History lesson: where did the one-page release notes come from, and what did they use to be?

[Mel Chua]

Spreading a little history about why we do the deliverables we do. :)

http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-mktg/2010-05-17/fedora-mktg.2010-05-17-15.07.log.html 
and added to https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing_meetings#2010, 
linked-to from 
http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-mktg/2010-05-17/fedora-mktg.2010-05-17-15.07.log.html.

15:07:26 <mchua> quaid was mentioning in another channel about the 
evolution towards our current 
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/F13_one_page_release_notes and what they 
used to be before.
15:07:38 <mchua> and I went "ooh, a history lesson opportunity"
15:07:59 <quaid> qqhave a good un
15:08:21 * quaid kicks his irssi connection
15:08:28 * wonderer puts some [*]3 into the ring ;-)
15:08:30 <quaid> ok, back
15:08:57 <quaid> so, I'll be loose with dates and details, and stickster 
can correct me ...
15:09:07 <quaid> we used to have about 3 locations where we'd do an 
overview of the release.
15:09:19 <quaid> * a single wiki page with a laundry list of upgrades
15:09:26 <quaid> * release notes overview
15:09:31 <quaid> * various announcement
15:09:53 <stickster> And none of them particularly more attractive than 
our existing release notes
15:10:01 <quaid> paul and I tried to define what a modified process 
would be like with a single source for multiple targets.
15:10:20 <quaid> for example, that  became the talking points.
15:11:05 <quaid> which had another purpose, allowing a localized team to 
write a useful release in a native language, using a native idiomatic 
"fun" approach (the whimsical approach)
15:11:22 * mchua digging to see if we can find examples of those old results
15:11:59 <quaid> but we never really got a good handle wrapped around 
the multiple overview approach, because we were probably trying to .. 
well, do the marketing without really doing it as marketing.
15:12:32 <quaid> so we wanted that owned by a marketing group, who could 
define it; and it took a few releases to even get other people to see 
that vision, or rather, make it better so it made sense from my inane 
ramblings.
15:12:54 <mchua> Was this back in the days before the 
ambassador/marketing split?
15:13:02 <quaid> somewhere in there it became clear our Really Big 
Release Notes were not cutting it for quick understanding and PR.
15:13:03 <stickster> Not that far back
15:13:32 <quaid> also, we cooked up big notes for Alpha, with 
translation, and that work got 50% replaced by Beta, then 25% more by 
final, so we all did lots of throw away work.
15:13:45 <quaid> that's the main reason we started the one-page 
wiki-based release notes for the Alpha and Beta
15:13:52 <quaid> (then called Test 1, Test 2, etc.)
15:14:03 <quaid> then we could edit it right up to test release, etc.
15:14:19 <quaid> it was also a good PR tool, point it out for 
journalists, etc.
15:14:34 <quaid> so I think the current one-page covers all those needs:
15:14:38 <quaid> * overview for the public
15:14:41 <quaid> * good face on the release
15:14:50 <quaid> * list of talking points addressed
15:14:56 <quaid> * more attractive
15:15:01 <quaid> * not done by Docs
15:15:13 <quaid> * professional sauce
15:15:17 <quaid> <eof> as I recall it
15:15:32 <quaid> yeah, there are tons of examples on the wiki
15:16:54 <quaid> #link https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/F9_talking_points
15:18:41 <mchua> The one-page release notes started in F12 when Sparks 
asked me if we could make a shiny, shorter version of the release notes 
Docs came out with
15:18:54 <mchua> it was originally supposed to be a joint Marketing/Docs 
thing, ended up being a Marketing thing.
15:19:12 <mchua> it replaced this one:
15:19:15 <mchua> #link https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Tours/Fedora10
15:19:28 <mchua> the "fedora tour" before we had fedora-tour (as in 
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora-tour)
15:21:17 <mchua> And I believe this concludes our history lesson for the 
day. :)
15:21:24 * mchua wraps logs, posts to wiki and list
15:21:29 <mchua> thank you for the history lesson, quaid and stickster!