[Mageia-marketing] Plan - stuff to do pre Beta 1 release

Patricia Fraser trish at thefrasers.org
Tue Apr 5 22:38:58 CEST 2011


Hi Wobo,

> All this reads very insightful and I do admit that some of your
> thoughts never occurred to me because they were obvious until now.

It's a whole nother art form, true. 
 
> 2011/4/5 Patricia Fraser <trish at thefrasers.org>:
> >
> > Announcement doesn't just have to be written - it needs to be
> > written in time to be passed back to the community for filtering,
> > sanity checking and to find out whether the community likes the
> > way it's being presented. So, it's at least a 2-step process,
> > maybe more.
> 
> Hmm, how many people you want to ask what has to be written in an
> announcement of a new version? Isn't it quite clear what has to be
> addressed?

One man's clarity is another woman's obscurity... 8-). If we're
representing a community - which is what I think Mageia's marketing
is doing, in part - it's good to know whether or not the community
feels comfortable with the way they're being represented. It's also
good if the community feels that marketing is actually a useful
and valuable part of the community.

You could check out the last time Yorick and the discuss list had a
conversation, to get a really unmistakable feel for this - I should
probably not need to point out that the shrinkage to not-quite-zero
of the marketing team can be traced back to that conversation. A
pity, because we were full of energy and working hard and well.
 
> What is the difference between an announcement to the community and
> one going to the outside world? An Announcement has to say
>  - who announces
>  - what is tha subject of the announcement

It's all in who you're talking to. If you're talking to a community
of which you're part, you're talking to people who are already on the
inside - there's an existing relationship of a kind, and they know
the context and what's going on and who's who. If you're talking to
people who aren't part of the community yet, you're extending an
invitation. You want to present them with a picture of the community
you're inviting them into (which the community doesn't need), and
give them reasons that might lead them to come investigate joining -
or they might just take the community's output and still not join...
or they might think: no thanks. 

> For a release this means
>  - version and date (making a point in being on schedule, if so)
>  - main points like new versions of major software or some
> innovative technology or whatever is the main "killer" of the
> release
>  - if it's a test release (alpha, beta, rc) say something about the
> main focus of this test release
> 
> Then the usual info:
>  - errata page
>  - release notes
>  - download (what and where)
>  - other informational pages of the project, contact info
> 
> What of these points would you change depending on the target, which
> targets, are there different targets at all? See next paragraph.

It's all in how it's expressed. Suppose you're a person who is on the
fringes of the FLOSS community - you've tried Ubuntu, but there are
so *many* Ubuntu people it's scary to try to join in. You
might or mightn't be a coder; you might also be a potential tester, or
documenter, or... 

Would you feel like joining, if you felt like the announcement was
exclusive, geeky, very plain-ordinary and didn't actually say: we're
looking for people. Please join us - we have room in our community
for people with all sorts of interests and talents. We need you! -
you mightn't. It might all feel just a bit too elite.

On the other hand, if you're an established coder, this kind of
"soft" approach might make you wonder whether you'd be comfortable
here - do people actually code, or package, or do anything really
interesting to me? or am I going to get stuck being a marketroid?

On the gripping hand...

You see what I mean, I bet.
 
> > Sending oughtn't really to be done until we decide where. Do we
> > stick with the standards of geek community/social media and hope
> > for the best;
> 
> We never did. We always tried to send release announcements out to
> everybody, geek or not geek (I'm relating to former Mandriva
> communication policy, around 2003-2005). As I already wrote, we
> spread to the geek targets but also to the general IT crowd,
> private users and professionals. Best examples are /., Distrowatch,
> online and print magazines.

Yep. It was moderately successful. It could have been more so; it
could be for us. It all depends what the community wants to have
happen.

> > On points 2 and 3, we could perhaps do with some kind of Mageia
> > Persona to send out information - a press@ or communications@
> > persona (which could have anyone at the back end; this persona
> > could submit stories to /., the fb page, send tweets and issue
> > press releases to all and sundry. Just a thought.
> 
> Yes, detaching press work to some more persons than those who do it
> now would be nice - when we will find such persons. But parts of
> this is already done by several people.

I'd separate here the "persona" which could have anyone behind it
from the people who do any communication with people outside the
community (or in it, for that matter, from the "function" of
co-ordinating, writing and disseminating targeted, on-point and
well-constructed information about Mageia, whether graphical or
verbal (or audio, or Braille, or what-have-you). I was positing a
"persona"; I do think the 
 
> > What if we get TV interest? Who will handle that and how much
> > backup will they need/want from marcomm?
> 
> This depends 1. on the occasion (local), 2 on the language, 3. on
> the kind of coverage the tv company wants to do (more general, more
> technical, etc.

I'd like to see marcomm be multilingual in time - maybe working
together with i18n, which is currently very technically-focussed. The
linguistic needs of marketing are a little different from those of
package translators (who need to be very precise) and documenters
(who need a different kind of precision and communication) - it would
be good to have marcomm/i18n people who could look for the marketing
nuance as they translated (like it would be good to have documenters
ditto).

What you get TV to do for you (we/us) depends entirely on how well
you target your approach to them - same as anything marketing. If you
can give them an angle that will help them sell advertising, they'll
look at you. So it depends on the kind of program you want to target.

What I was wondering about, though, was: suppose we're successful in
getting a TV spot? What then? 

> May be you are coming from the marketing side which results in
> different views, I have no relation to marketing in this context (I
> mean marketing in a non-profit world).

Marketing is the same whether commercial or otherwise - it's about
getting the message out. First decide what you want it to be;
second, construct it; third, spread it. Simplified, but that's the
job.

Cheers!

-- 
Trish Fraser, JD9R RQ2D
52.4161N,16.9303E
di apr  5 22:16:13 CEST 2011
GNU/Linux 1997-2010 #283226 counter.li.org
andromeda up 3 hour(s), 56 min.
kernel 2.6.33.7-desktop-2mnb
--
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