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

[Wolfgang Bornath]

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

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?

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

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.

> 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.

> 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.

> 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.

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).

-- 
wobo