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

[Romain d'Alverny]

On Wed, Apr 6, 2011 at 14:26, Bradley D. Thornton <Bradley at northtech.us> wrote:
> I believe that we can whip out a convention for the creation of the
> email aliases to delegate to the council since they've seemingly taken
> over the sysadmin team's job too

That's a joke. Just ask sysadmin about that. :-D

> and we'll see if they actually act on it, or pass it by like the forum/email
> list integration listed below as a priority a few months ago.

Nonsense. This has never been said as a priority (or find me a quote
about that) but as a "nice-to-have, provided someone stands up to
properly integrate this in our setup". It did not happen.

> We need a bit of reciprocity here. We can't be waiting on the horse for
> the cart and be expected to deliver the grain before the horse arrives
> to pull us along.
>
> There's a lot of infrastructure we requested and decided upon having
> here, and yet await.

References?

> Yes that was discussed at length, Wolfgang brought up the significance
> of syncing the forums and the email lists so that two disparate groups
> didn't begin to emerge independant of each other due to the lack of
> preference for one medium over the other.
>
> A simple technical detail that I'm wholly in favor of, although I myself
> prefer to use email lists themselves :)

There has never been a designed plan to actually make such a sync
between the official forums and the mailing-lists. The ml/forum bridge
has been provided by a third party advocating for it (good) but that
has not answered on details for joining the sysadmin team to help
spec'ing and setting this up for good.

So better leave this aside as long as no one takes this tasks.

> That discussion is archived (Don't tell me if we don't archive this
> Mailman list - that would be very bad and I would rather not know if
> that were the case) on this list - the particular discussion being
> spawned on 24 January 2011.

http://mageia.org/mailman/ - help yourself.

> We've waited for about six months now as a team, and suddenly the
> 'council' is arbitrarily creating lists and contact points without input
> or direction, or researching what has already been prepared and waiting
> on their actual formation?

You must be kidding. There has been a regular, permanent marcomm' team
in the past six months with regular meetings and actions?

I am not saying that there was not one. Patricia, you, a few others
were here from time to time. But in no way as much active as a few
other teams in the project (web, artwork or even more, packagers,
translators, sysadmins to name a few).

I am not blaming anyone/anything here. But pretending that the marcom
team has been waiting the past six months is pure nonsense when most
that was expected from the team was setting up and organizing, and
opening wide ears and eyes to all the people and activity within the
project to start to bring how it can help and improve things.

> I did run over and throw a few posts out just to help in filling the
> forums with some kruft and content so it can get going.

Just. Don't. Do. That.

Better have a slowly taking forum with good content than cruft. Really.

> frustrated that many of the things that appeared to be resolved on the
> list here were seemingly disregarded when it came time to implement, and
> simply arbitrarily taken on as a task by the 'council' and some
> 'founders'  w/o input, approval, or direction from this team.

Wait. You seem to misunderstand how things are done so far and how we
can improve them.

That was not "arbitrarily" taken by the council/board, that was done
as we used to do so far, without having a communication team/process
in place; that is, with some hurry and difficulty to spread the useful
info here and there before the release: that always happen like that,
take that for _granted_; the only thing we can do is: improve.

The goal of each team is _not_ to have a veto on how things go here
and there. A potential veto could come from the Council, or the Board.
Not much more. Of course, in the long term, we'd like to have the
communication team take the hand for
copywriting/proofreading/counselling and providing direction elements
- but for that, a clear and working timeplan has to be set and
followed by coordinated team members, and these have to be available
when required, especially at release time.

Someone is not available? So, unfortunately, she would have a hard
time complaining because things did not go how she expected/planned
them to. I know this can sound like nonsense if one comes from a
corporate environment - but it's not the same environment here - no
one is paid/ordered to contribute.

As ennael pointed out, the team better focus on how to build tools and
processes within the project, especially the release/communication
plan for finale, and advocate for it in the Council and through the
project (and "advocating" doesn't mean "forcing/patronizing") and help
everyone prepare to put this in motion.

Cheers,

Romain