Comments: IN DEPTH: Fedora 10 Preview

[Paul W. Frields]

On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 02:14:14PM +0000, Jonathan Roberts wrote:
> > The feature list definitely *has* improved uptake from journalists, I
> > can tell you from personal experience talking to them.
> 
> I didn't say it hadn't. 

I didn't take it that way, either. :-) I think we're in violent
agreement.

> What I was saying is that when I contacted editors this time six
> months ago, the ones I spoke with didn't know it existed. I think
> it's a superb tool, but it's hardly much use if we don't tell
> anybody about it. My point was that we need to take more concrete
> actions that are visible to everyone. It's great having a feature
> list, and it's great having a marketing plan, but in what ways do
> these documents encourage and help people from the community to
> actively market releases? From my point of view, it seems like
> there's very little support for community marketing
> activities... (discounting the ambassadors project, who I think do a
> great job and seem to receive plenty of support).

I'm going to be in RDU later this week and will brainstorm with some
of the Marketing people on whom I can get my hands there.  (Why
internal?  In this case it may be necessary to get them to do a little
more external participation.)

In the context of making a new Fedora release:

* What are the definite actions we can take to market Fedora and its
  features better?

  * Alerts to specific venues and aggregators?

  * Add stories and links to personal blogs?

  * Watch and reply to stories around release day?

When should we do those things?  In other words, a schedule and an SOP
that is similar to the way some of the community technical groups like
Infrastructure work.

Jack Aboutboul is chairing Marketing meetings, correct?  A few of
these concrete actions we can still take very successfully for Fedora
10 release, like watching story developments around the Web.  There
are additional activities we can line up for Fedora 11 release, like
pre-seeding information on proposed features to key sites.

> > And that's why we've linked it prominently in all the press issued
> > in RHM and on the Red Hat press blog for our other pre-releases
> > (Alpha, Beta, Preview).
> 
> I'm glad, and hopefully this will help it to become even more
> widespread. (NB, it kind of erks me still that this kind of thing is
> being put solely on Red Hat properties. Don't get me wrong, I
> understand and appreciate the help that Red Hat provides, but in terms
> of branding, I think it would be extremely valuable if Fedora had it's
> own space for these things.)

I didn't mean to imply in any way that marketing should solely be on
Red Hat properties.  I think the schedule of concrete tasks should
include a variety of venues on which we can get our message out.  That
should include any Fedora properties like the Fedora magazine site,
and also leverage the already existing draw of channels like Red Hat's
press blog.

-- 
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
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