Date: Wed, 11 Sep 2002 10:21:09 -0400 From: Michael Lucas <mwlucas@blackhelicopters.org> To: advocacy@FreeBSD.org Subject: FreeBSD PR Message-ID: <20020911102109.A60294@blackhelicopters.org>
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Hello, Once upon a time, we had an unofficial Public Relations person. This person handled all things related to FreeBSD PR. That person has since laid down most of his Project responsibilities and, while he's still kicking around, he's no longer doing any public relations work. I think we need to get a serious effort rolling on public relations for FreeBSD. After some discussions with other assorted FreeBSD folks, it seems that several others agree. Some of our corporate sponsors do promote FreeBSD, and I for one appreciate that. But Daemon News, FreeBSD Mall, or anyone else, cannot speak for "The FreeBSD Project." Only we can do that. And we can only do that if we become organized, develop a team and a charter, and request the proper delegation of authority from the committer body. We no longer have anyone to answer questions such as "How many FreeBSD users are there?" This is an important question. As a "FreeBSD Face Man," I get asked it all the time. And I have to pull a number out of the air. This is bad, because it gives the impression nobody knows how many users there are. Also, press releases are a fact of life in promotion. But the Project no longer issues press releases, because we have no PR person. Heck, *anything* is worth a press release. Fine-grained locking in the network stack? KSE? Those represent a lot of work, and nifty features, and we don't freaking *tell* anyone about them! Press releases get covered in the press, which means articles in the press, which means free promotion, coverage, and, ultimately, users. Some teams do make announcements, mind you. For example, re@ does an excellent job with their announcements on new releases. I'm curious if they're distributed to "The Press," however. They might well be. But we, as a Project, need to know if they are or not. We could also use a set of FreeBSD presentations and scripts for these presentations. I've been asked to speak about FreeBSD before, and always had to whip out MagicPoint and cobble something up myself. There are people out there who are much better at these things than I, however. I would love to see, say, /usr/ports/promotions/freebsd-embedded, that included a MagicPoint slide show and a script for speakers to audiences interested in FreeBSD's strengths in that particular area. (OK, a port is going too far. But this presentation should be as easy to get and install as a port.) Right now, to find a presentation to promote FreeBSD I have to go to Google and find something someone else used. What do you folks think? Do we need a PR team, or should I go back to playing Freeciv? ==ml -- Michael Lucas mwlucas@FreeBSD.org, mwlucas@BlackHelicopters.org http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/q/Big_Scary_Daemons Absolute BSD: http://www.AbsoluteBSD.com/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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