Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2002 10:36:42 -0400 From: Michael Lucas <mwlucas@blackhelicopters.org> To: Arjan van Leeuwen <avleeuwen@piwebs.com> Cc: advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD PR Message-ID: <20020913103642.A74684@blackhelicopters.org> In-Reply-To: <200209122109.39919.avleeuwen@piwebs.com>; from avleeuwen@piwebs.com on Thu, Sep 12, 2002 at 09:09:39PM %2B0200 References: <20020911102109.A60294@blackhelicopters.org> <200209122109.39919.avleeuwen@piwebs.com>
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Hello, You know, I don't think I kicked this anthill hard enough; not many of you are stirring. I'm picking Arjan's response to reply to in a general context, rather than replying to everyone. This might make it seem that I'm talking only with Arjan, but that's not my intent -- I simply am not writing this several times over. I also received several personal replies, and am going to respond to some of the issues raised in general here. First off, I'm glad some of you give a dang. We agree that PR is important. (In related news, we agree that Pluto is a bit chilly in the summer.) One issue I'd like to address right off is summarized nicely by Arjan here: On Thu, Sep 12, 2002 at 09:09:39PM +0200, Arjan van Leeuwen wrote: > I'd love to see a PR team, and I'd love to be part of it too (if that's > possible). Yes, it is possible, and yes, we would love to have you. One comment that was frequently raised was, "I can't help, I'm not a committer!" Well, I am a committer, and I have to say that being a committer is not necessary to do any FreeBSD work. But a commit bit is considered a benefit for FreeBSD contributors, so: you want a commit bit, you can have it, more easily than most. Here's how: One of our first tasks needs to be updating http://www.freebsd.org/news/press.html. I want this page updated with links that show FreeBSD mentions in the press, especially those that demonstrate FreeBSD technology uptake by other companies (i.e., Apple), not just ones that say "wow, FreeBSD is kewl." Snippets on personal Web pages don't count, sorry. These need to be "real" press articles. I'm not going to go and define what real press is: I know it when I see it. Install /usr/ports/textproc/docproj and /usr/ports/textproc/ispell. CVSup the source for the www tree (collection www). Edit www/en/news/press.xml to include the links and blurbs. Spellcheck the file, validate it with the DocProj tools, and build it to see that it works. Check the links to be sure they work, too. Then submit your changes as a PR. Pardon the self promotion, but: Installing user tools: http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2001/02/08/Big_Scary_Daemons.html Changing the docs: http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2001/02/22/Big_Scary_Daemons.html Submitting the PRs: http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2001/03/08/Big_Scary_Daemons.html You can also find this info scattered throughout the FreeBSD web site, especially in the Docproj Primer, but you cannot say I don't make it easy for you! :-) So, here's the deal: Submit updates to the "In The Press" page. rwatson sent out a nice list of links, which I'm going to count as one set of updates. Make sure your patches are clean, meaning that they apply cleanly, and don't break the Web build. Submit twelve clean patches in a row, through proper FreeBSD channels, and I will sponsor you for a commit bit of your very own. Do us all a favor, though, and post here that you have a press PR in the queue on story such-and-such; that will save others here the time and trouble to do it. By accepting this commit bit, you will also accept the responsibility to maintain the FreeBSD "In the Press" page. It may take you a couple patches to get right, and you may have to ask questions, but that's OK. Really. If you wind up submitting fourteen patches total because the first two needed correction, that's the learning curve. I went through it -- heck, Robert Watson went through it, and he's now one of the Core members and a highfaluting', respected kernel security guy. In case of dispute, the person who gets to decide is me; if I'm sponsoring you, that means I'm putting my good name behind you, so you better measure up to my standards. (I'm not that bad, ask Tom Rhodes about rewriting the NFS chapter of the Handbook. Actually, on second thought, don't. ;-) If you're too late, don't sweat it. There will be other tasks that can earn you a commit bit. > More press coverage would help FreeBSD a great deal. This is the crux of the issue. It looks like this is our "to do list." a) A way to inject press releases into the PR stream. b) A way to catch PR-worthy stuff within the Project. c) Actually writing press releases. d) More articles in the press, especially paper press. e) People to review FreeBSD 5 DP2 and 5.0-R f) presentations g) posters I had some private email suggestions for a), but I'd like to drag those people out into the open and see if they'd be willing to take this on for us. If not, some of you with a bit of spare time and Google could make some good suggestions on how to do this. b) is comparatively easy. Watch -hackers, cvs-all, and -current, and pay attention! Actually writing press releases, c) is fairly straightforward. We have some old press releases in the tree now, in the press directory. I would absolutely love to have a professional PR person to write these, but we can do it ourselves. It must be done, so we must do it. d) rides on people writing articles. I did this for years, until I got "promoted" into writing BSD books. But press releases will get other people to do the writing for us! Review copies, e) can be had from our corporate sponsors. Rather than have everyone harass our corporate sponsors with suggestions, it would be good if we here on -advocacy built our own comprehensive list of people to contact. I'm sure we could get some info from our sponsors on what contacts they have, and we could work on expanding that list. Presentations are fairly straightforward. I'm going to push MagicPoint (/usr/ports/misc/magicpoint) as a tool here, because it's very low-overhead. Yes, StarOffice has a nice presentation tool, and I'm sure KDE and Gnome do as well, but I think it would be a bad idea to require such big-ass programs for people to run a presentation. Besides, the MagicPoint format is easy to edit. If you want to create a presentation on FreeBSD, go right ahead! I don't care if it sucks, it's a start. Remember: "If it sucks, rework until it sucks less." To show how easy MagicPoint is, I have my BSDCon 2002 presentation available at http://www.blackhelicopters.org/~mwlucas/presentation2k2.mgp. Posters, g), are actually the most difficult thing here. We could probably ask one of our corporate sponsors for a poster in electronic form. What format would be best? > With version 5 coming up, we have a great chance to get people to look at > FreeBSD, and to get a lot of positive press. We'd be fools to let that chance > pass by. We could be something worse than fools. We could be lazy. ==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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