Release announcements

An important part of a Fedora release is its announcement. The release team composes a release announcement sent on the day of the release. These announcements are typically whimsical, meaning they take a fun approach rather than a typically serious press release approach.

Each local team is encouraged to write its own announcement in a way that makes the most sense for the local community. This is a truly localized version of the release announcement for Fedora.

For, use talking points. Read for more about how that works.

Process

 * 1) A small committee of Fedora writers, marketeers, and technical leaders draft and approve a final list of release talking points.
 * 2) A Release announcement template is produced using structured text in plain ASCII.  It includes a block at the top for the local content, then a complete amount of standard boilerplate.
 * 3) * To use the template, copy the content from the Release announcement template page and paste in to a plain text editor so it removes all formatting from the HTML/wiki.
 * 4) Any local group wanting to write a native-language Fedora release announcement needs to form a group of 2 or more collaborators.
 * 5) Drafts can be worked on here on the Wiki, via direct email, or whatever method the collaborators choose.
 * 6) The draft must be reviewed and approved by an independent reader of that language.
 * 7) * This needs to be someone from outside of the collaboration circle that wrote the draft
 * 8) * Any Fedora contributor who reads the language is an eligible editor.
 * 9) Formal announcements are sent out to fedora-announce, fedora-list (either the main list or a language-specific one), via blogs, and into various support channels (#fedora, fedoraforum.org, fedoraunity.org et al, etc.), either international or local ones.

This process section may be moved to the SOP.

Talking points
A talking point is a term meaning, "These are the topics the group wants to address, in the same way, with the same message, for all audiences." Having a common set of talking points helps keep a common message about the Fedora release. The talking points cover technology, features, exciting news, and participation/contribution invitations.

You do not need to use all of the talking points in an announcement or presentation, but at least some of them should be covered. If you substitute others, be sure that you have a good reason for not using the common talking points. An example would be if a technology or feature is particularly useful in your region.

How to use the talking points

 * Use at least some of the content
 * If you list all of the talking points, you can reduce the words to just a sentence per point
 * You can make the talking points part of the narrative of your whimsical announcement

Where to send your announcement
These release announcements are for use in your local region. No one in Fedora is gathering these to send out. The best resource is to work with your local Ambassador team(s), who know where to send announcements regionally.

Ideas include:


 * News media outlets (websites, newspapers, etc.)
 * Technical journalists
 * Technical and free/open bloggers
 * Educational organizations (IEEE, etc.)
 * User groups (LUGs, JUGs, etc.)

Announcements Schedule
The Marketing and Documentation teams keep tasks on their respective release schedules for the release announcement. The respective team leads and both teams' members should be coordinating and communicating regularly as they move toward the release date.

Past Release Announcements
These give you an idea of how they have been written in the past.


 * F-12
 * F-11
 * F-10
 * F-9
 * F-8
 * F-7
 * FC-6
 * FC-5
 * FC-4
 * FC-3
 * FC-2
 * FC-1

(And now you know why we don't let Bill write them anymore!)