Communications+plan+F14

= Diagnostic =

Context
Fedora is a leading GNU/Linux distribution. Started and sponsored by Red Hat, it is always going forward with a strength community. For the Fedora 14 release, the Fedora Community is organizing a release party the Saturday 4th of December. This event will occur during the "First Open Saturdays" (a french open source event) at the Paris' "Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie".

This communications plan is aimed to help organizing this event.

Environmental Scan
=Strategy=

Targeted audience
Most people will be between 20 and 35 years old. Linux users, they already know the Fedora Project quite well and have some IT knowledge. Early-adopters even innovators, they are always online using their smartphone and several social networks (twitter, Facebook...), and they like gadgets. They are also really concerned by freedom, that's why they could be useful for helping the community.

Cognitive (to promulgate)
First objective: to explain Fedora the advantages to every people Secondary objective: to expose new Fedora 14 features

Emotional (to share our love)
First objective: improving the Fedora view, showing that it is a distribution for everybody and not only Linux users. Secondary objective: to strengthen the link between contributors and users. It will be easier for them to interact more than before.

Conative (to make users acting)
First objective: to expend the users community Secondary objective: to enroll new contributors

Promise
With talks and workshops, visitors will be able to understand the Fedora Project, Fedora and its new features, as they cab come with their laptop or usb stick and ask help to install Fedora!

Pitch
Light but institutional.

Length
The communication strategy starts on November 15th and ends on December 10th.

Budget
There is no defined budget but french ambassadors will provide what is needed.

Partnership

 * Hosting : www.iKoula.com
 * Radio : None
 * Blog : None
 * Press : None
 * Web Press : None

=Action plan=

Announcement phase
From Monday the 15th of November untill Friday the 3rd of December.

Visual identity
We plan to create a specific logo and artwork for this bi-annual event. To concord with our target, they will have to be well designed, without photos, cliparts nor screenshots.

Announcement
Write an announcement for fedora-fr.org, its forum and its wiki as well. It will display useful information like the event place and its schedule. Not explaining talk details is important. This imply not uploading slides in advance

Press
Send a press release to free press actors (metro, direct soir, direct matin). It will inform about the event and give them all needed information about Fedora to be able to write an article. The writing press world is really complex (many codes, syntax...). As we don't have anyone to be the press specialist, this actions to be strictly controlled and clearest as possible. One risk could be to be seen as professionals with a strong amateurishness background. This could lead to bad advertisement.

Blog / webRadio / webTV
Move forward bloggers interested by the open source. This concern the use of the public opinion leaders strategy (very important for the IT). Those will received a press kit. As they already know (at least a bit) GNU/Linux, readers will need more details as the written press. To attract them, we would like to send them a Fedora 14 Live CD as they would be able to test it quickly without downloading it.

=> The press kit as been sent on December the 1st by Kévin Raymond.

Facebook
Create a Facebook event. Content will be the same as the one for the general announcement, but adapted to match more people.

Linkedin
Create an event on the professionals social networks. Linkedin is the largest international social network. Therefor, it has to be written in English.

Twitter
Create a twitter hashtag (#rf14) in order to regroup all tweets related to the event. Every tweet should be shorter than 100 chars and contain links (photo, announcement...) so it can be retweet easily.

E-mailing
Send and email at localized mailing lists (fr-user, announce, newsletter...). It has to catch every users.

Accompanying phase
From 2pm till 6pm the 4th of December.

Posters
Print posters for the CSI to help finding the event. From the entrance to the rooms, the GNOME footprints would be sticks on the roof.

Twitter
A day watch would be done on twitter using the twitter hashtag to help managing the event. Announcement could be done regarding talks and workshops.

Photos
Someone would be in charge to take pictures and upload them directly online. http://bit.ly/g82uO0

Slides sharing
Upload online the slides used during presentations.

http://pingou.fedorapeople.org/conf_rf14/puppet.pdf

Newsletter subscription
Create a box for people to give us their email address for receiving further information. Business card could be used later while looking for sponsoring.

Fidelization phase
From the 5th of December until the 10th of December.

Thanks
Write a forum post to thanks people for their visit and contributor for their helps. Give them some links (pics, links...). All bloggers who will write an article would be personally thanked.

Feedback (forum/twitter/facebook)
Ask a feedback to the most interested users (the one that would give us their email) to help us to analyse our event.

Event Report
An event report will be published by the event owner (Kévin Raymond) on fpo.

=Key success factors=
 * Regular meeting would be done to share and show the work in progress. There will also be a last meeting, after the event to discuss how we felt about this event and how to improve the next one.


 * We have to show that our community is easy to integrate for every users. The use of nickname will be avoided for public announcement, apart for contributors. We do that in order to integrate unknown people to our discussion. All users will be at the same level.


 * There will be a watch during the project. This will help finding issues, avoid bad advertisement and conflicts. To help that, medias will be listed and personal communication will be not be recommended without talking to the event owner.


 * Web actions (forum, twitter, facebook...) will be done using the "Rencontres_Fedora" name. Credentials will be shared between ambassadors for them to be able to reuse for next events.

=Planning=

GANTT diagram
=Duty=
 * Event manager : Kévin Raymond
 * Communication manager : Renaud Taburiaux

=Evaluation= To help us evaluate visitor feedbacks, our observations will be based on a quantitative approach: Our qualitative criteria are:
 * Visitors number
 * French forum new registration number
 * Installation number
 * Tweet number using the hashtag (positive comments/negative ones)
 * By reading the posts and comments, we will find the positive/negative and favorable/unfavorable aspects
 * Tweet speech
 * "like" number on the Facebook event

=Summary= Remember that the main goal is to increase fedora's notoriety and recruit new contributors.

This communication plan will has been approved the 15th of November during the Fedora-Fr meeting on IRC (#fedora-fr).

=Results/Assessment= This event was during the PSL (first open Saturday) who attracts mostly new users. Next time, it would be better to have a two day event, the first one for every users, while the second one (Sunday) would be contributors and experienced users oriented. This would lead to new contributions, hackfest, fun...

We didn’t manage to design a logo on time for this event, but that might be done for the next event. Communications should also be started sooner.

That was a nice event. Many thanks to all visitors and contributors!