Background
For the F11 release cycle, Marketing switched from a task-based model to a schedule based model. This went well, allowing us to keep better in sync with what was going on and what types of information were needed to be created/put out at any given point in the cycle. However, there are still many kinks and areas for improvement as were defined in document: F11 Cycle Retrospect. Bottom line, complacency is not a formula for success and we must always be looking towards the future and improving it.
Looking forward, we have always floated the idea of having a Fedora Magazine and the going logic is that we may be able to model Fedora Marketing around such conventions which would not be dissimilar to a magazine. The focus would be not only on producing the content that is required for each release cycle but also on producing relevant and interesting content, in many forms, audio, video and text-based for the consumption of both the general Fedora community and the Open Source community at large.
below are the notes I took at the first Fedora Insight meeting I know of, which was in the red hat westford office at the start of june. Mel Chua 12:37, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
- ja = themayor
- md = mizmo
- ss = smooge
- mc = mchua
ja: explains task-based to milestone-based switch to stephen. we want more marketing metrics - let's do a magazine. md: why not spruce up fwn? what audience are we trying to reach: ss: what I'd like to do is bring (non-fedora-dev) people in to show what we're doing... are we reaching people who are not fedora devs? md: how often are we trying to do this? what do we want to accomplish? ja: let's break it down. fwn is more short-term oriented; we want more media stuff, fwn is very text-heavy. we have multiple sources creating content, and none of it is coordinated. md: what are those sources? ja: fwn, the beat... md: the beat = docs? that's not really magazine-style content. ss: these are summaries? md: yes. ss: we're looking at doing a full blog... like a post blog, edited. ja: let me clarify what I mean by a magazine. more of an aggregate/feed, something like linuxjournal's website, this would be the standardized feed for getting interesting featurettes. md: so this isn't about getting more people to write more content; it's that people are writing content but it's all over the place, so let's get it in one bucket. ss: we have planet.fp.o, but this would be not your personal blog. ja: at the same time, I don't want to make planet defunct. another reason this is important is that we want a steady list of stuff we (mktg) need to make - so that every month we know we need to do X. Right now, the list of stuff we make is scattered. But we need a regular cycle for marketing deliverables too. mc: making sure I understand - examples? md: gnome journal - it's published monthly mc: planet sugar labs, planet laptop, and olpcnews, also full circle - similar? ja: yes, more on the news than the tutorials front, so more gnome journal/olpcnews than full circle md: sounds like the primary goal is to have a central edited place for this content. ss: how would this fit into community-the-platform? md: we could probably fit a module into community, with zikula... ss: would this be a way to help with community villages? would communty be a good steppingstone? md: audience = already in the community, not afraid of technical stuff, but who might want a good central content source and a routine for finding information ja: that's pretty much it. also, from the design end of things, we want to have it fit with whatever design is doing, so it looks consistent. also, when i was up here a month ago and you showed me the apple.com tour, let's get sketches for that, b/c the more consistent we look the more professional we look as well. md: a look for fedoramagazine.com? ja: oh, we need a name ss: "Rob" md: we have some branding templates we can plug this into. ss: let's stay away from "magazine" since we're not going there... "magazine" seems brand-y, flash-y... md: "journal" tends to be like a magazine but more technical... what existing publications are out there that we should model ourselves on? ja: it's similar to lj but not... or lwn... ss: what would the licensing be on this, btw? ja/md unision: CC md: I'd prefer non-ND license, stuff should be modifiable. name: "fedora first"? ss: what are the foundations? md: freedom, first, features, friends. first is like "the first place you go to get news..." ss: freedom is more a newspaper title... md: 'first' has a contemporary edginess. ss: let's ask the list ja: yeah, I'm going to solicit feedback on everything md: much of our media content comes from rh and it's not remixable ss: if we point to it instead of republishing, the licensing problem goes away mc: fedoraproject.org/first? md: *starts making a mockup!* mc: how about i18n, accessibility? md: *adds a language drop-down chooser* ja: are there transcription tools for podcasts? mc: yep, OSS ones. ss: I also want to make sure we don't overwork the transcribers. ja: there will be a workflow. mc: let's go through planet.fp.o and give a quick yes/no to headlines to figure out what sort of content everyone thinks should be in this everyone: *triages real quick* md: we should do quick profiles of contributors ss: if you know someone, you don't flame them (meeting ends)
Present
Currently, the state of project/community produced content is clearly scattered. We have many groups, such as Marketing, Ambassadors, Docs, Design, etc. all creating great content for a variety of different purposes. The amount of this content is effectively multiplied by how much we care to and/or use the services of the translation team to localize this content. Once this is done, there are various and sundry methods of distributing this content. We have Fedora Weekly News, Docs Beats, Fedora Planet, local ambassadors newsletters etc. There is not one central process or policy for creating content and distribution channel/plan. Also, much of our content is not clearly licensed.
Much of this content is also centered milestones and it may be possible to fit it into recurring schedule-based publication which would help overall management and tracking.
Future
There are many questions to ask. What do we want this to be? Who should the audience be? How well do we actually know our audience to make that assumption? What types of content? These questions are what we are trying to ask and answer now so we can get a solid picture of how we proceed further. We need to clearly answer these questions to clarify our goals. Goals are in the goals section below and they will and should be refined by the community as a whole.
We might want to strive for something akin to a journal style format for community created/relevant content and including Fedora Marketing content might work best. We should start by investigating sites with similar goals/audiences. We look at sites like https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter, http://fullcirclemagazine.org/, http://planet.laptop.org/, http://www.olpcnews.com/, http://planet.sugarlabs.org/ -- not to mention FWN/LatestIssue.
What we want might be a magazine, which is not really a magazine format, more journal-ish (technical, non-nephyte) but also not afraid to include some stuff for newbies, and mostly a platform where interesting content would show up for the community's consumption, which would act as a central hub.
Also, the goal should be to create something which is well laid out visually and consistent with the design teams work and general philosophy.