KDE Apps Release Announcement

[Paul Brown]

On Thursday, 13 December 2018 19:46:57 CET Christoph Feck wrote:
> Hi Alex,

Hello Cristoph,

> 
> CC'ing kde-promo and release-team.
> 
> On 13.12.2018 18:27, Aleix Pol wrote:
> > On Thu, Dec 13, 2018 at 6:14 PM Christoph Feck <cfeck at kde.org> wrote:
> >> On 13.12.2018 17:56, Aleix Pol wrote:
> >>> I hear there's been some turmoil regarding the announcement, can you
> >>> fill
> >>> me in about what happened?
> >> 
> >> KDE Applications 18.12 were released 3 hours ago. Did I miss anything?
> > 
> > I think it would be interesting that for the next release announcement you
> > talk with kde-promo, because they had the impression that they were rushed
> > into working on it.
> 
> The Promo team was informed https://phabricator.kde.org/T10070 about the
> coming release on Nov 17, with a detailed schedule
> https://phabricator.kde.org/T10131 filed on Nov 26.

Hello Cristoph,

Pleased to meet you. I hope you are happy with the impact the announcement has 
had.

You are right of course, the schedule said the day, and we were aware of that 
for a long time. What we were missing was the time. We were also missing a 
direct line to you or to any of your colleagues and I would like to clarify 
why these two things are important to Promo:

1.- The impact an announcement has varies depending on the time it is 
published on social media. We have researched this in depth and the patterns 
are clear. We want to take advantage of this and give important announcements, 
like .0 releases, the best time slots. Yesterday's announcement, for example, 
would have worked much better if it had been made between the times of 10.00 
am and 11:00 am CET.

2.- We (as in "KDE") want to be the ones who break the story and we want to do 
it through Promo. If someone else comes out with the news before us by as 
little as several minutes (because, I don't know, it was lunch time, for 
example, and we missed the announcement going live) it waters down the impact 
of the news story we want to post. Also,  if some third party gets ahead of 
us, their story can be incorrect, focus on things we think will impact 
negatively the spreading of the news, or will simply be dull and boring.

On things like this, Promo spends days beforehand discussing and shaping all 
aspects of the story, deciding on what we are going to say, how we are going 
to say it, what images we are going to include, and when would be the best day 
and time to publish. We have published stories that have come out 
simultaneously or even behind those of other people with the exact same 
content, and, even so, thanks to having written them better, we have had a 
much larger impact than them. So we are pretty confident that we know what we 
are doing.

This may not seem important to other people within the community, but it is 
Promo's main task: to get as many as people as possible talking about KDE's 
stuff. It is literally what the word "Promo" means.

And that is why, as the day (and time) approaches, we have to have a direct 
line to the people in charge of launch. We need a minute to minute update of 
what is going on so we are not late and we don't get bulldozed by somebody 
else.

Other projects do this by dropping by the Promo IRC or Telegram group near the 
time of the launch. They are only in the group during, say, the critical 24 
hours prior to the launch and they keep the Promo team up to date as to 
whether things are running smoothly, or there is any kind of problem that may 
result in a delay. Krita, Kdenlive, Plasma and others all do this on a regular 
basis and their launches have become much better because of it. It is also 
quite exciting when it al comes together.

Once whatever it is we are working on is launched, it is "Hasta luego Lucas!" 
and until next time.

The problem is that yesterday we did not have any of that. We were running 
blind, which made us nervous. And, when the announcement was made, it came out 
in a time slot which was not very good.

But, hey, lesson learnt for everyone. Next time will be much better.

I am glad to meet you, regardless, and look forward to working with you on 
future announcements.

If we don't talk before, have a very merry Christmas.

Cheers

Paul
-- 
Promotion & Communication

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