KDE Apps Release Announcement

[Jonathan Riddell]

Nobody on the promo team contacted Christoph that I saw.  The article
on Dot is great but would be been better written a few days before so
it could be the main announcement.

Jonathan



On Fri, Dec 14, 2018 at 10:10:45AM +0100, Paul Brown wrote:
> 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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