Offer to help editors?

[Paul W. Frields]

On Tue, 2008-04-22 at 15:00 -0400, Max Spevack wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Apr 2008, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> 
> >> Corporate communications has established a relationship with several 
> >> of the editors listed below as we're always reaching out to them with 
> >> the latest Fedora and Red Hat news.  I'm happy to help in contacting 
> >> any of these folks.  I'll be in touch with several editors toward the 
> >> beginning of May to line up Fedora 9 pre-brief interviews with Paul 
> >> the week prior to the F9 launch.
> >
> > We need to find a way to make more of the marketing activities 
> > transparent and involve the community.
> >
> > 1) Know what is getting done
> > 2) How we can help
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I just want to give you some context around this thread.
> 
> Kara Shiltz is a member of Red Hat's corporate communications team, and 
> she's the person who is responsible, from the Red Hat side, for 
> Fedora-related PR.  Whenever we want to take Marketing strategy, 
> messages, and energy from this list and channel it through Red Hat's PR 
> team to help formalize, amplify, etc. the effort, Kara is one of the 
> folks who is going to help us do it.
> 
> What does this mean?
> 
> Well, among other things, we get lots of interview requests from various 
> publications, websites, etc.  Most of those requests come around the 
> time of the Fedora release, or whenever we have some sort of big Fedora 
> announcement to make.
> 
> Additionally, Kara works with the Fedora team (and the community) to 
> augment the community marketing that we are doing -- We've got the 
> Fedora Interviews segment, for example, that JonRob is leading.  Kara 
> can help to drive attention to that from other sources, like the general 
> pool of press contacts that Red Hat has access to, etc.
> 
> Kara is here to be a resource to all of us, and to augment the community 
> marketing that we do with the professional, full time communications 
> work that Red Hat does.
> 
> So, specifically on the topic of contacts at various magazines -- it's 
> great that we're developing that list, because it can be compared to the 
> lists of contacts that other folks in Red Hat already have, and is 
> helpful to both of us.
> 
> Everyone needs to remember that doing "open marketing" like this, in 
> which we actually communicate and work transparently with members of Red 
> Hat's PR team, is a very unique way of doing business, even in the world 
> of open source companies.
> 
> Folks like me and Greg have always worked closely with RH's PR team, but 
> now we're trying to bring more and more of that work to this list. 
> Let's all continue to be patient with each other, work together, etc.
> 
> We're doing a good job, but we have to remember that it's kind of new 
> for everyone.
> 
> Thanks to everyone for all your hard work.

Max, thanks for writing this.  We need to all be aware that in *all*
parts of Fedora, the way we interact with new contributors, whether
they're volunteers or Red Hat employees, sets the tone for their overall
experience in Fedora.  It's up to each of us to be a positive force for
encouragement.

I'm delighted that Kara is on this list now -- she and I had a very
productive meeting this afternoon about the timeline for F9-related PR.
And we do intend to do as much of that as possible out in the community
space.

I should have a couple lists of major feature points and community
stories ready tonight, as well as explanations on why they're important
(for non-technical press contacts and readers) and will be posting them
on the wiki and linking here.  Those are the big points we will try to
weave into interviews, blog entries, and press releases because they
have compelling messages attached to them that resonate well with the
press and their readerships.

Kara, welcome to the Fedora Marketing team and we're glad to have you
aboard! :-)

-- 
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
  gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233  5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717
  http://redhat.com/   -  -  -  -   http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/
  irc.freenode.net: stickster @ #fedora-docs, #fedora-devel, #fredlug
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