Hi, (Sorry for evil double-posting :D) I was taking a look at the oft-neglected Talking Points, which were originally designed as a handy list of "new shiny" for each release that could be handed off to Ambassadors as a quick reference list of features to talk about, and have also at times served as a starting point for choosing features to be highlighted in release videos, interview stories / articles, blog posts, etc. It's entirely possible that they have also been a reference point for writing release announcements as well. Talking points tend to be very focused on *totally new* things, and not generally on incremental improvements. And so I figured I'd take a crack at it again - see https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_19_talking_points - though the mail to mktg list is still yet-to-be-written (the content of this mail sort of got in the way, ha). (For those unfamiliar, it's sort of an iterative process, wherein a number of features are proposed, and marketing whittles them down into a list, which is likely shorter than perhaps the feature-related content in a release announcement might be.) A few things stood out as I was going through the list: 1: We have bucketized items into a handful of groups over time, in the talking points as well as release announcements, as well as for docs beats and eventually, release notes - User, Developer, Sysadmin (and Cloud/Virt have popped up here and there in more recent releases for announcements). Those lines seem to be increasingly blurry - there are tools/apps that cross the dev and sysadmin roles, user and sysadmin roles, etc. - and while these groups are probably good for beats/release notes, esp. since content can just be duplicated / retailored if absolutely necessary, I'm wondering the following: Is bucketizing a bunch of stuff into "User, Sysadmin, Developer" the best answer for marketing highlights of the release? It seems like... well, a listing of car parts, but not really telling a story about the car, for lack of a better metaphor. And it seems a lot like "we made a bunch of improvements here and there" isn't as compelling as "we have improved overall state of ($experience, $usecase, etc) and here's how." Looking at the list of features it seems like there are a few main themes, for which I've suggested some marketing-i-fied names/groupings, though (as you can see in the Talking Points link) it's certainly open to other suggestions (or the option of leaving as-is): Develop and Distribute: Languages, compilers, and tools for developing software, and tools for packaging software. (Could also be: Create, develop, and distribute?) Start and Recover: Enabling a variety of options for improving boot times, as well as quicker recovery from system or software failure. (Boot and Recover? Launch and Recover?) Monitor and Manage: Systems and resource management, and tools for diagnosis, monitoring, and logging. 2. Note that I'm not advocating for the "user, sysadmin, dev" categories to change in docs-land; I think that these stories/themes are likely to change with each release. But, given the intertwinement of docs and marketing when it comes to the release announcement, it seems like (if docs is crafting the tech-bits of the release announcement) if we were to bucketize by stories, that we'd need to get marketing to figure out what those stories are. And I don't just mean the overarching stories, but also the individual feature stories, in some cases; I can't tell you how many times I look at a feature and say, wow, I wish I spoke that language, I wonder what the bigger picture is, what this effectively enables? Maybe the talking points is a launch point for that as well, in additoin to being the list that gets handed off to ambassadors, and then can drive the story collections in a release announcement, or in one-page release notes; I'm not sure. Thoughts? The workflow, as often seems to be the case between docs & mktg, is key. Basically: Seeking feedback? Thoughts, anyone? :D -Robyn -- marketing mailing list marketing@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
