[Foresight-distro] Re: [Foresight-devel] Re: Monthly News Release

Mon Mar 26 23:09:25 EDT 2007

Sorry to send this to both lists, but I'd quickly like to get some feedback
around the idea of a Foresight Linux Newsletter, and call for some
volunteers.

As discussed previously on the list, I'd like to publish a Foresight Linux
Newsletter, and will volunteer to edit and publish content, as well as help
aggregate the content.  I believe it's a great opportunity to server our
users on what's going on with the distro and in the community, as well as
good tool for marketing and promotion.  One comment I heard, I believe in
IRC, was that with our forums not having a lot of activity, it may give the
perception that this isn't a very active distro.  Our IRC channel is exactly
the opposite, not only very active, but also very friendly and encouraging.
I think a newsletter is a great way to show all the different things going
on and help convince users and developers to join.

I've started a wiki page to get the conversation going, including proposed
structure for content, and a high level publishing schedule:

http://wiki.foresightlinux.com/confluence/display/marketing/Foresight+Linux+Newsletter+Overview

What we need to quickly discuss:

1.  Do we want to publish the first article this weekend and recap the March
1.1 and GNOME Live Media release?  I will get a rough draft on the wiki up,
I think the first one will be the easiest.  I'll have a rough first draft
for review up by this time tomorrow night (10:00 p.m. CST)

2. I need feedback on the wiki page to make sure we have agreement on the
topics.  I built a draft structure, as well as possible topics that could be
included, but I wasn't sure they should be.  Please remember we want to be
fairly consistent in the structure for the long term.  I looked at other
distro's newsletters to get some ideas, including Ubuntu, Fedora and Debian.

3. Are we agreed on using a blog engine to post the content?  This will
allow easy RSS feeds.  I recommend Wordpress-MU at this time (
http://mu.wordpress.org/), as most of the other CMS engines were overkill.
Wordpress-MU will also give us the ability down the road to offer blogs to
developers who may not have their own webspace.

4.  If we are agreed on Wordpress-MU, I could use some help on creating a
quick theme.  I started one, but my skills may be best used in help getting
the content together, as my html / php coding skill is fairly rudimentary.
Any volunteers?

5.  Publishing Frequency - this is mentioned on the wiki page as well.  My
goal, and we should discuss this, would be to make sure we are publishing
timely, but interesting content, and not just publishing to publish.  I like
GNOME-Journal, but it's also an example of not having a very consistent
schedule.  We can start monthly, bi-weekly, or weekly, if we feel we have
enough content.  But we all have to pitch in too with ideas.  :)

Thanks for hearing me out, I know this is a lot to discuss very quickly.  I
would like to see us try and publish this weekend, as I think we have a lot
of great things to take credit for that happened in the last month.  We can
decide from there on some of the details.

Thanks!

Paul Cutler
silwenae at gmail.com

On 3/24/07, Paul Cutler <silwenae at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Weekly may be aggressive, but I'm open to posting often, just need info
> from the devs with what we're up to.
>
> Paul
>
> On 24 Mar 2007 15:49:00 -0400, Jonathan Smith <smithj at rpath.com> wrote:
> >
> > I think it should be more than just once a month... Weekly?
> >
> > Be sure to publish it to lwn and the like.
> >
> > -smithj
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: "Ken VanDine" < ken at vandine.org>
> > Date: Saturday, Mar 24, 2007 11:24 am
> > Subject: [Foresight-devel] Re: Monthly News Release
> > To: "Paul Cutler" <silwenae at gmail.com>
> > CC: foresight-devel at lists.rpath.org
> >
> > I think this would be great!  It should really be a news blog where we
> > >can post a variety of new related things, but once a month you (Paul I
> > assume you are really volunteering to lead it) can post a news letter.
> > > The same news letter can be emailed to the list or maybe a separate
> > >subscriber list.
> > >
> > >I do think we could come up with enough content, just need someone
> > >that will stay on top of it and beat on the developers for content.
> > >
> > >Thanks,
> > >--Ken
> > >
> > >On 3/24/07, Paul Cutler <silwenae at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Is there any interest in creating a monthly newsletter around
> > Foresight?
> > > I'm wondering if there would be enough content, but I was thinking for
> > > structure:
> > >
> > >> 1.  Foresight News (such as this month's major release to 1.1, Live
> > Media)
> > > 2.  Package updates (if any packages have major releases that are
> > available
> > > via updateall, such as Banshee 0.12.0 etc)
> > > 3.  Security Updates
> > > 4.  Community News (such as Foresight in the news or reviewed on
> > another
> > > site, documentation updates on the wiki, etc).
> > >
> > >> My thought it can serve the community to help know what's going on
> > and it
> > > gives us marketing and promotion if any other websites pick it up.
> > >
> > >> I thought I'd drop a note here first to see if there is interest,
> > then we
> > > could move it to the wiki to collaborate on the different topics.  I
> > know
> > > it's short notice, but it could be neat to publish our first one in
> > the next
> > > 10 days to recap all the stuff in March.
> > >
> > >> I would need our developer's help for #2 and #3 above.  Over time, if
> > we
> > > feel there is not enough content for monthly, we could always go
> > quarterly
> > > as well.
> > >
> > >>
> > > I'd also be interested in hearing how other communities do this - I
> > know
> > > Ubuntu has the Fridge (http://fridge.ubuntu.com/) and a weekly
> > newsletter.
> > >
> > >> Please send in your thoughts and suggestions.
> > >
> > >> Thanks!
> > >
> > >> Paul
> > > silwenae at gmail.com
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Foresight-devel mailing list
> > > Foresight-devel at lists.rpath.org
> > > http://lists.rpath.org/mailman/listinfo/foresight-devel
> > >
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> > >
> > >
> >
> >
>