10 August, 2007

Announcement help

So, writing the announcement of Beta 1 was fun, and it's cool to be quoted all over the web ;-)

Yet, every time I write about nice stuff done in KDE, I'm left with the nagging feeling I MUST have missed a lot. And I'm sure I did miss some great things. It's mostly due to the unstructured, ad-hoc way of writing the announcements. OK, I tried to go through a lot of blogs and all KDE commit digests since the second alpha (boy, is that a lot of work) but even then, stuff is missed.

Now it's not just that the release announcement is thus incomplete. It's also that people don't get the credit they deserve, and those reading the announcements miss out on some great stuff which has been done.

So I came up with the idea to create a space on techbase where everyone can help collect stuff for the next announcement. And with everyone, I mean EVERYONE. If you just saw a cool thing being checked in to KDE-EDU, or you read a blog about a new fun feature in Kwrite - or you do a test of KWin and discover new stuff - go ahead. It's worthy. When the release announcement has to be written we (the promo team) will go through it, filter the good stuff, write the text all the while thanking each and every contributor silently ;-)

You don't have to write anything, just say what it's about ('Cool KWin stuff' is enough) and provide a link...

Where? here you go: http://techbase.kde.org/Schedules/KDE4/4.0_Announcements

I already threw in some things, and I'm sure I forgot stuff already. So, developers: if you did something amazing, put a link there. To a blog, commit message, mailinglist email, anything. And to all those reading all the blogs and stuff in the community: please, help a little. It's not much work at all, and it'll not only help us - but also ensure the completeness of the release announcements!!!


Love,

Jos

6 comments:

  1. I think that is actually a really good idea. Will also help getting some of the less flashy things mentioned.

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  2. Well, of course the announcement should mention the most flashy things (after all, it's a marketing thing) but some kind of 'quickies' section is nice, and besides, one might see what you consider 'less flashy' as very cool ;-)

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  3. hehe, just the same day, laurent montel start a serie named 'hiden features of KDE4 ' on is french blog. Well, a source of inspiration I'll try to folow and translate into techbase (it was my first commit to techbase, yay)

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  4. Something similar is done for Kubuntu pre-releases in wiki. Even though most of the work is done by our great nixternal, it is at least clear to all Kubuntu developers where to log items to be announced.
    You can look into last one (also links to previous releases) as example:
    https://wiki.kubuntu.org/GutsyGibbon/Tribe4/Kubuntu

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  5. @lure:
    Yes, I did notice Kubuntu got their act together. Didn't bother looking why, and I should, as I would've figured this out a long time ago ;-)

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