On getting and giving attention

Dear openSUSE community,

There is a lot going on in openSUSE. Some of those things are reasonably well known by now - Tumbleweed for example. Other things like the cross-desktop MIME handling Stanislav Brabec has been working on are not that public. But should be! Now that is where everyone can make a difference. If you're a developer but also if you're just interested in what is going on! Development of important things happens because people know about it and care about it. They know and care about it because there is communication done. The openSUSE marketing team and in particular those writing for news.opensuse.org see it as their task to help spread the word about things in openSUSE which are important and can use help. But our marketeers can't be everywhere - they don't always know what is going on. So they need help with that.

How?

Simple. If you are a developer working on something cool and new, let the openSUSE marketing team know. That doesn't mean you have to write a story - just ping one or more members of the team or mail the mailinglist or news@opensuse.org. They'll get back to you, ask you questions, write about your initiative. And if you're aware of something cool a developer has done or is doing in and for openSUSE but you haven't seen any writing about it, think about letting the marketing and news team know! Send links to mails or blogs where they can find some information or help them contact the developer(s). Obviously, if you can write a quick summary of what is going on and why it is cool - that is awesome. You don't have to write the article, the marketeers can do that for you, but any material you can give or point them to will help them do it!

This way we can more easily give some of the cool new initiatives in openSUSE more attention. openSUSE is a bottom-up community, the initiatives by individual contributors make the difference - that also means we need to work a bit harder to get the word out on what is going on. Help us with that, please!

Linux Starter

On an slightly related note (getting the word out), the Dutch "Linux Starter" Magazine still is and will continue to be available from this site. Yes, you can finally order them now! Go ahead if you want to start with Linux and/or openSUSE, for about 10 bucks you have an excellent source of information and a nice custom dutch openSUSE DVD! Spread the word on that too :D