Marketing and Promotion

Now Troy is at it, I'd thought I would chime in as well. I won't create such a huge marketing vision, we got enough grande plans and Idea's, I'm more of the "let's do this" type of person right now. So I'll just add to some of the points Troy mentions.

I've been busy with press stuff since I started to write for KDE - and we need more of that still. Communication is key, I've blogged about that before. So I have ideas how to write better announcements, plenty. But help would be great for this (see the blogs about that).

But there is other stuff to do. I recently wrote an article for 'general press' on how to write about KDE, and tried to get it on kde.org. Now that project has grown into writing a full 'press' page on KDE.org - a page which doesn't exist right now. The goal is to give journalists but also bloggers or anyone who wants to write a little piece about something KDE related a place to start and some good tips & tricks. If you want to help - the current work is on google docs and I can easily give you access.

And yes, we need writers from everywhere to write about KDE. We get questions like "we'd love to have an article about X, do you know someone who could write one" regularly, and I've tried to get those seekers someone who can write. But we need more ppl who could write (just join the kde promo mailinglist if you're interested!!!).

The $10,000 Music API Challenge

Now I think some the Amarok ppl might be qualified for this, and interested as well. Of course, not just Amarok ppl - there are many more talented hackers in the KDE community that are probably interested in spending time on sharing music API's ;-)

Now I dunno about the particular pro's and con's of the Music Locker and mp3tunes, but I do know Robertson. He might not be the biggest freedomfighter out there, not a Richard Stallman, but I'd pick him over the Steves (Jobs and Balmer) anytime, any day. So I thought this was worth mentioning...

From the article: MP3tunes is having a music contest. You won't have to sing or perform to win. You won't get an American Idol record contract but you could have a bigger impact on the future of music than any media-manufactured star.

-> it's about designing an API for connecting to devices and the Music Locker, so you can listen to your music anywhere and however you want. Sounds neath, right? So if you're tired of KDE development for a minute and wanna make a buck (the 10 best api's get $1000), have a look ;-)

And maybe DIGG it...

Good stuff going on on the 'other side'

Yeah, there is. A lot.

Some time ago, Gimmie came up. Check this and this. It's pretty cool, imho, and a relatively new approach on how config screens, app lauchers and search interfaces should look. And we need it.

Have you ever seen the compiz/beryl configuration modules? Here is a screenshot, and think for a moment how horrible it is. It doesn't SEEM complex, no, it looks good. No problem there (and I personally love that theme). But now, look for something. You have categories on the top. Then subcategories on the left. Then those are each divided in tabs. And those tabs contain a scrollable area with a huge bunch of options. It's not that unique, this is cool as well... And this is an older version of the beryl settings manager, as far as I can tell.

That's much. I mean, really much. I'm used to checking the settings of most apps I use, see if I like the defaults, if I want to change things. That's almost impossible with beryl/compiz... It's just too much. Now, they have a new version. And it's better. Much better.

Why? it DOES show more stuff in one window, right? Yes, it does. But still, it's less intimidating as all these sub-sub-sub divisions. It still seems less. Stuff is easier to find, with much less mouseclicks. And this is showing up in more spots: check the new gnome configuration tool. And be sure to take time to read the blog, it's interesting...

Maybe here's an idea for Rafael as well: see further down the page, how THEY handle selection of a category.

Of course, many of the great ideas in that new control center aren't so very new. Wow, a 'nifty filter' function ;-) But still, its a good design. Based on an evolutionary approach, at least since the gimmie stuff. But imho - a great result. I'd love to see KDE developers play with this, and probably adopt it (maybe with improvements).

Edit: Indeed, as I said, many of the ideas aren't that new. Actually, only the sidebar is new compared to what Kubuntu has made (Cyrille just mentioned it), and what will be the KDE 4 control center. And, afaik, it does one thing better than the Gnome Control center: It doesn't start each control module as a separate app/window, but embeds them. Yeah, KDE technology rocks ;-)
But the sidebar offered by Ubuntu might fit well in this scheme, imho. Might even eliminate the advanced tab. And the forward and back buttons could be in the sidebar (on top?) as well.

Promotion

When I wasn't that involved in KDE, I really appreciated the good looking and verbose release announcement, or visual guide as it was called. KDE 3.5 had it first, written by Jes Hall, Tom Chance and Roland Wolters.

The 3.4 release from 2005 seems not to haven been this lucky, at least I can't find such a visual tour. Text, yes, unfortunately no screenshots. And when you go further back in time, the announcements become less and less verbose. On the other hand, our 'coopetition' got their act together a long time ago.

I have always read their announcements, and enjoyed that. Had to chuckle often, as I generally had been using many (if not most) of the new and great things they introduced in my KDE desktop for years. I'm surprised to see how even the 2.20 release still feels like that, even though our last major release was almost 2 years ago.

But KDE always lacked in the marketing, and even though we are doing better, this really is something that needs more work. As many of you might have noticed, we are improving. KDE 3.5 had a lovely announcement, and we are gearing up for KDE 4. Beta1 had a nice graphical overview of what's new. And Beta 2 of course. And we want to do even better, especially for the final announcement.

But it is a lot of work. Last announcement took me many many hours (I was actually surprised by how much time it took) and it's definitely not perfect. So in one of my previous blogs, I asked for help. And some did help, and it made a difference. Really. So: thanks to those who spend a minute to add some worthy things to the announcement page on techbase.

And for those who didn't: please do. It's easy. You don't have to write the text, just give a short description (a few words is enough) and a link. I'll do the writing. Of course, feel free to write something, I can use that, and it saves me time.

And boy, do we need collaborative editing. After the first draft, improving these announcements would be so much simpler if I could just ask Danny and the others to work with me realtime on them...

Aaah well. KDE 4.1???

KDE 4 Beta 2, Tagua

I've been busy working on the Beta 2 announcement (please read it, it took many hours to compose...), and a Tagua announcement. Now that last one was funny. Paolo contacted me, asking if I would wanna work on it, and well - I did. Tagua is the new KBoard, and boy, is it cool. Not to take away the fun of the announcement, but really - gorgeous graphics & animations. I urge everyone capable of doing graphics ('artists') to get going with it, it's really neath. Same for those who miss their favorite boardgame in KDE: Tagua is a generic boardgame app, and it's very easy to write another one. It only has two games (with each 2 variants) now, so more would be great.

And I didn't even mention the fact you can play it over the internet or a network yet, did I? Yeah, it's good. Really good. Very KDE, still, though, as it's pretty configurable - esp in the graphics area. I already suggested to tone that down a bit...

Now onto the Beta 2 announcement, I must say I'm looking forward to start working on the beta 3 one ;-)
Sebas suggested some improvements to the process and final product, and I'm gonna work on that to make his work easier. Of course, I have to thank Danny as well, not only for the review but also telling me how horrible my spelling mistakes are, and that I should really do something about them. So I'll try. Sir, yes, sir.

Last, I think I should blog more, but I have no time. There is so much cool stuff going on, and my personal life is busy as well. I've applied for a job (and it's likely I'll get it), to name just one thing.

And to join the gang - KDE 4 is indeed becoming usable. I won't be using it as default yet, but yeah, soon. Maybe even next beta already... Go, KDE, you Rock :D

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

Akademy 2007 - day 1

Akademy 2007 started of a bit weird for me. Jos (van den Oever) and me went to bed around midnight. After a few hours sleep, I was woken up by a face next to mine. Aaron decided the floor of our room was unused, and it was the perfect spot to put Laur, who didn't have a place to sleep. He was nice enough to warn us so we'd not be too surprised, but it was hard to get through to our sleepy heads...

Saturday, managing the whole press thing was very hard. We didn't make hard arrangements in advance, so I had to ensure both tracks where covered. Luckily, some ppl quickly offered to help (thanks Giovanni, Laur, Claire!) and when Danny arrived, our press team got up and running. We even have a pressroom now, though it's shared with the food corner ;-)

We still missed Troy, though, who was held up by the incident at the airport.

The second day, the pressroom got so crowded, we (Danny and me) didn't even have a proper seat, so we just moved to the 'real' pressroom in the other building (we each have our own desk now) so we can put up the first article. Yes, you can expect it any time now, as the network is finally up... And Troy did arrive, which means more hands writing for the articles ;-)