Re: [Debconf-team] After DebConf Press release?

[Philip Hands <phil@hands.com>]

On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 01:32:50AM -0300, Holger Levsen wrote:
...
> > We're usually not reporting every 
> > small bits that could be interesting (even though some would be good),
> > thus, having two similar notes about Debconf may be a little bit
> > overstressing.
> 
> I disagree. 
> 
> It's quite likely that many publishers didnt issue anything about DebConf 
> _before_ the event, because there were no real news/value in it: it was too 
> late for people to attend (no one flys to Argentina the next day because she 
> just learned DebConf will happen) and an upcoming event in itself is hardly 
> newsworthy. That something _has_ happened _and_ was an success on the other 
> hand, is news.

Quite -- if nothing else, getting an extra mention and/or link to the
sponsors will perhaps make it an easier sell next year.

Also, things like the video setup, the fact that we had WiFi throughout
the hotel etc. might not be that surprising to us, but are pretty
impressive to the wider public.  I didn't try it myself, but I'm guessing
that people could have started a VoIP call on the 7th floor, and wandered
down to their room without dropping the call, for instance -- that's a
lot better than my experience in other venues.

We also "put Mar del Plata on the map" -- given the state of that area
of openstreetmap.org now as compared to before the conference.  I'd say
that's a potential news story in itself, especially since google maps
has a big blank area for Argentina.  I get the impression that there are
now some more locals that were enthused by that, so can be expected to
finish the job -- this can be presented as a story of Free Software people
going around the world "teaching people to fish".  In this case, the locals
can build their own map, rather than waiting for Google to cut a deal with
their government -- of course, I'm aware that this is certainly not the
first bit of Argentina to be mapped, since B.A. was already thoroughly
mapped, so we don't want to make claims that will piss off the people
that were already doing stuff there -- On the other hand, we can give
the press 3 images with the story, which might catch their interest:
Google (blank), Before (about 5 roads), After (loads of new detail)

(especially if we generate the maps ourselves from the latest OSM data,
and tune the rendering a bit, the last one should look pretty impressive)

Cheers, Phil.