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Bits from Publicity Team (aka: We are alive!)



Hi!

Looking at the archive of the -news mailing list[1], you might have
already guessed:  Debian's Publicity Team *is* alive and it is quite
active!  But there's some confusion recently, on what we do, how we do
it, and -- most importantly -- how to interact with us. So, here's a
small introduction from us.

  [1] <http://lists.debian.org/debian-news/>

Who are we?
-----------

The Publicity Team[2] is an open team helping to make Debian known to
more people.  Currently we mostly do so by drafting press announcements
and publishing a biweekly newsletter, the Debian Project News[3] (aka
DPN).

  [2] <http://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Publicity>
  [3] <http://www.debian.org/News/project/>

We also work as the marketing arm of Debian by publicizing how Debian
gets created and acting as a liaison with the wider world. Other areas
we contribute to are working with the press, helping Debian Developers
broadcast their progress, and supporting the Debian Project Leader, or
any other Debian Developer, with communication tasks.

In many ways Debian is the _how_ of Free Software, not just the _why_.
Debian Publicity hopes to demonstrate the practical aspects of Free
Software, how a large disparate community can work together motivated by
a common cause.  Debian is a project with many voices, and the Debian
Publicity Team hopes to provide a channel for those voices: we help you
to get your message out to many people.


How you can help
----------------

What you can do to help:

* Get in touch with us on debian-publicy@lists.debian.org or
  #debian-publicity when you have a Debian announcement to send out
* Suggest ideas and links for the next DPN
* Draft paragraphs for the next DPN, see
  http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute for details; note
  that Debian Developers can directly commit to our "drafting area" of
  the Project News
* Proofread the next DPN (we usually call for reviews on the debian-i18n
  and debian-l10n-english lists)
* Promote Debian by using our marketing resources, see
  http://wiki.debian.org/Promote
* Volunteer to start blog.debian.org, see discussion started with
  http://lists.debian.org/20100719132407.GA26626@upsilon.cc
* Translate the DPN into your language
* Help us setup the infrastructure required to have a useful presence on
  identi.ca and other social networks, see discussion at
  http://lists.debian.org/20100809184657.GB29589@rivendell
* Suggest dents/tweets for our identi.ca account, see
  http://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Publicity/Identica
* Help us, to fix the existing RSS Feeds and add missing RSS feeds into
  our Website (requires some perl know how, and a bit knowledge on how
  our website works)
* We also try to create a database with interested journalists.  So if
  you are one (or know one) please contact us.
* Participate in the "This Week in Debian" podcast.  See
  http://wiki.debian.org/ThisWeekInDebian for details.

How to use our "services"
-------------------------

So, how exactly can you do that?

Well, for a starter, let's face a sad but true fact: while the publicity
team is quite active, we can't be everywhere, so an important point is
to notify us about all the interesting things in the wider Debian world.
We probably already know about the latest release Debian made, but we
can't read all blog posts, mailing lists and news sites.  A good example
is [4], where Roman Khomasuridze noticed, that a derivative of a
derivative published a Debian based version, named some of the reasons,
and also got positive feedback from the users for this.  That will
surely make it into the next issue of the Debian Project News, so thanks
Roman for notifying us :)

  [4] <http://lists.debian.org/AANLkTi=t2UoN82JdHF5QBF9TG9WjWOKRGrip+KPP0jGr@mail.gmail.com>

So let's assume you are about to blog about something interesting you
just did.  When you blog about it, you consider it interesting enough,
for others to know, don't you?  So why not reach out to even more
people, by getting it mentioned in the next Debian Project News?  So you
should get in contact with us.  Maybe you can even prepare a small
paragraph summarizing what you did?

You are about to write an email to debian-devel-announce? Consider
whether the topic is important enough to be covered both with a press
announce for the wider audience, and with a separate mail to d-d-a
containing informations for Debian's contributors (see for example the
recent backports.debian.org example). If yes, get in touch with us
before sending your mail out.

The important point is the "before sending".  When you have already sent
your mail to the debian-devel-announce mailing list, or when your blog
post has already hit planet.debian.org, it's too late for the Press team
to act. No time to draft anything, not to speak of getting it reviewed,
added and built on our web pages and sent out via mail.  If your
announcement does not need its own press release but is still relevant
to a large set of people, feel free to drop a mail with a short
introduction and a link that we can integrate into the next DPN.

From time to time it happens that you would like to announce something,
which shouldn't be disclosed in advance (e.g. by discussing it on a
public mailing list).  In these cases you can get in contact with
press@debian.org; it's a private alias read by a subset of the mailing
list.  Whatever you send there, it won't be disclosed until you tell us
to do so.

For future reference, the above guidelines can be found on the wiki [5].

  [5] http://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Publicity/DeveloperInformation

How to contact us?
-------------------

Via email:  debian-publicity@lists.debian.org
IRC:  #debian-publicity channel on irc.debian.org

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