Media coordinator? [was: Re: ZFS committed to the FreeBSD base. (fwd)]

[Sam Lawrance]

On 09/04/2007, at 10:48 PM, Jeremy C. Reed wrote:

> On Sun, 8 Apr 2007, Sam Lawrance wrote:
>
>> Would it be worthwhile to form a "media coordinator" role?  I can  
>> think
>> of two areas of value for this role: announcement coordination and  
>> media
>> liaison.
>
> FreeBSD has a media coordinator -- it is made up of marketing
> professionals, book authors, active announcement and/or press release
> writers, freelance writers and a few others.
>
>> Announcement coordination would be provided as a service to our
>> developers and the community.  For example, before committing or  
>> MFC'ing
>> some hot new feature, people can ask the media coordinator for
>> assistance with the announcement.  This might involve helping to  
>> draft
>> the primary announcement, writing articles for submission to news  
>> sites,
>> the sort of information described above by Robert.  The work can be
>> delegated, the key is simply to provide all the right information  
>> to the
>> right people and channels when an announcement is made.
>
> This is frequently done, but usually the marketing team contacts the
> developers. We do need to remind developers to contact the marketing
> team.
>
> Also the marketing team doesn't have defined goals or any set  
> schedule --
> and also no single person to accept responsibility. Nevertheless, the
> volunteer marketing team has done a good job over past couple years --
> take note of the several press releases distributed. (In a few cases,
> press release writing and distribution has been paid for. Also I have
> personally contacted many print publications for several news  
> stories over
> past couple years.)

The effort is apparent - I think that most people here would have  
seen it, whether or not they recognised it as a product of the  
marketing team :-)

Has the marketing team considered developing and working to a  
charter?  Similar to portmgr, secteam, releng, and doceng?  I noticed  
that the team is listed on freebsd.org/administration.html.  There's  
no visibility from freebsd.org/marketing, which is where you may  
expect to find it.