Open Stack

On 06/05/15 09:13, Anne Gentle wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> In the interest of communicating sooner rather than later, I wanted to
> write a new thread to say that Flavio Percoco and I are going to work on
> a TC communications plan as co-chairs of a TC communications working group.
>
> I think we can find a happy medium amongst meeting minutes, gerrit
> reviews, and irregular blog entries by applying some comms planning, so
> that Flavio and I can dive in.
>
> Please answer these questions on the list if you're interested in
> shaping the communications plan:
>
> Audience considerations:
> Is the primary audience current OpenStack contributors or those in
> consumer roles?

I think it has to be both.

Maish's suggestion that "most contributors are already in the know and 
on the mailing lists and meetings" is absurd. Beyond the group of 
probably <25 people who pay close attention to governance, most core 
reviewers and even PTLs I speak to have a vague idea what is going on in 
the TC only when it pertains to an issue that was heavily discussed on 
openstack-dev, and even then they're unlikely to know what the outcome 
was unless/until it starts affecting them directly.

> What percentage of the audience are fairly new contributors? Fairly new
> to OpenStack itself?
> Is the audience more likely to be an "outsider looking in" to OpenStack
> governance?

Not sure how to parse this. Substantially everybody is an outsider to 
OpenStack governance, so yes, but I think it should be primarily for 
insiders to OpenStack.

> Is the audience wanting to click links to learn more, or do they just
> want the summary?

I don't think they want to be clicking links through to the governance 
repo (though it doesn't hurt to have them). IMHO folks need a summary, 
and maybe a summary of the summary so they can figure out when the 
summary is worth reading.

> Does the audience always want an action to take, or is simply getting
> information their goal?

Information.

> Channel considerations:
> Is this audience with their goals more likely to use blogs, RSS, and
> Twitter or subscribe to mailing lists?

Contributors are mostly on openstack-dev, and that's an audience the 
blog posts haven't been hitting. So I think executive summaries on 
mailing lists with links to blog posts will work and improve the current 
reach.

I think the blog + RSS + newsletter approach approach used up until now 
is probably the best chance to get through to the non-openstack-dev 
readers. It's always going to be an uphill battle though, because people 
have to choose to subscribe to a mailing list or the newsletter or the 
feed or Planet OpenStack or whatever - there's no place we can go to them.

> Depending on the channels chosen, is cross-posting to multiple channels
> a huge error, or are we leaning towards a wide net rather than laser
> targeting?

IMHO cross-posting is fine, but I wouldn't necessarily replicate the 
entire content to every channel.

> Is there another channel we haven't considered that is widely consumed?

Not AFAIK.

> Does the cadence have to be weekly, even if "not much happened with the
> TC" is the activity rate for the week?

IMO no. It's more likely to be read if it's just posted when there is 
actual important news to report.

cheers,
Zane.