Akademy/2012/PRWorkshop

Monday 2 July, 9:30 - 16:00, Room 227

Your project is going well. But you're not satisfied with how many people use it or have even heard of it. What can you do?

Getting the word out about your project isn't hard, but it's important to know the right steps to take. This workshop will look at many different aspects of project promotion, from writing news and release announcements to working with the press to get your project's message out. It will also cover topics like website content, cultivating members of the press, concisely describing your project in all of your communications, and more.

The interactive format will allow time for questions and discussion. In addition, there will be an exercise to write a release announcement, press release, or other project communication. Examples will be shown of successful promotional campaigns by open source projects.

Jake Edge is an editor for LWN.net, an online news weekly covering Linux and free software development. He has been doing that full time since 2007. Before that he did 20+ years of software development, much of that on Linux. He is based in the US, in western Colorado, at least when he isn't flying all over the place to attend conferences.

Markus Feilner is a German Linux journalist, consultant, author, and open source trainer based in the Munich area. Since 2007 he has been the deputy editor-in-chief of Linux-Magazin. He started working with Linux in 1995 during his university studies in geography.

Deb Nicholson Deb Nicholson works at the intersection of technology and social justice. She has been a free speech advocate, economic justice organizer and civil liberties defender. After working in Massachusetts politics for fifteen years, she became involved in the free software movement. She is the Community Outreach Director at the Open Invention Network and the Community Manager at Media Goblin. She also serves on the board at Open Hatch, a non-profit dedicated to matching prospective free software contributors with communities, tools and education. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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Please add questions or topics that you want to have addressed in this workshop.
1. My project is one of the best available of its kind. But there is so much noise bombarding users. How do you cut through the clutter and many people saying their thing is the best?
2. What is the preferred content for giving the press -- and when should they have it given a certain release date, and in what format?
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