Promo/People/Join

Become a Promo team member

Thank you for showing interest in becoming a Promo contributor! We're always looking for new people willing to spread the good word about KDE software.

If you would like to help us, here are some initial tasks and things you can do.

Keep up with Promo discussions

• Join our IRC channel #kde-promo on freenode, or come to our Telegram group. It doesn't matter which one you join - they are connected, and every message you post is visible in both. In case you're not familiar with IRC, these instructions can help.

The channel/group is the place where Promo contributors keep in touch. Introduce yourself and feel free to ask anything you'd like to know about KDE.

• Join our mailing lists ([email protected] and [email protected]). We announce important news and hold detailed discussions about the future of the KDE Community on those mailing lists.

As you become familiar with different KDE teams and projects, you may want to join their mailing lists. Feel free to browse through all mailing lists and join the ones that interest you. Note: some mailing lists are traffic-heavy, so be prepared for a lot of emails.

• Take a look at our workboard. We use Phabricator to manage tasks in the KDE Promo project. If you find something you want to work on, log in and leave a comment on that task. For that you will need a KDE Identity account.

• Important: always communicate politely and follow the KDE Code of Conduct in all discussions with other KDE Promo team members. If you're new to the KDE Community, please take some time to get familiar with the CoC so we can all have a pleasant time and collaborate nicely. :)

Follow KDE on social media

• This is the easiest way to contribute to KDE Promo - follow our accounts and share our content, or post KDE-related content on your own social media profiles. You can tag us in your posts, too. That way we can see them and share them on our main accounts. When writing posts for social media, make sure to follow our guidelines.

• Accounts to follow:

• KDE Community Twitter
• Akademy Twitter
• KDE Community Facebook page
• KDE Community Google+ page
• KDE Community Mastodon
• Subscribe to our subreddit
• Subscribe to our YouTube channel

• Subscribe to Planet KDE (either via RSS or follow the account on Twitter). Every day there will be some blog posts from the community. Pick a few posts from there and promote them on your own social media accounts. This is good practice for writing social media posts -you can learn how to best utilize hashtags, the importance of images, posting at the right time of day...

• FOR BONUS POINTS: is there a local KDE community in your country or city? Follow their social media accounts and share their content. You can also translate their social media posts into other languages and share them on your account. Example: Spanish speakers can follow KDE España.

Find more Promo tasks to work on

You've followed all our social media accounts and you regularly share our content. Not only that, but you've also started posting about the latest KDE efforts on you social media accounts, and you even have a KDE-themed blog (that you've added to the Planet KDE feed). You post in KDE-related threads on reddit, and you share news about KDE in your local online communities, groups, and forums.

But you want to do MORE!

We've prepared some suggestions for things you can do to promote KDE even more actively. Of course, you can always share your own ideas with us in the Promo IRC/Telegram group.

Be a community messenger

By now you should be familiar with IRC and have at least a basic understanding of how different KDE teams communicate (hint: IRC, Telegram, mailing lists). If you are interested in a particular KDE project or application, you can be the official messenger between them and Promo!

• Join relevant mailing lists and channels where developers communicate. You can browse through Telegram groups and IRC channels.

• Introduce yourself as a Promo contributor and offer to be the messenger/mediator between developers and Promo. Ask developers about interesting information and new features they're working on. Find out when they hold developer meetings and see if you can be involved in them.

• Keep track of developers' discussions and upcoming new releases. Make notes about new and interesting things we could promote, then report back to the Promo mothership.

Listen to our users

As a member of the Promo team, you'll be spending a lot of time online - sharing social media posts, answering questions about KDE, and generally spreading the good word about the work we do. You will encounter different types of users - beginners, advanced users, confused ones, unhappy ones... We strongly advise you to avoid engaging the trolls. Don't waste time responding to rude, unreasonable people.

However, not all criticism is unfounded. After all, we can't make our users happy if we don't know what they want. Here is where you can shine and be our hero.

• Scout the Web for FRF - Frequently Requested Features, or frequent complaints about KDE software. You don't need to actively participate in discussions - just read what people are writing about KDE software in relevant subreddits, forums, social media groups, and similar communities.

• Make notes about things users frequently complain about, or features they would like to see. Compile these into a report that we can later use for marketing, or share it with developers to help them understand different use cases.

• You can also turn the complaints into Dot article ideas - if users commonly complain of not being able to find/do something with a KDE application, we can help them by explaining how to do that in an article!

• Find more stats/information about KDE software usage. Some Linux distributions collect statistics about how many users install which desktop environment and/or applications. See if you can access those stats, or if there is someone you can contact on behalf of KDE Promo. Make sure to tell us about this in Promo IRC/Telegram!

Prepare content for the Dot

The official news website of the KDE Community is the Dot. Everyone can contribute stories to the Dot. If you like writing reviews, reports from various events, software release announcements, or fun stories about community members, let us know.

• You can write for the Dot - come up with a topic, tell us about it on IRC/Telegram, prepare a story, and submit it. Don't forget to include images!

• You can also proofread and edit other people's content. Hang around in the Promo IRC/Telegram - all new content is submitted for review there before publishing. You can be the one to review posts, catch embarrassing typos, and save our reputation!

We have some general guidance for Dot content, as well as release announcement guidelines that can help you. However, they don't cover everything, so if you have any questions or if something is not explained clearly enough in those pages, don't hesitate to ask us in the usual Promo channels.

Help with video content

The KDE Community has an official YouTube channel where we share video content created by our community members. You can also participate in improving the quality of our video content - in several ways:

• If you speak languages other than English, you can add subtitles to our videos on YouTube. Contact us on IRC/Telegram first so we can help you get started.

• Log into Phabricator with your KDE Identity account (you have one, right?). Open this task and, in the comments, suggest topics for videos we could create. That's all!

• Do you have your own YouTube channel? Would you like to create video reviews or tutorials about Plasma and KDE applications? Let us know! We can help you with sourcing materials, edit the script for your video, get people to do voiceovers, and more. Get in touch via IRC/Telegram.

Promote KDE at conferences, hackathons and other live events

• If you're interested in organizing your own KDE-related event, or representing us at an existing one, you can find some advice on the Events wiki page. Please get in touch with other Promo members on IRC/Telegram or on mailing lists to coordinate the organization, budget, and other related tasks.

Do you have questions or need help?

Contact us on the Promo mailing list or in the IRC channel/Telegram group linked above.

We look forward to your contributions to KDE Promo!