Thanks Sally, really appreciate your insight.
To respond to the community discourse around this:
> Keep your announcement plans ... private: limit discussions to the PMC
This is all that I was asking and expecting: if somebody is making commitments
on behalf of the community (such as that a release can be expected on day X),
this should be coordinated with the PMC. While it seems to transpire that no
such commitments were made, had they been made without the knowledge of the PMC
this would in my view be problematic. This is not at all like development
work, as has been alleged, since that only takes effect after public agreement
by the community.
IMO, in general, public engagements should be run past the PMC as a final
pre-flight check regardless of any commitment being made, as the PMC should
have visibility into these activities and have the opportunity to influence
them.
> There has been nothing about this internally at DS
I would ask that you refrain from making such claims, unless you can be certain
that you would have been privy to all such internal discussions.
> there's really no reason not to assume best intentions here
This is a recurring taking point, that I wish we would retire except where a
clear assumption of bad faith has been made. If you are criticised, it is
often because of the action you took; any intention you had may be irrelevant
to the criticism. In this case, when you act on behalf of the community, your
intentions are insufficient: you must have the community's authority to act.
On 20/07/2020, 14:00, "Sally Khudairi" <s...@apache.org> wrote:
Hello everyone --Mick pinged me about this; I wanted to respond on-list for
efficacy.
We've had dozens of companies successfully help Apache Projects and their
communities help spread the word on their projects with their PR and marketing
teams. Here are some best practices:
1) Timing. Ensure that the Project has announced the project milestone
first to their lists as well as announce@ before any media coverage takes
place. If you're planning to time the announcements to take place in tandem, be
careful with embargoes, as not everyone is able to honor them. We've been
burned in the past with this.
2) Messaging. Keep your announcement plans and draft press releases, etc.,
private: limit discussions to the PMC. Drafting announcements on public lists,
such as user@, whilst inclusive, may inadvertently expose your news prematurely
to the press, bloggers, and others before its ready. This can be detrimental to
having your news scooped before you actually announce it, or conversely, having
the news come out and nobody is interested in covering it as it's been leaking
for a while. We've also been burned in the past with this. Synching messaging
is also helpful to ensure that the PMC speaks with a unified voice: the worst
thing that can happen is having someone say one thing in the media and another
member of the PMC saying something else, even if it's their personal opinion.
Fragmentation helps no-one. This recently happened with a Project on a rather
controversial topic, so the press was excited to see dissent within the
community as it gave them more to report about. Keep things co
ol: don't be the feature cover of a gossip tabloid.
3) Positioning. It's critical that whomever is speaking on behalf of the
Project identify themselves as such. This means that the PMC needs to have a
few spokespeople lined up in case of any media queries, and that the
spokespeople supporting the project are from different organizations so you can
. I cannot stress enough the need to exhibit diversity, even if everyone
working on the media/marketing side is from a single organization --the ASF
comes down hard on companies that "own" projects: we take vendor-neutrality
very seriously. What's worked well with organizations that have pitched the
press on behalf of a project is to pitch the project news, have spokespeople
from other organizations speak on behalf of the PMC and follow up with
different spokespeople/companies that have supporting products or activities.
The ability to showcase breadth of deployment demonstrates Project relevance.
There have been instances of companies pre-announcing Project news and
milestones before the Project has done so themselves, in the form of press
releases, blog posts, articles on Medium/DZone/elsewhere, or on social media.
Whilst we appreciate their enthusiasm, it has caused significant erosion of
goodwill within the community, and issues with the press.
Apache Projects that have been successful with outside (corporate) support
to help with marketing and media relations have shared their press
announcements, articles, posts, and pitches prior to going live to ensure that
they are balanced and have proper attribution and form. I'm happy to help with
this if needed.
Briefing analysts is a bit of a different situation, and I'm happy to help
with that as well.
Best of luck,
Sally
+ forwarding to press@ as well to keep everyone in the loop
- - -
Vice President Marketing & Publicity
Vice President Sponsor Relations
The Apache Software Foundation
Tel +1 617 921 8656 | s...@apache.org
On 2020/07/20 09:44:31, "Mick Semb Wever" <m...@apache.org> wrote:
>
> > Our plan is to share the community-approved blog with reporters who have
> > expressed interest in Cassandra, which may result in coverage. We also
> > developed a 4.0 beta graphic that anyone is welcome to use.
> >
> > FWIW our timeline revolves around yours. We're ready to reach out just
as
> > soon as the beta is cut; no need to adjust anything on our behalf. If
> > you're available for emailed or live interviews, please shoot me a note.
> >
> > We're here to help C*. I've spoken with a handful of folks already about
> > how to best achieve that, and the door is open - reach out anytime!
>
>
> Thanks Melissa! If all goes well there should be a 4.0 beta release ready
for public this week.
>
> Coordinating media releases around open source releases is not something
I've seen much of, or have much experience with. I can imagine that it is
always going to be clumsy around an organic group of individuals around the
world, individuals doing their best to be independent from the companies that
employ them, companies that each have own stake in the project. We just have to
do our best! If people know of other OSS projects doing this well it would be
great to know and learn from them.
>
> To all non DataStax folk, I've only seen Melissa's work in this community
(dev and private ML). There has been nothing about this internally at DS. The
only thing I've heard about the media coordination is from Josh's post here,
and I made mention of it when raising the vote:
https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/r537fe799e7d5e6d72ac791fdbe9098ef0344c55400c7f68ff65abe51%40%3Cdev.cassandra.apache.org%3E
>
> DS of course benefits from a successful OSS project, but so do we all, so
do please help Melissa (and all new contributors) out, there's really no reason
not to assume best intentions here.
>
> regards,
> Mick
>
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