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 > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@cassandra.apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@cassandra.apache.org > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@cassandra.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@cassandra.apache.org
