Sprints/Promo/2018

 

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KDE Promo Sprint 2018 will take place in Barcelona, Spain, from 16th to 18th of February (Friday to Sunday).

This will be the first Promo sprint in many years, so we are excited to get together and work on various aspects of promoting the KDE Community and KDE software, attracting new users and contributors, and establishing partnerships with other communities, organizations, and companies.

Organization and Communication

The sprint is jointly organized by Paul Brown, Ivana Isadora Devcic, and Aleix Pol.

The main Phabricator task for the sprint is here: https://phabricator.kde.org/T7316

For any questions about the sprint, feel free to ask on the appropriate Phabricator (sub)task, or contact any of the organizers in the Telegram group. The KDE Promo IRC channel on Freenode is bridged to the Telegram group, so you can also ask questions there.

Venue

Espai 30/Nau Ivanow: http://www.espai30lasagrera.cat/

Accommodation

[TBD]

Regarding accommodation, the plan is to do a joint reservation somewhere near the venue.

Suggested Topics and Tasks

Improve Promo workflows, establish groups and policies

Present work from last year + results from promo survey + data collected from several sources (social media, website, online publications)

Format: Presentation + Discussion

Goal: Give attendees an overview of what human resources we count on and what we have discovered with regard to audience (what our audience reacts to and how), to be taken into account for the rest of the sessions.

Observations: Covers https://phabricator.kde.org/T5938

Move to another venue?: NO.

Address the current state of promo and highlight areas in which we could improve

Format: Brainstorming + create subtasks

Goal: Come away with policies that improve the results of our work and implement them.

Observations: Covers https://phabricator.kde.org/T5741

Move to another venue?: YES. It is a bit vague and probably an enormous tasks that risks eating up a lot of time of the sprint without rendering concrete results. Move it online for ongoing discussion and break it down into smaller, more manageable subtasks that can be dealt with online or in future sprints.

Create a repository of visual assets for social media

Format: Discussion + talk to VDG + ask sysadmins to implement it when we have defined what we want

Goals:

• Define the features of a shared repository for quality KDE-related images to use in social media posts.

• Define a process for collaborating with VDG on creating the images and videos and a protocol for requesting them.

Observations:

Move to another venue?: YES. This can be more easily solved online, since it involves more than one group (us, sysadmins and VDG. Move to Phabricator for first steps.

Establish content guidelines - updating wiki pages for posting on the Dot

Format: Brainstorming + writing

Goal: Come away with written instructions and a style guide to put on the wiki. These must help Dot authors write stories more easily and in a style coherent with the rest of the stories on the Dot.

Observations: Some advice will work across the board, some will be specific to the type of story. It is not the same, for example, an announcement of a new version of Plasma, as a crowdfunding campaign. The audience may change as what you want the reader to do. One of the earlier steps should involve brainstorming the different kind of stories we publish.

Move to another venue?: NO.

Establish a coherent social media policy that's easy to follow

Format: Analyse data + Brainstorming + writing

Goal: Come away with written list of DOs and DON'Ts for when posting to social media.

Observations: Here the data collected form our social media accounts will come in useful. Covers https://phabricator.kde.org/T5974 and https://phabricator.kde.org/T5973.

Move to another venue?: NO.

Improve communication with other groups within KDE

Format: Discussion + Brainstorming + Writing

Goals:

• Come away with a written list of strategies and best practices when interacting with other groups, such as developers.

• Create written workflow and skeleton schedule for announcing new software releases (writing release notes, scheduling social media posts, preparing visual material...)

Observations:

Move to another venue?: NO

Organize smaller groups within Promo and define their specific goals

Format: Needs analysis + Brainstorming + Work with community

Goals:

• Divide Promo's tasks into smaller parts and create teams for each task that specialise in dealing with them.
• Assign people to the teams.

Observations: Initial proposal:

• Outreach Team - coordinate with other FOSS communities for cross-promotion, reaching out to companies and organizations for possible partnerships, reaching out to potential sponsors for our events and sprints, contacting media with information about new releases and activities in the KDE Community

• Release Team - staying in touch with the developers, preparing announcements and release notes, getting screenshots of new software/features, coordinating videos

• Monitoring Team - tracking new stuff in the community - events, new features, new projects...all the small details, filtering what's worth reporting about, and forwarding that information towards social media editors and the rest of the Promo

• Design Team - consulting and staying in touch with VDG, creating visuals, maintaining the visual assets repository

Move to another venue?: YES. It seems like this is mostly done. What is left can probably be done online, with the whole promo team.

Integrating KDE Goals and Mission into Promo work

Integrate new contributors into Promo

Format: Candidate need analysis + Brainstorm + (re)Write docs + Talk with sysadmins

Goals:

• Make list of entry points.

• Document entry points

• Simplify procedures

• Create group of mentors for newcomers

Observations: Integrates with https://phabricator.kde.org/T7116

Move to another venue?: NO.

Leverage the power of KDE community

Format: Discussion/Brainstorm

Goals:

• Discover what behaviors of community members would be beneficial for KDE and how we can promote and enable them.

• Discover how we can turn a large yet passive audience into active promoters and contributors.

Observations: LoCos may act as reference points among local KDE users, serving as 1st level support and make language barriers easier to overcome.

Move to another venue?: YES. This is currently very vague with no concrete goal. Move online and define better. Tackle it at future sprint.

Discussion: Reaching more users

Format: Brainstorm

Goals:

• Compile list of specialised fields we could attack.

• Lay out strategies to introduce KDE tech to new fields involving developers.

• Compile list of actions to reach more end-end users

Observations: Covers https://phabricator.kde.org/T6895 - Proposal that suggests trying to make KDE the default tech solution for research and academia.

Move to another venue?: NO.

Content Creation and Website Work

Use video content in our promo materials

Format: Discussion/Brainstorm

Goals:

• Decide on the type of video content (showcases, guides/tutorials, interviews with contributors...) and frequency (only for new Plasma/Applications releases? biweekly/monthly schedule with short videos?)

• Establish a workflow for producing video content, with specific people acting as the video team

Observations:

Move to another venue?: YES. The contributors who have worked on video content will not be present on the sprint, and there is a lot to discuss and decide on. This could be done online or at another sprint.

Develop a comprehensive, but simple checklist that will allow project managers know if their web is audience-friendly

Format: Discussion + Writing

Goals: Create a list of actionable, easy-to-understand guidelines that will help the maintainers of KDE-related project websites clean up their copy and present their software in the best way possible.

Observations:

Move to another venue?: NO.

Discuss what we want to do with the KDE.org website and its subpages; define tasks to proceed

Format: Discussion + Creating subtasks + Writing

Goals: Agree on the content for the new KDE.org website

Observations: Covers this and its subtasks. https://phabricator.kde.org/T6842

Move to another venue?: YES. The discussion is already well underway on Phabricator, and the task itself is too complex for such a short sprint. We can either continue it online (perhaps in a different format) or move it to the next sprint.

Revive the "Behind KDE" project

Format: Discussion + Writing

Goals:

• Decide whether we want to revive this project
• Decide what the new format for the project should be
• Assign people to work on interviews

Observations:

Move to another venue?: YES. This is a relatively simple task that can be done online.

Fundraising and Events

Develop an event that will help more end users become familiar with KDE apps and environments

Format: Discussion/Brainstorm + Creating tasks

Goals: Come up with an event that the KDE Community members could organize, and that would target "regular", non-developer users, as well as people who are not familiar with KDE and/or FOSS in general.

Observations: There's a lot to discuss here: what kind of event would this be and on what scale; where it would happen, how often, who would support it financially...

Move to another venue?: YES. This task would require coordination with other parts of the KDE Community, and it's not something that can be done in one day.

Develop a list of things to do to boost our presence at technical-events held by others, based on experience at QtWS 2017

Format: Discussion/Brainstorm + Writing

Goals:

• Define clear guidelines for the booth staff
• Create a package of topics/presentations on various KDE-related projects that people can talk about and show off depending on the type of event

Observations: Useful information can be found here https://phabricator.kde.org/T7324 and in post-event emails about QtWS 2017 and FOSDEM 2018 on the mailing list.

Move to another venue?: NO.

Develop ways of having a presence in non-technical or, at least non-FLOSS specific conferences and events

Format: Discussion/Brainstorm + Writing

Goals:

• Define clear guidelines for the booth staff
• Create a package of topics/presentations on various KDE-related projects that people can talk about and show off depending on the type of event

Observations:

Move to another venue?: NO. This can be done simultaneously with the previous task, since relevant ideas are bound to come up in the discussion.

Set up a boilerplate for crowdfunding campaigns

Format: Discussion + Writing

Goals: Create reusable copy that can be modified to suit various KDE crowdfunding campaigns to speed up the process of setting up the fundraiser website(s).

Observations: This task could additionally include developing templates for fundraiser websites. However, that part of the task would have to be delegated outside of the scope of this sprint.

Move to another venue?: NO.

Long-term marketing strategy

Discussion points:

Gathering and analyzing data about the KDE brand, adoption, target markets, needs, awareness...

How to tap into the resources of 20 years of history?

What makes KDE remarkable? What is our "purple cow"?

Thinking outside the box. What haven't we thought off before? We could do some creative brainstorming. There are nice formats for this.

Looking back. What has worked before? What can we do again?

Sprint Schedule

Day 1 - Friday, February 16

[TBD]

Day 2 - Saturday, February 17

[TBD]

Day 3 - Sunday, February 18

[TBD]

Attendance

Confirmed Attendees

Please note that this information is public, and can be accessed and viewed by anyone.

If you do not wish for your personal information to be displayed on this page, contact the sprint organizers.

First Name	Last Name	Arriving From (Country, City)	Arrival Date and Time	Departure Date and Time	Accommodation (Shared, Individual)
Test	Dummy	London, UK	February 16, 12:30	February 19, 15:30	Individual

Remote Attendees

If you would like to participate in the sprint, but you are not able to attend in person, add yourself to this table.

Depending on the number of people interested in attending the sprint remotely, we will look into organizing an appropriate solution.

Name	Timezone (relative UTC)	IRC/Telegram Nickname	Preferred method of attending
Name Surname	UTC +1	Sample Nickname	Video chat

Report

After the sprint is over, this section will contain the full list of community members who attended the sprint, as well as the list of accomplishments, conclusions, and plans from the sprint.