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

Briefly present the work from last year and the results of the promo survey + data collected from several sources (social media, website, online publications) over the last year

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?: NO.

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

Format: Brainstorming

Goal: Implement policies that improves the results of our work.

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

Move?: 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

Goal: 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?: 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?: 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?: 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?: NO

Organize smaller groups within Promo and define their specific goals

Format:

Goal:

Observations:

Move?:

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

Integrating KDE Goals and Mission into Promo work

+ Integrating new contributors into Promo (aligns with the goal to streamline the onboarding of new contributors)

Possible ways to do it: mark Promo tasks as "easy", "beginner" or similar; adding Promo tasks to appropriate mentorship programs

+ Discussion: Leverage the power of KDE community

What behaviors of community members would be beneficial for KDE and how can we promote and enable them?

How can we turn a large yet passive audience into active promoters and contributors?

Invest effort in creating/strengthening local KDE communities. LoCos may act as reference points among local KDE users, serving as 1st level support and make language barriers easier to overcome.

+ Discussion: Reaching more users

There is a proposal in https://phabricator.kde.org/T6895 that suggests trying to make KDE the default tech solution for research and academia. Brainstorm more specialised fields we could attack and how to go about it involving developers.

Brainstorm more actions to reach end-end users.

Content Creation and Website Work

+ Discuss how we can use video content in our promo materials

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

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

+ Revive the "Behind KDE" project

Fundraising and Events

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

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

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

Set up a boilerplate for crowdfunding campaigns

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.