Generating a PR buzz for 2.2.0

[Christian Stimming]

Hi Nathan,

> As I understand it, we currently post notices on our website,
> the lists, and they occasionally get picked up by other tech news websites
> from there (correct me if I'm wrong). 

Correct.

> When 2.2.0 is released it will be a 
> big deal. With this release we break into the mass market (eg - Windows).
> There are big benefits (as I'm sure you already know): more potential
> developers, larger user base, etc, but that's not the point. The point is,
> that this is "big news" and we need a PR strategy.

Absolutely! I'm all in for some real PR buzz! :-)

For the 2.0.0 release, Matt Townsend had provided an excellent template for a 
press release [1] and we would need something similar (although of course not 
identical) this time.

Nevertheless the "PR buzz" at 2.0.0 was probably not too large. I've collected 
the resulting press coverage [2] which included, for the U.S., lwn.net and 
slashdot, but not more. In Germany, the top I.T. news site (heise.de) and 
some more less important ones covered it, at least.

Now the funny part is: Our tiny little quiet 2.1.0 release got almost the same 
coverage already; if you google for "gnucash windows", you will notice 
several German I.T. news sites and a whole bunch of blogs that mention 
our "GnuCash going Windows" news. For that reason I agree even more with your 
post - we should really try to use this momentum of the official 2.2 release.

> 1. create a list of news sites to submit a story to. If they choose to
> publish it great, if not, we haven't lost anything. We should consider news
> sites in the following categories:
> -tech/IT sites (to raise visibility among IT professionals)
> -accounting/financial sites (to raise visibility among then financial
> industry - we do create financial software!)
> -general interest news sites/ public broadcasters (many have a tech and
> financial sections where an article may fit in.)

Yes, this is by far the easiest part and we should really do this. As usual, I 
suggest some wiki pages to do this. Can you start on 
http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/PR_planning or similar? I'll add what I know and 
especially what I know about the situation in Germany.

> We would need to draft up some special announcement beforehand.

Yes. As I'm not a native English speaker, I'll wait for someone else to start 
the first draft...

> 2. Advertise online

If it's possible (is it?), why not? Sounds interesting, to say the least.

> Scheduling: We need to have all the packages released at the same time (or
> at least hold the announcements until all the packages are up and we are
> happy with them). We don't want to get caught unprepared. (yes, I am
> speaking as the person that is building the last package ;) )

Yes, absolutely. We will make sure all packages are in place before any 
announcements are sent out.

Thanks for taking the lead here - that sounds great!

Christian


[1] http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/index.php?title=Announcement_2.0.0&oldid=2004
[2] http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Announcement_2.0.0#Press_coverage