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Proposal for establishment of contact points for outside world :

Public relations (and thereby press relations) have been on the list of things we've successfully ignored so far. There were more important things to work on, and still are, like picokernels and such. I am fairly sure that we thought the time for such things would come on its own, and so we'd not have to worry about it yet. That time has not yet come (Sorry), but recent events show that a little work in this area could save us a great deal of trouble later. We were mentioned in Wired News (online) in April, and are in Wired (dead trees) this (Aug) issue. This week we are the subject in a small article in LANTimes Online, and a copy of that article is in a sidebar to the JavaOS (tm) article in the weekly magazine (dead trees). (See PressArticles for links) Each of these pieces has contained small, forgivable errors. These errors (and worse ones) are preventable if we establish dependable points of contact for outside individuals and organizations.

To this end I propose we establish points of contact in at least the following manners:

  1. An email alias such as press@jos.org, that always points to someone who is reachable and knowledgable of the project as a whole
  2. A Wiki Page such as PressInfo to contain:
  3. Regular and irregular announcements: Thanks to Clark, we're doing well here, but we need to finish up and format Q298 (and grab the pretty version of Q1 if it ever got done) and distribute/post them as in the next point..
  4. Mail/snail some info: We need to forward copies of our releases to publications that have already noticed us, and figure out rules for where else to send them.

Questions? Comments? Did someone already do this and not tell me? (common problem around here, that :)

I think you made a very good point when you say that JOS need a little more organization in the PR area. (not only, but also...) The sugestions are all good, but I would add some more...

My sugestion is not the way that JOS should communicate with the press, but the role of the PublicRelations group that JOS should have.

With the explosion of the net we also saw an explosion of free projects. Linux is the most successeful one. The power behind free collaboration is enormous, we can build an operating system from the ground up, Linux is the proof.

But now there are so many free projects, that this power is a much more diversified.

If we want to build an OS from the ground up, we really going to need people (a lot of them !) that believe in this project, not just a few hundred guys in a mailing list, we do not have already (I think) a critical mass.

Building an OS is not a common task, it is an very "ambitious" one... (taking words of Rick Ross in LANTimes ;-))

That's why I think that our PR group should be proactive and not only reactive as you seem to suggest, to attract people into the JOS community.

Proactive measures:

  1. There's no point in building a Wiki page for the press if the press doesnt even bother to visit the site ! ;) I think that PR should contact the press with some kind of a JOS profile.
  2. All the periodic info could be added to some kind of press mailing list, to let them know what we are doing.
  3. Public relations is not only press relations. There's a lot of free java projects around. I'm sure that an Java OS (read JOS) could acomodate many of them. The PR should try to collaborate and invite this groups to make part of the JOS community. The web ring is a good thing but we need more agregation.
  4. PR should try to establish a credible image for JOS, to avoid the come and go of people that we seem to suffer, in part because of the chaotic organization that we have.
  5. add you sugestion here...

The last topic focus (again) tha bazaar kind of organization that we have. Nobody knows if anybody is working on something, there's to much chaos. We really need to review this topic ! problably not here...

Hope for comments...

PS:I can't even imagine the errors i've made. Sorry, english is my third language... :)

RuiGil (rigel@technologist.com) 25-JUL-98

All very good suggestions (the need, I think, is obvious. I would only add that there are Java-oriented e-publications of wide circulation that we should be sure to send our releases to, such as xenosys.com, javaworld, and 1 or 2 IBM java lists among others (I don't have the names handy, but can find them on demand). Occasional posts to selected java newsgroups might also be useful. A single caution would be that in the event a member is being interviewed and the interviewer is pushing hard to tie them down to specifics or to get them to agree to a proposition (i.e. "have you stopped kicking your mother?"), the member should take pains to clearly express that they are not authorized to make official announcements for JOS. Fact is that at our current organizational level, neither such authorization nor its basis yet exists.

ScottMiller (samiller@cyberenet.net) 3-Aug-1998

Has anyone started to follow up on this? If not I'll start making a list of people/places to keep informed about the progress of JOS.

I created a PublicRelationsGroup and some sub-groups. When you get a chance can you take a look and let me know what you think (is it too much too soon?).

WaynePierce 12.31.98 (updated 1.1.99)

Wayne, please contact me about PR (whooops@gmx.de), we need to update this! And I think we need a page with "out of the box" running code for the suits.

MarkAMeyer 8-Feb-1999

Can we Put together a 2000Q1 Status Report like was done in 1998? Feel free to send email bragging about what you're working on and how it's coming along so it can be assembled into a concise report.

DaveStubbs - 23 Mar 2K



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