openSUSE:12.3 marketing hackathon

Intro

openSUSE 12.3 is slated for release in March. In preparation, the Marketing and Artwork Teams will gather for a week-long hackfest at the SUSE headquarters in Nuremberg, Germany. This will be followed by appearance at FOSDEM conference in Belgium, where we will staff the openSUSE Booth.

Below you can add your name and details to the hackaton. Please note that even if you are not on the approved sponsored list you can STILL attend, just not sponsored. We will also attempt to set up remote access for those unable to travel to Los Angeles but still wish to participate in the hackfest.

More details including hotel, Nuremberg information and more will be posted as soon as full details become available. FOSDEM is being organized by Richard and there's a page up here.

It takes place from Monday, February 4th to Sunday, February 10th.

Attendees

Attendees
Name	Nickname	Travel from:	Length of stay	Phone number	Notes
C. hameleon	geeko	Nuremberg, Germany	365 days/year	01234567890	I am all green!
Athanasios-Ilias Rousinopoulos	Zoumpis	Nuremberg, Germany	31/01 - 10/02	+34669294533	By plane (MAD-NUE in 31/01, at the afternoon)
Michael B. Fox	mfoxdogg	Armidale, Australia	31/01 - 11/02	+6144783851	Still in doubt and negotiating
Richard Brown	ilmehtar	Brighton, UK	01/02 - 11/02	+447966239498	Will travel to Brussels direct (train) on Feb 1st
Jamileth Velasquez	Itxshell	Honduras	31/01 - 10/02	+50432731610	still looking for a better deal
Kostas Koudaras	Warlordfff	Greece	31/01 - 10/02	+306989627530	By plane (SKG-NUE in 31/01, at the afternoon)
Izabel Valverde	izabelvalverde	Brazil	31/01 - 10/02	+5511985104280	Brussels & Nuremberg Here we go!
Bruno Friedmann	tigerfoot	Switzerland	01/02 - 09/02	+41788026760	Direct flight to BXL, Return by train on Saturday night
Marcel Kühlhorn	tux93	Germany	31/01 - 10/02	+4917630541790	Arrival in NUE by train on Thursday evening
Michal Hrusecky	-miska-	Czech Republic	31/01 - 6/02	+420777635865	Bus PRG <-> NUE
Victorhck	Victorhck	Spain	03/02 - 11/02		Sp->Much->Nue and back!
Henne Vogelsang	henne	NBG	04/02 - 08/02	+491605557827
Carlos Ribeiro	CarlosRibeiro	Brazil	31/01 - 10/02	+5513 81717863	Brussels & Nuremberg.

About the meeting

In short:

• The meeting will be a week long and include a visit of the marketing/artwork team to FOSDEM.
• It will take place in Nue and ppl will fly/train in and out from/to there
• It takes place the week before or after FOSDEM, or the days surrounding it (we still have to decide on what works best)
• Budget will be enough to get at least the core people here.
• Goal of the meeting is to get Work Done so there'll be proper preparation, agenda and all that.
• We'll book hotel for the visitors, travel they get re-imbursed
• We work with the TSP team and marketing/artwork team leaders on decisions about money and who gets support. That work is now ongoing.

Practical details

Hotel

The openSUSE Team will book your hotel. Depending on your sponsorship status, we will pay or you have to pay yourself when you check out. The hotel will in Nuremberg, walking distance from the office where we meet.

Travel Tips

Weather

By the time you arrive, Nuremberg is COLD. Rainy, windy but not unlikely snowy and icy too. Dress warm! Brussels, where FOSDEM takes place, won't be any better - rain is very usual there.

Currency

The cheapest way to exchange for EU currency is to use your bank card to withdraw money from an ATM machine. The airport will have plenty of ATM machines for you to withdraw from and there are banks all over Nue ;-)

!!!WARNING!!! You must contact your bank or credit card provider before you leave your home country and let them know you will be using your card in the other countries. Otherwise, your bank may disable your card upon first use while traveling. Be sure to give them the dates when you will be in Europe.

Things to See

There are many interesting places to see in Nue and Brussels. Heck, you'll be most likely staying in a cool area. The center is not huge and close to the office so you'll see plenty while walking around for food.

Agenda

We will begin our meetings each day day at 10 a.m.

Note that the MAIN focus of the meeting is to get things done for the openSUSE 12.3 release, both for the distro (artwork) itself as well as the promo (artwork: social media badges, banners etc; release notes, articles, twitter messaging etc for marketing) around it.

First day: We gather at the office at 11:30 a.m. for lunch. After lunch, the first discussion will be a review of our current status as a team, then we'll move on to where we stand with 12.3 in the area's of artwork and marketing and what we, in broad terms, have on our plate. Following this discussion, we will collect topics from the list below and any additional topics mentioned during our discussion phase. We will organize those topics in terms of priority and schedule them for the rest of the week. We have to plan rooms already so a very high level agenda is already prepared.

Below is our list of topics. Please feel free to submit your ideas for topics to cover. Even if you are not participating, you can still suggest ideas and priorities for the agenda.

Proposed Agenda
Topic	Description
12.3 announcement	release notes, announcement writing, feature guide
12.3 social media	social media messages and planning
12.3 promo	articles about features & what's new, press kit
12.3 distro artwork	background, application branding, themes
12.3 promo artwork	banners, countdown, badges for social media
12.3 Junior Jobs	junior jobs for newcomers, geting involed into openSUSE Community
12.3 openSUSE Connect for all	use openSUSE Connect as our primary social network , spread openSUSE Connect to the people
12.3 We are Hispanohablantes!	Centralization of the Spanish Spoken community [mailing-lists,forums etc]

Preliminary Agenda/room schedule

Schedule proposal

Monday

• 11:30: meeting in front of SUSE office to go for food
• 13:00-17:00: All hands area: discuss ourselves as team, goals and the schedule for the rest of the week.
  • Needed results:
    • List of artwork items to work on
    • List of Marketing things to work on
    • Some solutions to issues we've had in the past and decisions on improving collaboration and planning
• Monday night: food & fun outside.

Tuesday

• 10-12, Rome, marketing team: product feature writing guide (based on this page)
• 10-12: Oslo, artwork team: how do the distro artwork tools in openSUSE work
• Afternoon, Rome, marketing team: breakout sessions hacking on feature guide (+Junior Jobs)
• Afternoon, Oslo, artwork team: breakout sessions hacking on distro artwork
• Afternoon, somewhere: Kostas, Izabel, Richard, Agustin, Jos: meet for an hour to talk about ambassador program
• Afternoon, somewhere: 2-3 marketing team members meet with OBS team to prepare articles on upcoming 200K/40K milestone.
• 18:00, Rome, all: presenting progress
• 19:00 all: Food and hacking

Wednesday

• Marketing team: work on feature guide
• Artwork team: work on task list
• Evening, all hands: food and hacking
• 12-, openSUSE Connect for all : Small hack sessions around openSUSE Connect

Thursday

• 10-11, Rome, marketing: presentation of ActiveDoc, a new tool from documentation team at openSUSE in need of promo. Discuss options.
• 11-12, Rome, marketing: breakout sessions ambassador program and feature guide
• 10-12, Oslo, artwork: breakout sessions ambassador program, distro artwork
• afternoon, Rome, all: breakout sessions ambassador program, distro
• 12-16, openSUSE Connect for all : Small hack sessions around openSUSE Connect
• 16:00, Oslo, artwork: meet with company art/design people
• 17:00, Rome, marketing: meet with company marketing people
• 18:00, Rome: presenting progress
• 19:00 all: Food and hacking

Friday

• 10-12, Rome+Oslo, all: breakout sessions and hacking
• Afternoon, Rome+Oslo, all: breakout sessions and hacking
• 12-,We are Hispanohablantes! : Working on centralization of the Spanish Spoken community [mailing-lists,forums etc]

Saturday

• 10-12, all-hands, all: discuss if we got what we needed, plan for the future
• 12-,We are Hispanohablantes! : Working on centralization of the Spanish Spoken community [mailing-lists,forums etc]
• Afternoon, all-hands, all: breakout sessions, hacking and leaving

TODO list

A list of specific TODO items for Marketing (artwork Todo here).

• need huge amount of time for product features for 12.3 with first some training time, then writing writing writing.
  • Then based on that at the very least some planning of articles, preferably writing a few.
  • For the writing of articles it helps to have technical people around!
• videocast(s) of openSUSE 12.3
• screenshots
• social media planning
• presentation style for ambassadors
• updated presentations for ambassadors
• Ambassador program should be discussed team-wide as well as by the Ambassador program people separately