Publicity Team BoF

Welcome uh to the publicity team, both. Thank you for putting the slides. Um This both is uh by four people who are almost all present here. Uh our main page is that wiki page. And uh welcome. >> Can I see the next slide, please? >> Uh or down. Yeah. Yes, perfect. So, um we have a delegation uh from uh the former DPL Jonathan Carter in 2023 and he delegated the team to be those four persons. Uh Donald is not here. He lives in the US and he uh it's a bit difficult for him to travel. Um so, I'm and I'm happy JP is uh via the video uh link. Uh next slide, please. >> [snorts] >> So, what do we do? In the delegation uh message it says uh that we should do do those four things. Uh we moderate uh Debian news and Debian announce mailing lists. Uh we have a blog. We do bits from Debian and we make sure that {slash} uh capital N news is up to date. Uh and we it's up to us to decide uh what's the most suitable venue for publication uh publishing stuff. Uh we are the official contact point. Uh so, if somebody from the press uh wants to talk to Debian, they go to us. And yeah, sometimes they ask for DPL and we can refer them to DPL if that's necessary. Um and it says we should not uh express our own opinions because we are only we are the spokesperson. So we should reflect Debian's stance on issues. Next, please. But yeah, as it is in Debian, we have two official things and what happens on the ground is everywhere. Um So we have three Well, we have lots of Git repos. Three of them are one for micro news. So that's for our social media posts. Uh one for bits, which is for posts which are a bit a bit bigger. And one for official announcements. And the last one also gets translated. There's the trans- translation teams doing grateful great work for that. Very happy with that. Uh and we still have to use the WML format for those because it's connected to the website. Uh what what what we also do is when there's a campaigning for a new DPL, we try to do interviews. Uh that's uh person over there who does that. Um Point release announcements, but they they are mainly done by the release team itself. And they they can just commit to to our Git repos and uh is they know their way around, which is really cool. Um what else? Obituaries. We also maintain Debian history package. It was started by Bdale actually, who's also around. Uh now we are maintaining it. Um Currently there's an end of 10 campaign. So Microsoft [clears throat] Windows support for Windows 10 is end of life. People are supposed to upgrade to Windows 11, which has more hardware requirements. So that's a nice opportunity to choose free software instead of getting your hardware to the dumpster. Um and we have a paid subscription because it's very hard to really automate posting to platforms like LinkedIn or dev.to and we want to do that to reach also these people who are there. And so we're paying a kind of bridging thing to make sure that happens. Anup did great work on making that happen. Next slide, please. Uh, so who who does all this work? That's Yipeng who is you just saw him online. I think he will be back on the screen after my talk. Um, yeah, he did the most most of the commits, but then there's the commits and there's also other work more in the background. And so the release announcements are done by Jonathan Wiltshire and Adam Barratt. Uh, Charles, where's Charles? There I see Charles, did great work for CICD when we push stuff to our repos to make sure that uh uh, what's it markdown syntax is correct and that kind of stuff. Um, Justin Rye, I don't think he's present. If he is, he knows everything about the English language. So he fixes language bugs. Most of our English announcements are written by non-native speakers, so it's really cool if it's actually good English. Uh, Pablo Lucas did some Brazilian translations and he pushes it directly to our repos. And Sahil Diman, I think he did the Google Summer of Code or something. I don't really remember. And he worked on some bits stuff. It's also very much appreciated. Uh, yeah, so big surprise, we need more volunteers and contributors. Um, yeah, a lot lots of stuff happens in Debian and it would be cool if we can cover a great deal of it, but yeah, we have limited time and we have volunteers. Um, but yeah, if you if you do interesting stuff in Debian which is suitable for really uh general audience, so not really Debian technicians and technically skilled people but just normal people on the internet. >> [snorts] >> Then we can be of help and we can work with you to uh draft the text. Sometimes I know from from my own experience sometimes it's really difficult to to morph a technical message into a thing which is consumable for non-technical uh But yeah, we have experience in that and we can work together to get something out. And if you have something which is more suitable for Debian people themselves, there's still developer news on the Debian wiki. Um And it's a basically collaborative way to make posts to Debian develop announce and it's on the Debian wiki. I can give you a link if you're interested. Um Yeah, so we are liberal in what we accept. Anything goes, merge requests, email to our lists, IRC. Oh yeah, I didn't mention the other thing. I will mention later. Okay, next one, please. Yeah, you can contact us. We have a mailing list. Uh Yeah, most people in this room are probably aware that if you post to a mailing list, it's publicly archived. Um And yeah, so people from outside, they can use press@debian.org so that it goes to the four delegated people. Um Yeah, and typically things like obituaries, that's very privacy sensitive stuff. You want don't want to discuss that in the open so we use that alias also for that. Or other sensitive stuff. Uh and we have an IRC channel which is bridged to uh to Matrix so it's basically available for everybody. Uh that Yeah, that was the my part of the talk. Uh we have lots of space for discussion, and I can also tell more, but uh I would like to be uh the rest of the session more uh interactive. Maybe we can switch to the video uh link again. Yes, great. So, maybe somebody already has a question or a remark to make. Yeah? >> I'll take the mic. Sorry. Um thank you very much. You mentioned that we have uh the press email address for things that need to be kept um uh quiet until a release, such as obituaries. But, once something has been released, such as an obituary, um do you keep an archive of that or specific announcements that have come through the press team in perpetuity, so we can hard link them? >> Well, I know there is a mail at debian.org, which is stored on some Debian system. But, actually we we don't use that. Uh and once things are out in the open, um yeah, we have list archives, and we have uh Yeah, I think Yeah, I think Yeah, it's a good question. Uh lots of it is in Git. So, you could assume that's kept. Um uh Yeah, actually I I I In In In the the most general sense, I I can't say anything, Because we also used used pets and yeah, that's another story. So, yeah. Oh, may Ah, there that's that's one thing. There is there is debian.org/news with a capital N. And recently there has been something going on there. Maybe you're referring to that? >> [laughter] >> Okay, I can talk about that. Um what's his name? Thomas Lange? Yeah. Thomas Lange is doing great work. He is uh cleaning up our website. And our website has been going for uh how old are we? 30 years? A long time. So, there's a lot of old old craft there. And there's a great translation and internationalization framework. So, almost all pages are internationalized. So, if you want to do real redesign of the website, uh you have to re-pass and do lots of crunching on news items of 10 years ago, for instance. That's not nice. And that makes us not flexible uh when we change our requirements. So, uh Thomas decided, "Okay, let's just remove all this old old crap and get rid of it. And uh that that's it." Uh he was uh maybe uh could some consider he was a bit too pushy. Uh I personally Well, personally I suffered from it because uh I maintained the Debian history package. And there are links to old news items. And all these links were gone. They were dead. Uh so, I fixed that. Now it points to some somewhere else. Um and I lost What was your What was your question again? >> [laughter] >> Actually, I don't remember what I what solution I came up with. That's That's also the internet archive, of course. Uh I had a solution and I forgot what it was. But it it's still there. Thank you. >> Hello. My name is Andreas Tille. I would like to thank the press team a lot for all their work because even if I want to hide behind a stone as a DPL, I could not avoid to contact you. I could avoid probably every other team, but it's really cool what you are doing and I'm really happy about this and thank you for this. And if I can do something like maybe refreshing the delegation with new members, I'm absolutely willing to do so. Just give >> We know where to find you. >> Yeah. That's That's all I wanted to say. >> Thank you. >> Uh Yeah, so just about the the archive stuff. Uh I don't think we do have an archive of our news items or press releases that were on the site and are not anymore. So, I guess what you might want to ask the publicity team is if we want to have that archive somewhere. And to see if the if the place is here in Debian or is it is it in the internet archive? And I guess that was a bit of the discussion. I have no opinion. I think we should keep the URLs working like for any news that we sent out and was in the archive. Uh currently it doesn't work, so maybe we should do something on that or to uh to to to Jesus. >> I think you made your point. >> Yeah. I guess we have to discuss this as a project and as a the publicity team. So, I I would like also to hear Jupaja's opinion if he can hear us and understand what's going on. >> Uh seems he can't hear us. >> Okay. Well, I can say something about what you just said. Uh there's been announced like the official official announcements. There are the we have list archives. So, the the emails are in the web archive of the list. Um I can't hear very well. >> Yes, I can speak but I don't know why what to do. Yes, because I don't hear you very well. Uh I have to I'm not sure what I understand but I think you you you you speak of translation of micronutrients for example. We can imagine to have a post in the every language you you you you you want but it's not easy to to link one language to to another. It's easy to do in in this file from Debian, for example. We we can have the text in 10 language if you want, but I I think you have to to to work with translation teams. In the French team, because I go to the French translation team, we choose exactly what we we want to to translate. And for example, we don't translate all the bits from Debian because we need more more person to translate first. And we have a a big progress in a big project on the translation of of main page, for example. So but if you want to translate any any parts of of the site, it's it's it's good. You you can we can help you to to produce them. We we don't It will be it must be natural that translation team translate also what is in our official media like bits from Debian. It's absolutely natural. And if you are an universal system it's it's obvious that we we need to to be to be translated in multiple language. We don't ask a systematically to to team to translate. It It might be natural that the team choose to translate our our text our our our production. >> Um Yeah. Given I was part of the webmaster team for very long time and >> I I would like to say something. We have to scroll in our website to to find what's the the events for example. There is a lot of page in the wiki with events in in Europe, America, elsewhere. But it would be a good thing that everybody what organize a meeting a bell for an event send a mail systematically to the publicity list. Because it will be easier for us to to don't forget one manifestation, one event. Uh It drive we we we don't we miss one event. It's it's a pity. So, if you want to be sure we announce your event please write us. If you make something great in your team tell us. We we we we need to know what every team of developers do in inside the the community. And we we can't read all the list of all the teams. So, if you want to to communicate about what you do, don't hesitate to to send press to for for us, please. And to publicity list first. >> Um about archival of thing we don't need to go to external sources like archive.org. We have all the stuff, all the things in Git. We can go through Git history and even so when it was removed now, it's still in Git history and we can access it there. So, we don't need to worry about things going away even when we by accident or by being over pushy about things even when we are deleting things, they are not gone. They are still there in Git history. >> I'll just mention that um removing it keeps it in Git history, but I think unlike a lot of code or anything that of anything that is needed to be read through Git, text and especially um uh translations is very inaccessible to web search. So, if you want to look through article histories and look for older translations which are not linked anywhere uh even if they were linked, you would have to go back in history, look through then find the article, find its translation article on the Git and then go through Git Git history which I think um most of the public well, at least speaking for myself in publicity team, one one of the main reasons I'm I'm in publicity is because I prefer the non-technical aspects of Git. So, I'm not really used to looking through Git histories. So, it exists in somewhere in Git, but yeah, it's not really the preferred method I would like to think of preserving articles and translations. >> Um right, that's not what I mean. Um I meant that it's not lost in the sense and we can always bring it back or put it where it's needed in in a form that is more accessible and doesn't rely on third-party services. >> Okay, thanks publicity team. My name is Nikola and I was uh as um share thinking about the way I like our Schulze method and voting system and how we can also contribute to our humanity and societies in the way to protect democracies also. And if it's also a way or an idea to publicize the the voting package or the way we found we work. If it's a good idea or not or a good publicity also. >> Yeah, I think basically all almost all subjects are welcome and we can get in touch and work something out. I might not I'm personally now doubting what audience you're if you want like the general people on the internet or Debian people. So but in a conversation we can work things out. So thanks for the idea. >> Uh yeah. That's that's Uh so one of the one of the topics of the the both was how to get your Debian work publicized by the publicist team. Uh so we have two main channels to for that. Uh we have bits which is like um blogging web page. So everyone can contribute. You can submit merge requests. You can preferably send a mail to our mailing list, which is debian-publicity at list.debian.org uh with uh a proposal of what your uh blog post would look like, and then we can help you to get it in shape. Uh also, you can join us on IRC. Um and aside from that, we have the micronews, which is like uh uh linked to Mastodon, but it would be like a >> Yeah. I I'm not afraid to talk about Twitter. It's an interesting subject. Um I think we still have time. Uh so, Twitter was a thing, and then it was renamed to X, and then uh the person who was running it was behaving a bit strange. And then uh there was the there was this idea, uh do we want to to in a way endorse them by publishing our stuff on that platform? And uh the team decided, no, we don't want to do that. So, we made a statement, and we made a final uh tweet on X referring these people to other platforms, and that's it. But there was a huge uh traditionally, Debian are not flame war, but people were talking about it. So, that happened. Yeah. >> Yeah, but but yeah, but this micronews is like uh one sentence, one phrase like that we publish and we push to Mastodon and other places. Uh so, if you just want to publicize an email or something, you can just shout out in the micronews. Uh like we are doing for the talks. Uh every talk gets uh gets announced on micronews. Uh so, I guess those are the two main ways to publicize your work in Debian. >> That I answer your question? Was it Was that what you were asking? How to publicize? >> Thanks. It wasn't so much about the technical part, but about what do you think about publicizing the Schulze method, Condorcet method we have? Or it could be a huge publicity for the worldwide or for the >> I responded on that, so I think that's covered. >> Yes, yes, yes. >> Okay. >> Just to respond. >> Any other ideas, questions, remarks? >> Um you obviously publish various bits and pieces on LinkedIn. Can you tell us a bit more >> What did you say? >> So you you publish various bits and pieces through the LinkedIn gateway you mentioned. Can you tell us a bit more about uh what what sort of things you're posting, when you're looking to post this, and how you come about content to add to that particular stream? >> Um so uh it dep- it depends on the length of the text you actually want to send out. So that has to fit in the format. And uh tweet slash what's it called? Boost or something, the Mastodon thingy. Uh these are short. So if you have a long story to tell, what what what we generally what we often very often do is make a the short short thingy referring to a bigger text somewhere else, where people can find out more about the background. Um and yeah, so these short things they reach more people. And we don't have a way to reach a lot of people with longer things, which I think is a feature. Um yeah, does that answer your question? Yeah, thank you. >> I'll add to that quickly. Uh I don't think we uh like we don't have a publication uh where where we specifically publish some bits to some platform or rather that we use some particular streams for some particular information. Most of what goes through microbits then gets indicated to several different platforms. So, uh what used to go out to um Twitter uh Twitter / X uh would also then go on to our um Mastodon account, also go out to our LinkedIn, also go out through other mediums. Uh so, yeah, there I don't think we specifically target any special content to any special stream. I Yeah. >> You You want to say? >> Hello, everyone. I'm Anupama. I'm a publicity team delegate. And as we can see here, I don't see many people over here. Maybe this is much less popular than other talks. But, I want to focus that uh like how do we get more attention and more uh money if we don't publicize what we do and how we mention that what we do is more important. So, this is the team that can help you to get your work get recognized. So, if you are doing something important, let us know and we will put it out to the world. Okay. So, uh what I want to say is like if you're organizing an event or a bug squashing party or even if it's a small event in your local team, then please let us know so that we can put out the word and other others who are also interested in Debian around you can meet you in person and then join the work as well. So this is something in a way that we can grow grow our community. So hereby we are doing an important job. I'm not saying like uh this is something that nobody else can do. Anyone can do this. So if you are interested in handling things for us, if you're good with the language, please join our team. And if you're good with translating things, you can also help us translating our micro news and our bits post so that we can reach more people who doesn't understand English. So there are several tasks that you can help us with in the publicity team. And you can also become a non-uploading DD if you continue the work. So such way uh the the uploading DDs are not the only ones that are important to Debian. We are too. So I invite all those who are interested in non-technical tasks to join our team and keep working like keep making Debian more famous. And then we can also get more active members in the team. Okay, thank you. >> Thank you. Anything that Laura you want to say something on IRC? >> Uh Laura said something about regarding the um previous conversation about archiving. I'll quickly pull this up. Uh Uh yeah, we we have 10 minutes, I think. Yep. Uh so quickly just adding to the previous conversation, uh Laura said all announcements published on the website are also sent via Debian news or Debian announce mailing list. So the mailing list archive can be thought of as the canonical archive place as with other stuff, security announcements, events, etc. Uh yeah. So, just archiving our posts does happen on the mailing list. And given that we have limited time, I would also while I have the mic, I think one of the important things I would like to bring up that was on the pad for me was like how to contribute actually. Like how do you get yourself on published on to how do you get some story directly published on to micronews or anything? You can join join IRC and just shout out anything you want. But if you want to write something out new, you can follow our you can use our get and write a new article. We have documentation on wiki the wiki Debian wiki. But it some of it needs to be updated. For our blog, we use Pelican which is a Python SSG. Did you have to say something? No, no. You can I don't think I'm I think this can go at the end. >> Um so, hello. Yeah, I sometimes help out in the publicity team. Very rarely I have been showing my face in ages, but one thing I always think about is that we have a lot of things in Debian that we want to it would be nice to show it to the outer the other people that are outside the Debian community. We have a lot of things that we are publishing like in LinkedIn that I know that we do forums. We for post like nice the nicest forum post in Debian from to a LinkedIn group called Debian administrator or something. But also we do have micronews bits and everything. But how do we publicize the work the publicity team is doing? So, that's what I sometimes think about. Like how do we let more people know about the things that we have and we talk about especially the things that publicity do this. >> I think that's what we're doing here now. >> Outside of Debian. >> Thanks sir. That's a good remark. Thank you. Anybody else? I think that's your last chance. We have 5 more minutes, I think. 6 Is there anything happening on IRC or on the pad or Okay. >> So, I would love to stress what Anupa said. We can do we can need to work from non-uploading DTDs way more. We need some for press team, we need some for conference, we need some for gathering money, whatever. We'd love to It's It's There's no need to be uploading to do any of this work. And we really enjoy people who are doing other work which is even more important sometimes. >> Thank you. >> Oh, yeah. Oh, maybe I can uh say something >> else? 5 minutes. >> Uh there's lwn.net. It's a great website and they do great reporting on Debian stuff. It's amazing. They summarize huge mailing list discussions. So, uh maybe we can try to be better than they are. >> Bring them self a mic. Um, yeah, um I don't think we have anything else to discuss. Generally Please, uh, if you have anything, I whenever I it is now my third year at DebConf. Every time I go up to some person who's sitting and working in a hack lab, working on something, I can sit down with them and I will always have some interesting conversation that they have to tell me. They will inform me that yeah. Yeah, they they'll inform me that hey, um, I've I was working on this and hey, this bug this bug wasn't like properly this bug existed because this interesting thing which nobody has ever documented or seen happened. We can publish that. I think a lot of people within Debian would like to read about how crazy people are well, how people are doing crazy adventures and working through code. So, talk to us. We can publish anything. We will uh, and I think Planet Debian is a really good way that people publish stuff and we should also have that be published. Planet Debian is not just for inside, but also for outside communication. And publicity team, I think as person who tries to contribute and fails, I think we should be doing more of that. Uh, yeah. >> Thank you. So, 3 minutes, let's end. >> Sorry? >> 3 minutes. >> Yeah, um, we maintain the Debian timeline package, which is, uh, in a very bad shape. Uh, there's sort of a Debian timeline package. I think it's some some web thing showing the history of Debian with, uh, yeah, it's really cool, but then like 10 years ago the history stops. So that's a bit of a pity. And there is the Debian history package I mentioned. I'm doing my best to keep I think very important like obituaries, people we've lost, to keep that information up to date there. But the rest is good use some more love. But yeah, well, that's work everywhere basically. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for your presence. See you.