Behind the scenes at TDF: Marketing and Communications
The months between April and the first half of August have been rather busy, as I have been working – together with the other members of TDF staff and several volunteers – at different projects: the first TDF Annual Report, the final development stage of LibreOffice 5.0, including two bug hunting sessions, the announcement of the publication of ODF 1.2 by ISO, and the launch of LibreOffice 5.0. In addition, I have worked at smaller tasks such a announcements of minor releases.
The bigger task, as everyone can imagine, has been the launch of LibreOffice 5.0, as we wanted to make a real impact with this new major release.
First of all, I started to update the mailing lists for the distribution of press releases, which are a fundamental tool for the success of the launch. Since January, TDF is using a dedicated open source tool – phpList – which is saving a lot of work, especially when keeping mailing lists updated. In fact, phpList keeps track of all bounces, which are stored in each record, making it easier to spot old or wrong email addresses.
Journalists move around quite frequently, and only a small percentage remembers to update their record. For all the others, you have to chase them using a combination of search engines and other tools such as LinkedIn and About.Me. It is a rather tedious activity, but is key to ensure the success of each press release.
Since TDF has a combined mailing list of over 13,000 journalists worldwide, I have had to review and update around 10% – or over 1,000 email addresses – between May and July. To avoid being burned by this task, I have done a few each evening, while watching TV.
In early July, I have started to work at the launch documents, by looking at new features and trying to identify those which were more important. I have also set the announcement date at August 5. In addition, together with Jan Holesovsky and Charles Schulz, and the graphic designer Barak Paz, we have worked at a new identity for LibreOffice 5.0, with a new splash screen and a new start center.
In mid July, I have started to “leak” some news to a selected number of journalists, to start getting coverage on the upcoming major release. I have sent short messages to all the editors who clicked on our previous announcements, showing some interest on our press releases. I have also invited these editors to pre-release conference calls on August 3, or to 1to1 interviews on August 3 or August 4.
In late July, I distributed the final draft of the press pack, which was based on a press release, a feature backgrounder, and a “road to LibreOffice 5.0” document highlighting the major features of all the previous LibreOffice releases since January 2011. I also developed a timeline infographics, to explain the three stages of LibreOffice development: 3.x for code cleaning, 4.x for code refactoring, and 5.x for UI and feature innovations. This document was published on TDF blog as a teaser release on July 29.
I also prepared a short slide show to introduce LibreOffice 5.0 to journalists, with some visuals which were supposed to be used also to embellish the articles.
On August 3, I hosted pre-announcement conference calls for journalists based in Europe and in the US, for a total of 8 journalists (Extension Media, Genbeta, Golem, IDG News, ITWeb, PC World, The Inquirer and V3). I also sent the Press Kit under embargo to Betanews, ECT News, Liliputing, IT World and Network World.
On August 4, together with Michael Meeks, I hosted the pre-announcement 1to1 interview with InfoWorld. In addition, I have provided some quick answers to questions raised by journalists who received the press kit.
On August 5, I published the announcement message and the blog post, and distributed the press release to over 4,000 journalists worldwide. Over 30% viewed the announcement and clicked on the link, and half of them – around 600 journalists – published an article. As a consequence, we had a spike of visits to the blog and a spike of donations (which are proportional to downloads). All in all, a very successful announcement, thanks to the work of our developer community who has been able to put together a fantastic product, and of the other volunteers who have contributed with ideas and comments to make LibreOffice 5.0 stand out from the office suite crowd.