It is an incomplete draft that we are working on - if you can think of ways to make it better, please edit the page and improve it!
Introduction
This is a Marketing SOP that describes how to create Feature profiles.
Examples
You can see examples of past feature profiles at Category:Feature profiles.
Instructions
Create the feature profiles page for the current release
- Create a page named F(number) feature profiles where (number) is the number of the release under development. For instance, F13 feature profiles.
- Add some text in the page explaining what feature profiles are. The template for a #Feature profiles page may be helpful.
- Categorize the page properly - in Category:Feature profiles, in Category:Marketing, and in Category:F(number) where (number) is the number of the current release (for instance, Category:F12).
Select the feature profiles
Add a section to the feature profiles page you just created for keeping track of feature profiles. You can use the #Feature profiles table template to help you.
Select 3-5 features to profile and add them to the table. This is best done in a Marketing meeting with collaboration from the FPL.
Selection criteria:
- Total amount of engineering effort required to complete the feature (higher is better - we want to celebrate the work engineers are doing!) Bonus points for being driven by Fedora people working in upstreams, OR (if not upstream-drivable - if it's a Fedora-specific thing) run by a contributor/volunteer (someone who's not paid to do what they did, whether or not they're a Red Hat employee).
- How many of the 4 foundations does this hit? (More is better, of course.)
- Do we want people to use this feature en masse because it would be helpful to the project, and would they be less likely to find out about it otherwise?
Announce the feature profiles
Email the marketing list with a notification that the feature profiles to focus on have been chosen. Include a link to the feature profiles page for the current release.
Note that people are free to create more feature profiles if they want - that's fantastic! The initial list of 3-4 profiles are the ones we will commit to doing for the release.
Write the feature profiles
Feature profiles are a great opportunity for developers to have "their chance to shine." Highlight the good work people are doing!
For feature profiles for a release, we're primarily aiming at covering the improvements made for that release - for instance, "What's new in NetworkManager for F13? How did that come to be?" It's a story of what people have been doing in the last 6 months. Feature profiles are consequently based on interviews with the developers of that feature.
Contact the interviewees
An easy way to find interviewees for a feature profile is to go to the talking points for that release, and click through to the feature pages for the talking point you're covering. Each feature page will have an owner, and there will be contact information for that owner. These are usually the developers you want to be interviewing.
Email (or otherwise contact) the developers to schedule an interview. Be aware of your interviewee's availability - try to make it as easy as can be on them as far as time goes. They're busy people too!
Hold the interview
Feature profile interviews can be conducted in a variety of ways - IRC is common, as is email, or for podcast, audio, etc. It doesn't really matter as long as the final edited version is made available via the wiki. If you're holding your interview on IRC, using Zodbot for logging may help.
Feature profiles shouldn't just be a way to advertise what Fedora has - it's also a way for the community to get a more in depth look at what people are working on, that they can't always see because they're so busy doing their stuff. In other words, we're not just emphasizing Fedora as a distribution, but also as a community.
The audience for feature profiles is a general Fedora user audience - don't necessarily assume technical familiarity! A good rule of thumb is to look at the talking point category your feature(s) were listed under, and write for that audience.
Some possible questions:
- Tell me about yourself. What do you do, where do you work?
- How did you get involved in Fedora?
- Tell me about this feature. What drove the need to create / enhance / upgrade this feature?
- How does this feature make the day-to-day work of someone easier? Who would be interested in it?
- How do I try out, test, and give feedback on this feature? How could I help improve it?
In general, try to do background research and be familiar with the feature you are interviewing for. Try to anticipate what answers might be, so that you can make the next question flow from the previous answer. A good way to gather background information is to look at other activities inside Fedora. Is this feature used by the Infrastructure team? Was there a Test Day held for this feature? Look at the feature's wiki page - is there a ton of information? Are there screenshots to be used, or is the interviewee interested in making some screenshots for the interview?
Put the interview on the wiki
Feature profiles are written on the wiki - you link to them from that release's feature profile page. There should already be a table for you to place your profile in. For instance, for F13, that page is.
Edit the interview
There is no word count limit for feature profiles. (When others remix the content, they can shorten it as needed for their publication outlet.)
Make the feature profiles remixable
Feature profiles should be remixable content - people can and will respin them into other pieces for blogging, denting, filming, printing, press kits, etc.
Publicize the feature profiles
We stopped writing instructions at this point because we hadn't reached this part of the process at the time of writing this SOP. If you're reading this SOP and need further instructions to proceed, either (1) make them up and add them in here as further steps, or (2) email the marketing list and ask for further instructions, and we'll make them up for you.
Templates
Feature profiles page
This page is the home of the Feature profiles for the F(number) release. For more information on what feature profiles are or how this deliverable was created, see the Feature profiles SOP.
For each feature, the marketing owner should do several things:
- Create a wiki page that can be the home of the work that you do.
- Conduct an interview with the primary developer(s). Written, podcast, or both. There is a page on how to make a podcast for those that are interested.
- Make sure that the feature is reflected on the talking points for that release.
- Prepare a tutorial or screenshot tour of the feature.
If you have any questions about these, or need any help, please do not be shy about asking on fedora-marketing-list! You can also reference the prior feature profiles pages to see examples of previous feature profiles.
Feature profiles table
| Feature | Owner | Reference page | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feature name | Owner of the feature profile | Reference page | Notes |
Feature profiles header
The Fedora Marketing team built this interview as part of their work promoting the latest and greatest free and open source software technologies that Fedora brings with each new release. If you're interested in participating in Fedora, visit http://join.fedoraproject.org to get started.
Improve this SOP!
If you see a way to improve this SOP, please go ahead and edit the page - you don't need to ask for anyone's permission. Read more about our contribution philosophy here.