Re: DRAFT: v7.3 Release Announcement

On Sun, 27 Oct 2002, Josh Berkus wrote:

> Marc,
>
> > IMHO, its the non-tech press that needs to be "informed/targetted"
> > ... its
> > alot easier on the techs if their CTO comes to them and mentioned
> > 'this
> > RDBMS PostgreSQL that they just read abou that we should
> > investigate',
> > then for the tech to convince the CTO ... eaiser to implement
> > something
> > when the higher-ups are pushing for it :)
>
> By "general tech press" I mean, for example, News.com and the
> Washingtion Post Business/Tech page. As opposed to "open source
> press", such as NewsForge and The Register, who would probably cover us
> even if we just forwarded them a mailing list message.
>
> As nice as it might be to get ourselves on the front page of the WST,
> it ain't gonna happen until we get a major world government to switch
> their operations over to PostgreSQL. And maybe not even then, if
> OpenOffice.org is anything to go by (Germany adopted OOo/StarOffice,
> and we didn't even get a page 3 blurb in the WST. They are *not*
> friendly to Open Source).
>
> My questions are:
> 1) Who is this press release for?
> a) The general tech press
> b) the Open Source press

IMHO, the above two ...

> c) PostgreSQL users and customers
> d) PostgreSQL Inc. customers

the above two are "already informed" ...

> 2) Do we want to prepare 2 or more press releases for different target
> audiences?

I don't believe so ... there should be "A Press Release" which is targeted
to 1a/1b ... and a 'Release Announcements' which is target'd towards 1c ..

> 3) Should the PostgreSQL.org press release overlap with PostgreSQL
> Inc.'s press release? If so, how?

Not sure why PostgresQL, Inc would do a seperate press release, we aren't
releasing anything new ... all we should be targetting here is
PostgreSQL.Org's v7.3 release ...

> 4) Will we provide advance copies of the press release to other
> companies that support PostgreSQL development for them to release to
> their customers?

I don't believe so ... is there any reason why such companies aren't
involved with this list in the first place?

> 6) What should the balance of emphasis between new release features and
> general PostgreSQL promotion be in the press release?

We need to somehow emphasis that what "the rest" are touting as their new
features are what we've always had, while promoting our new features ...
which could be hard ... I'm tired of hearing about how great MySQL is
because it has transactions now, while we've always had it ... we need to
make ppl aware that we've always had those features and that they have
been well tested over the past several years ...

> 7) How much testimonial material should be in this press release, and
> how much on the Advocacy web page?

I would think you'd want very little in the press release ...

> 8) Should we include a technical rundown of the new features, or just a
> general-audience one? (by my evaluation, Geoff's list falls in the 60%
> technical, 40% general audience level)

General audience one ...

> 9) Can we get a programmer quote about the new release? Please?

Tom, I think you are well overdue for being quoted, no? :)