Re: registration press release draft

[William from Texas <williamfromtexas gmail com>]

Draft version 2. 

---
May 11, 2010: Public registration has officially opened for the 2010 
GNOME GUADEC conference. Organisers of GUADEC - the GNOME Users And 
Developers European Conference - anticipate a wide range of speakers and
 participants to once again make this conference an highly informative 
and community-building event. The secure registration and payment site 
can be found at: <a href="" https://register.guadec.org/”>https://register.guadec.org/</a>

GUADEC 2010 will be hosted in The Hague, The Netherlands, from July 26 - 30. Now in its 11th year, GUADEC is one of the largest annual meetings of open source software developers, GNOME foundation leaders, individuals, governments and businesses from around the world. Speakers include leading names from the GNOME, UNIX, Linux and Open Source software communities.

The GUADEC coordination team is excited to start accepting registrations. "We're still dotting i's on the conference programme," said Koen Martens, GAUDEC 2010 managing coordinator, "but we're happy to have the attendee section of the site up and running. Opening registration is a big mile-stone for us.” As registrations begin, monitoring of the number of participants will allow organisors to properly gauge the size and scope of the conference to better predict venue, network and catering needs.

Registration pricing will be set at four different levels. Everyone interested in attending GUADEC 2010 is encouraged to sign-up on the level they are most comfortable with. Registration levels are:
 - Professional Level: €250, includes a free t-shirt and access to a professionals' reception.
 - Normal Level: €100, includes a free t-shirt.
 - GNOME Foundation Member Level: €75, includes a free t-shirt. (For more information on becoming a GNOME foundation member, please see <a href="" http://foundation.gnome.org/membership/”>this site</a>. (gnome.org)
 - Hobbyist/Student Level: No fee

The revenues raised will be used to fund travel grants for those contributors from the global community who might otherwise have not been able to attend due to financial reasons.

Two pre-conference events are also scheduled to take place:
 - The first is a two-day <a href="" href="http://www.gnu.org/ghm/2010/denhaag/">http://www.gnu.org/ghm/2010/denhaag/”>GNU Hackers' Meeting (GHM)</a> (gnu.org) of GNU maintainers and contributors, to be held on July 24 - 25. The event is being coordinated by the GNU, and registration will be announced on the <a href="" href="http://savannah.gnu.org/news/atom.php?group=ghm">http://savannah.gnu.org/news/atom.php?group=ghm">GHM newsfeed</a>.

 - The second is the official pre-conference GNOME Open Desktop Day, a meeting of interested parties and stakeholders discussing collaboration between government institutions, software communities and business. Strategies and background of successful and up-and-coming European projects will be used as examples. Registration for this event is possible from the <a href="" https://register.guadec.org/”>GUADEC registration page</a>.

Composed of hundreds of volunteer developers and industry-leading companies, the GNOME Foundation is an organization committed to supporting the advancement of GNOME. The foundation is a member directed, non-profit organization that provides financial, organizational and legal support to the GNOME project and helps determine its vision and roadmap.

The GNOME desktop is used by millions of people around the world. GNOME is a standard part of all leading GNU/Linux and Unix distributions, and is popular with both large existing corporate deployments and millions of small business and home users worldwide.

More information about GUADEC, GNOME and the GNOME Foundation can be found at http://www.guadec.org/, http://www.gnome.org/ and http://foundation.gnome.org/.
---

On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 5:15 PM, Koen Martens <gmc sonologic nl> wrote:

On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 05:05:21PM +0200, William from Texas wrote:
> - Please let me know any factual inaccuracies.
> - I assumed here that the pre-conference would be the GNU Hacker's Meeting,
> but now I think it's the Open Desktop Day??

No, the GNU hackers meeting has their own registration process, we're not
dealing with that. The preconference is indeed the GNOME Open Desktop Day (GODD!).

> - The last 2 paragraphs were from a previous GNOME press release, I thought
> they were good descriptors, is it ok to use? (I tried to contact Paul Allen
> of Rise PR, who I believe is GNOME's press release firm in the UK, but no
> answer.)

In this case let's go by the adagio 'better to ask for forgiveness then seek
permission'.

Some minor comments embedded below:

> ---
> Press release:
>
> May 11, 2010: Public registration has officially opened for the 2010 GNOME
> GUADEC conference. Organisers of GUADEC - the GNOME Users And Developers
> European Conference - anticipate a wide range of speakers and participants
> to once again make this conference an highly informative and
> community-building event. The secure registration and payment site can be
> found at: <a href="" https://register.guadec.org/”>
> https://register.guadec.org/</a>
>
> GUADEC 2010 will be hosted in The Hague, The Netherlands, from July 26 - 30.
> Now in its 11th year, GUADEC is one of the largest annual meetings of open
> source software developers, GNOME foundation leaders, individuals,
> governments and businesses from around the world. Speakers include leading
> names from the GNOME, UNIX, Linux and Open Source software communities.
>
> The GUADEC coordination team is excited to start accepting registrations.
> "We're still dotting i's on the conference programme," said Koen Martens,
> GAUDEC 2010 managing coordinator, "but we're happy to have the attendee
> section of the site up and running. Opening registration is a big mile-stone
> for us.” Registration pricing will be set at four different levels. Everyone
> interested in attending GUADEC 2010 is encouraged to sign-up on the level
> they are most comfortable with.
>
> Registration levels are:
>  - Professional Level: €250, includes a free t-shirt and access to the
> professional’s reception.
>  - Normal Level: €100, includes a free t-shirt.
>  - GNOME Member Level: €75, includes a free t-shirt. (For more information

Make that 'GNOME foundation member level'..

> on becoming a GNOME member, please see <a href=""> > http://foundation.gnome.org/membership/”>this site. (gnome.org)</a>
>  - Hobbyist/Student Level: No fee
>
> The revenues raised will be used to fund travel grants for those
> contributors from the global community who might otherwise have not been
> able to attend due to financial reasons. As registrations begin, monitoring
> of the number of participants will allow organisors to properly gauge the
> size and scope of the conference to better predict venue, network and
> catering needs.
>
> Martens said that registration is open for the pre-conference as well. The
> pre-conference on July 24th and 25th includes <a href=""> > http://www.gnu.org/ghm/2010/denhaag/”>a 2-day GNU Hackers' Meeting.
> (gnu.org)</a>

So this paragraph should be about the GODD, not about the gnu hackers meeting.
It'd be fine to mention the GHM though, the link to the information page about
that is on the guadec overview page.

> The GNOME desktop is used by millions of people around the world. GNOME is a
> standard part of all leading GNU/Linux and Unix distributions, and is

Well, with wording like this, i can't call it a factual error but of course there
is also KDE, which is default on on some distributions..

> popular with both large existing corporate deployments and millions of small
> business and home users worldwide.
>
> Composed of hundreds of volunteer developers and industry-leading companies,
> the GNOME Foundation is an organization committed to supporting the
> advancement of GNOME. The Foundation is a member directed, non-profit
> organization that provides financial, organizational and legal support to
> the GNOME project and helps determine its vision and roadmap.
> h
> More information about GUADEC, GNOME and the GNOME Foundation can be found
> at www.guadec.org, www.gnome.org and foundation.gnome.org.

Might be because i'm a nerd, but i usually spell url's completely: http://www.guadec.org/,
added benefit: it can be recognized as a url by programs who choose to highlight these
and make them clickable..

For the rest: i like it!

Gr,

Koen