Re: REMINDER: Marketing meeting January 9th 20:00 UTC

[Allan Day <allanpday gmail com>]

Sriram Ramkrishna <sri ramkrishna me> wrote:
> Reminder that we have a marketing meeting tomorrow:

I'm afraid that I won't be able to make tomorrow's meeting. I'll
actualy be busy on Wednesday evenings for the next ten weeks. A few
comments on a few of the agenda items:

> Topics:
>
> 1) managing classic experience expectations

Right now we don't know exactly what "legacy" or "classic" mode will
entail (we don't even have a final name decided). There will certainly
be window based alt-tab behaviour, an app menu and *some* kind of
window list along the bottom of the screen. Many of the details are
still to be worked out. The point is that this will not be exactly
like GNOME 2, and we don't know what the quality of the new mode will
be like. It seems extremely risky to promote a new feature when
neither the design nor the implementation have been finalised. Raising
expectations could lead to disappointed (although I obviously hope
that won't be the case).

How do we deal with this? First, we can try to convey the message that
it the new mode is still experimental. We could even think about
promoting the initial release as a preview release. Second, we should
promote those 3.8 features that we can be more confident about.

> 2) 2.8 marketing message and materials

I presume this means 3.8. :)

There is already a long list of new features for the next release.
Going through them all, I think we can be confident that it will be
fairly strong. Looking at the list of improvements, there are a few
themes that stand out to me:

 * Settings - there will be at least three new settings panels
(search, notifications, privacy) as well as reworked panels for power,
network and color. There has been a huge amount of work invested.
 * There's a new story for search, with a new interface in the shell
and the new settings panel. This is a new and highly visible
integration point for applications.
 * Applications - Web, Documents, Contacts and Clocks are all getting
a decent amount of work this cycle.
 * Polish - Every Detail Matters has been extremely successful this
cycle. We also have Owen Taylor's graphics performance work and a new
kind of pressure sensitivity for actions like the hot corner and
triggering the Message Tray. There's also been a lot of work to refine
and consolidate the big new features we had in 3.6, such as input
methods integration and the lock screen. Oh, and the window selection
part of the Activities Overview has been massively improved.

There's a new potential messages we could talk about there: empowering
users (through new settings) as well as increasing quality and
providing a refined experience.

In terms of materials, I would like to discuss how we want to handle
the release notes for 3.8. We should also plan blog posts and news
stories about new features for the run up to the release.

Allan