Blog more please!

[jorge o. castro]

Hey fellas,

I just got done talking with dholbach and I came to the conclusion that
planet.ubuntu.com is getting way too boring. :)

Now, I don't know about you guys, but if it's going to end up being me,
Corey, and Jerome blogging, then it's going to get boring pretty quick.
But don't worry, I've put some thought into this and I'm here to get you
all on the right track. I'm here to convince you on why blogging about
what you're working on is a good thing, and why you should do it more!

a) Free marketing - The guys over on Planet GNOME do this well. It's not
even intentional. We all know how important performance is during this
next GNOME cycle. We all know this because we weren't smart enough to go
look at the development release notes, we know so because it's been
plastered all over their planet for months.

b) An outreach tool - Guys like me can say "The guys at MOTU need some
help" all we want. But, it's a totally different ballgame when a real
MOTU says "Hey guys, I know you want Foo packaged, I've put it up on
REVU, please help me test it, click here for the info."

c) A recruitment tool - "Wow, so you like doing what I said in step b?
Consider joining us, click here dude. I am Daniel Holbach, and I approve
this message."

d) Powar to teh people - Users like me just feel better when we hear
stuff straight from the developers. "Hey I heard on irc that X will be
busted for two weeks" vs. "Hey guys, X is going to be broken for two
weeks. Blame me, worship your Lord Daniel, mwahahahah."

e) Project updates -  If you take a chance to scan the forums, you'll
see that people are pumped up about features. Things like gdebi, the
graphical installer, fastboot, network-manager. There are people out
there waiting to try the stuff out, a status update on what you're
working on will go a LONG WAY to getting more testers. Users love new
features, they're waiting to eat 'em up ... feed us!  WE WANT OUR CRACK.

f) Leadership roles - Second to last, I think that people in leadership
positions should blog about people. Sure, we recognize people that do
great things in the official status reports, but what rules about blogs
is that they're personal. I for one wouldn't mind seeing team leaders
blog about the people out there making ubuntu rule that we don't know
about. There are a good number of DD's out there cooperating with Ubuntu
and making our jobs easier, as an example. We never hear about these
guys, how come? Someone misses a .diff and we're jerks on planet debian
for a week, surely someone out there can blog about the good things
being done in this area?

I, for one, would like to know who they are. I also want to know who the
trench-sludging irc helpers are. That job really sucks. Recognizing
these people is important, and I think it'd be cool to have people
recognized on planet for things like this. Most of them are volunteers,
it's not difficult to point out how much they rule.

g) An outreach tool part 2 - Lastly, I think sabdfl should blog. Not
only that, I think Mark should blog about things that SUCK. Boy do I
want to know what makes him want to throw his laptop across the room.
That should keep everything interesting. We're all committed to his
crazy vision, might as well do it all together! Woo!

So, overall, I think you guys should liven things up. Throw up those
prototypes and whacky ideas, and progress reports. I for one wouldn't
mind telling keybuk that his ideas are crack. So what say ye?

--
jorge
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