Community anniversary
Flaburgan
Public
Seen by 77
In one month (the 27th of August to be exact), the project will be run by the community for one year. I think it could be great to use this date to relaunch communication. At the moment, most articles in the web say bad news about diaspora: project dead, nothing new for years, abandoned by founders... Vice did a big and really complete article one year ago, it would be cool to re-contact them to update it to have a happier end.
If we could have the diasporafoundation.org website finished and polished, and a big new feature like "diaspora federation is available as a ruby gem, talk with diaspora directly with your application" by the end of August, it would be awesome.
We could make an announcement on the blog with a nice image, I'm sure this will be token by the whole media.
So, we need to:
- Polish and complete the diasporafoundation website
- Finish, package and test the federation gem (it doesn't need to be integrated to diaspora at the moment)
- Prepare an announcement
- Make nice images to do the buzz
- Make a list of media we should contact
I think we should involved the diaspora* community: there is a lot of artists and web dev on diaspora we can contact to help us, at least with the images and maybe with the website.
We could post a message with diasporaHQ: "In one month, it's the first anniversary of the community run diaspora, we want to do the buzz, so every artist here, express yourself about it, make images, gifs, movies, everything you want, and prepare yourself to spread the word the 27th of August! We especially need a "banner" like 
to go with the official announcement. Post your proposition here and we will pick one!"
What do you think guys, are you ready to make this happens before the 27th of August?
Update
See email and list of media here: http://piratepad.net/IOOTIYz2vi
German version here: http://pad.spored.de/p/Community_Geburtstag_-_Presse
Flaburgan Fri 9 Aug 2013 1:09PM
@goob about your draft, I don't think this is what we need: media wants to write their own article, it's their job to summarize the history of the project and make beautiful sentences. What we need to send to them is raw information they'll be able to use: key points, key features, key people, and key numbers.
We need to prove that the project is living, and nothing is better than numbers to prove. We can talk about the number of line of code modified / added, the number of people who contributed, an estimation of the number of users, and each time, we can make the comparison with "last year" and "last three months" to see that the project is growing NOW. The graph and the pulse section of github are a gold mine.
goob Fri 9 Aug 2013 1:35PM
But the advertising, the buzz, is not about having directly more people involved. It's about changing the reputation of the project. For those who don't use it like for those who do, diaspora is a dead project. Because many hopes appeared and were deceived, because founders quit, because nobody communicated, because code didn't change during almost one year (april 2012 to april 2013). We need to show that now, there is people working on it, there is believers, there is, more than never before, a need of a privacy respectful social network. This is what I want to say the 27th of August. This is what I want every free software people to know.
@flaburgan this is very well said. I think things have been going so well over the past year that I'd more or less forgotten just how bad things were for so long before that. You're right, we need to say 'Look where we were a year ago. Now look where we are today!'
Thanks for that paragraph, that conveys the passion we should convey to the outside world.
About the press release, I look forward to your edits! :)
Flaburgan Fri 9 Aug 2013 2:37PM
About the press release, I look forward to your edits! :)
I created a draft for an email.
Jason Robinson Sun 11 Aug 2013 4:57PM
I just made edits to the draft email. IMHO we should finalize it within a max few days and then start sending out emails. What do you think?
The press release maybe needs a few details, but for that there is a bit more time. Otherwise the language in it is good imho.
Awesome work @flaburgan and @goob :)
Flaburgan Sun 11 Aug 2013 4:59PM
Currently working on the code and english is not my native language, so if someone wants to polish and send emails, he's welcome ;)
goob Sun 11 Aug 2013 5:48PM
Have just added my edits to the email. The press release I drafted will still need a lot of work later on.
Flaburgan Mon 12 Aug 2013 12:28PM
I posted a first message about artwork, is it okay to reshare it with diasporaHQ?
goob Mon 12 Aug 2013 2:47PM
I hope so, because I've just done it!
Jason Robinson Tue 13 Aug 2013 6:34PM
I think the email (first part of http://piratepad.net/IOOTIYz2vi) is pretty much ready. Added 12 month commits/contribs from https://www.ohloh.net/p/diaspora/commits/summary.
What email address could we send it out from? Any possibility of creating an [email protected] address for this kind of use? Who would monitor it?
Maybe we could also add addresses to send to in format "Blog - Address - email" to the doc under the email - and then someone sends them out once we decide to go ahead?
Flaburgan · Fri 9 Aug 2013 12:46PM
@goob I agree we don't want nor need to suddenly increase the number of users. What we need is developers (and podmins). But the advertising, the buzz, is not about having directly more people involved. It's about changing the reputation of the project. For those who don't use it like for those who do, diaspora is a dead project. Because many hopes appeared and were deceived, because founders quit, because nobody communicated, because code didn't change during almost one year (april 2012 to april 2013). We need to show that now, there is people working on it, there is believers, there is, more than never before, a need of a privacy respectful social network. This is what I want to say the 27th of August. This is what I want every free software people to know. Being involved is another step. Using it is another step. But just to know that diaspora* is alive and become better everyday is the step we have to do right now.