WEBVTT

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This talk will give an overview of
what the Debian publicity team does

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and how they work and how you can
support them.

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Please give a warm round of applause to
Cédric Boutillier and his talk

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"Debian, a giant with a tiny voice"

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[Applause]

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I'm sorry, I have a kind of technical
problem.

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I don't remember the shortcut for doing
full screen in okular.

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Ctrl-Shift-P… ok, thank you.

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This is my first DebConf, so I would like
to take this opportunity to present myself

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I'm Cédric Boutillier, I'm known as boutil
on IRC and I'm a Debian member

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since 2012 and a couple of years before
that, I started contributing to Debian

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as a member of the ruby team.

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I also joined the french localization team
and I started to translate

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some announcements and that's how I became
part of the Publicity team.

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What I will talk about today is
the structure of the publicity team,

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the various services we are handling in
the team and how you can in fact

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get involved in the team and promote
Debian through the Publicity team.

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So, what is the structure of the team.

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It's a bit complicated because in fact the
publicity in Debian is for the moment

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two teams: there is the Press team and the
Publicity team.

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The members of the Press team are
delegated by the DPL and

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they can speak in the name of the project
when it's needed

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to contact for example journalists.

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They have a private mail alias
press@debian.org and they serve as a

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contact point for journalists and the
outside world.

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And there is the Debian Publicity team,
which is much larger, but…

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not much larger, larger but not as well
structured as the Press team.

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We have a public mailing list,
debian-publicity@lists.debian.org

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and an IRC channel, #debian-publicity.

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And we should also include in this team
all the people doing reviews,

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especially translating our broken english
into proper english − Hello Justin −

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and all the translators doing the work to
translate

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various announcements in various
languages.

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We have also in this Publicity team the
maintainers of the Debian blog,

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more on that later, that are also
delegated by the DPL.

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And in fact, we should also include the
whole project, because publicity is

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the duty of the whole project and
everyone should be concerned by this.

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I will now review the various tools we can
have in the team.

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First, there are the press announcements.

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They are published on the website in the
News/ subsection.

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They inform journalists and users of
important changes and they are prepared

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by the Press team and the Publicity team

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and also with various involved teams when
there are specific changes.

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It includes the news for the new releases
and some times also

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news that are published in coordination
with other companies or

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other projects.

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These announcements are a very
official way to communicate

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about the project

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and on the wiki, at the moment there is
some information about

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how you could approach the team to propose
such an announcement.

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There is another tool which is used
to publish communication about the project

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in a less formal way.

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It's the Debian blog, AKA bits.debian.org

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It first lived as an unofficial service
under news.debian.net for two years

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then it was reopened as an official
service in 2013.

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Blog posts that are published there are
less formal,

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we can have all kind of announcements
there

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so every Debian member has a commit access
to the Git repository

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to draft an article which is then reviewed
before the final publishing.

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Some teams already have published informal
reports to this blog and

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it would be nice if it became something
usual that teams having sprints

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could publish informal reports
in this blog.

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We have also some Google Summer of Code
announcements and things like that.

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Something I know quite well is the Debian
Project News.

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This is a newsletter that at its creation was
supposed to be weekly released,

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then after some break it was revived as a
bi-monthly newsletter

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but at the moment we kind of lack manpower
so it's more or less released once a month.

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So what's the structure.

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It's available on the website under the
News/weekly/ section of the website.

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It's also released as an e-mail on
debian-news and on localized versions

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of this newsletter for translations.

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It's also available as a RSS feed and
links to the newsletter are also

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sent to identi.ca.

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It's translated into various languages and
how do we create this newsletter?

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We gather various information from mailing
lists, blog posts and

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write some short paragraphs about this.

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We have also recurrent sections in this
mailing list about

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security announcements, interesting new
packages, during freeze time

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we publish a summary of the RC bugs statistics
and recently we added some information

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about the reproducible builds statistics
too.

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A new section that appeared from time to
time in the last issues is the

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"Team, what do you do?" section which was
introduced by Donald Norwood.

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The principle of this section is to
interview teams.

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I think it's a nice way for users and
people interested in Debian in general

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to discover the value of various teams,

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not only teams doing packaging but teams
doing like cross archive work or

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work on other fields of the project.

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If your team is invited to answer these
questions, please find some time

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to answer to our e-mail and

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if your team is interested in
participating in this initiative or

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if you know a team that you would be
interested in knowing more about,

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please tell us and we'll try to
contact them.

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How can you help the Publicity team?

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You should consider publicity as a way
way to advertise your work

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so you can first join the publicity team
and work directly on

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what we are producing: announcements
or this newsletter

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by writing, reviewing or translating
articles like for the Debian Project News.

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Debian is a very large project and it's
very difficult for us to monitor

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all the mailing lists and all the IRC
channels and things like that

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so if you can help and collect some
information about what happens

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in the project, it's very good.

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For example, if you are already a Debian
contributor and you did or you saw

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something amazing in the Debian project

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you could just send us an e-mail with just
a few lines and a couple of links

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and we could include this into the
newsletter.

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If you have a package that you are very
happy of,

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you are very happy this package entered
the archive and you would like that

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a lot of people use this package, you can
also tell us about it

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and we will advertise it in the next
Debian Project Newsletter issue.

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Working in the Publicity team is also a
good entry point

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for people interested in Debian but who
are not contributors yet.

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It's a way where people can learn more
about the Debian project.

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So, if you are interested in Debian and
you don't know exactly where to start,

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it could be a good starting point.

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What is the workflow we are using.

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Recently, during DebCamp, we migrated
from SVN to Git

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so now, all the documents we are handling
are kept in Git repositories.

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The Debian Project News, the announcements
and the blog have their own Git repository

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Every Debian Member has directly commit
access to these Git repositories

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and others can easily get write access by
joining the Publicity team project on Alioth.

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Coordination to produce these documents,
annoucements and the DPN,

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is usually done through the mailing list
or the IRC channel

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and once the announcement or the DPN is
finished

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then some calls for review or translation
are sent to translation and localization

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mailing lists.

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There is more information on the wiki.

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There is an other way to publish news
about your work, which is

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the Misc Developer News.

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It's a wiki page at this address.

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This page contains a template you can use
and you can edit the wiki page.

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If you are the person adding the fifth
news to this wiki page,

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you win the right to collect these five
news and send an e-mail

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to debian-devel-announce mailing list
with the five news.

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It's quite a light way to send news about
the project,

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especially if you are not the fifth one.

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Debian is also present on various social
networks.

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We have an official identi.ca account

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which is represented here.

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We're also present on GNU Social, Twitter
and Google+.

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There was a special event this year, the
release of Jessie and

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we did some live denting on identi.ca and
some messages were sent to Twitter

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during the whole weekend, non stop.

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We sent like 150 messages.

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So if you want to propose a DENT, you can
go directly to

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the #debian-publicity IRC channel and send
a proposition with a DENT: prefix

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and when this proposition is acknowledged
by someone of the team,

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this message will appear on the social
network.

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You can also e-mail your proposition to
Debian Publicity.

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For example, if you want to publish
messages about DebConf,

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you are welcome to do so.

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Last tool we have in the Debian Publicity
team is the Debian timeline.

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It was created by Chris Lamb and now
maintained by the Publicity team.

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It's a web page showing a timeline with
various events related to Debian.

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You have the history of all the releases
and various events like sprints,

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bug squashing parties, various transitions
and things like that.

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All the source code of Debian timeline is
maintained in a Git repository.

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So every Debian member can commit to this
timeline and then a publicity member

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can push to the server the changes to
update the timeline.

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You can look at this timeline and if you
see that some event is missing,

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either directly commit to Git or send us
an e-mail to the Debian Publicity team

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so we can add this event.

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We have also a lot of projects but
currently have no time

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to implement them.

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Examples of this would be to revive the
"debaday" website

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which was presenting a new Debian package
everyday.

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We could also try to revive the audio
interviews which are known

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under the name of "This Week in Debian",

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or subtitle the existing audio interviews
in english

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and translate these subtitles into other
languages.

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We are also open to new ideas for
recurrent sections

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in the Debian Project News.

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We could also try to gather some
statistics and

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track mentions of Debian on external
websites

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to see how Debian is doing from another
point of view.

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You're welcome to propose your own idea.

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We'll have a BOF this afternoon and you
are welcome to come and

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discuss with us your own ideas on that.

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Here are some useful links.

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For Debian contributors, you have the
mailing and various wiki pages

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about the workflow of the team and

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for users, these are the mailing list and
social network

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where we publish some information.

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This is our contact information if you
want to get in touch with us

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and please come to the BOF this
afternoon in Amsterdam room at 15:00

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We will be happy to discuss with you
everything related to publicity.

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Thank you.

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[Applause]

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[Talk master] Thank you very much.

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Are there questions from the audience at
this point?

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That doesn't seem to be the case.

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[Q] Less a question and more a comment,
really.

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Just of highlighting some of
the feedback

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we got around the release.

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Both the release team and basically
everyone around was

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really really impressed with the live
denting and the live tweeting

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of the release.

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It's something that makes it really
visible for Debian and

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when we release things and we're able to
produce that publicity

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then it makes Debian a really big thing

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so just a huge thanks, really for helping
with that.

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I definitely encourage everyone to get
involved with the Publicity team.

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It's also a really easy way for people to
get involved,

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so if you know anyone who says

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"Oh, I'd like help Debian but I'm not very
good at packaging things"

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A bit like me as I haven't done anyone in
about 5 years or something.

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Getting involved in the Publicity team and
helping out is something that

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I definitely really encourage.

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It's a really good team, it really needs
help and we can do so much more with it.

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[Q] At some point there was a project to
collect a box which could be used

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at the exhibits, when Debian goes out and
exhibit.

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What is the status now of that?

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Did it progress any or do we have a box?
Like in European states where we could

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easily distribute to a local party to go,
to bring at the conference

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and what it would constitute, I wonder.

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Do we have resources for, well…

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Many people disagree that "Oh, we
shouldn't have stickers"

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or something like that.

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I think it's already a visibility, right?

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If we have really nice giveaways like all
those stickers we have on our laptops.

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Of course we could buy them, right?

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But when we go to the conference and
the cost of those

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if we print them in bulk, it's
ridiculously small.

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I think it would be beneficial if we have
a box, which we could bring

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to a conference and has really nice
banners, some nice giveaways.

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Maybe not just to throw them around, but
even just for good visitors,

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to give a sticker, I think it's nice.

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And that's what we do for NeuroDebian
as well.

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For those close to us, we give those nice
stickers for the laptop,

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they are happy, we are happy.

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We have nice exhibit table usually
I think.

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So, what is the status there and what
should we do about it?

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[A] I think it was handled by the Event
team, but this Event team

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doesn't exist anymore, so…

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[Maulkin] I think that's the sound 
of someone volunteering.

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[laughter]

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So, more seriously, I think it was Martin
Zobel wanted a banner and said

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"Oh, we should have a banner.
Can we spend the money?"

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and I said "Yes, carry on."

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He said "But I haven't told you how much
it cost yet."

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"Carry on, it's not gonna be like ₤5000,
so just go, make a banner."

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But he couldn't get anyone to make the
artwork for him or do anything like that

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so he sent out some requests and no one
really was able to do that.

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So, if you want to put a box together and
you think we should make stickers,

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do that, that sounds good.

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[Mr Let's do a box] Banner, we usually use
Ben Armstrong's banner.

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And as for volunteering I am
exhibiting

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at least twice a year.

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So I'm there already.

00:22:16.381 --> 00:22:19.320
But box, we have already some box with
some hardware

00:22:19.861 --> 00:22:24.320
and if we could reuse it, I wonder,
that would be more efficient.

00:22:26.502 --> 00:22:30.122
Do we have any interesting hardware we
should go present as well

00:22:30.281 --> 00:22:32.080
that would be nice in that box.

00:22:34.461 --> 00:22:37.181
Ok, volunteering. Got it.

00:22:37.560 --> 00:22:39.021
[laughter]

00:22:39.181 --> 00:22:42.100
[] If you need help with artwork,
just call Valessio.

00:22:53.381 --> 00:22:56.342
[Talk master] Ok. Thank you very much.

00:22:56.520 --> 00:22:58.681
Let's give the presenter another round
of applause.

00:22:59.081 --> 00:23:04.361
[Applause]