Is personality in a press release a good idea? We might just want to keep it factual. Not to diss on Waldo's edits, but "We think OS X users will be blown away by NeoOffice®/J's amazing feature set." sounds a little too much like M$ or Apple hype for my comfort.
It might just be me, but I tend to throw out computers that blow me away. For safety reasons - and I have an MSc in Chemistry so I am no stranger to handling dangerous materials.
I prefer to err on the side of understating, but I am not a marketeer.
Anyone care to react? _________________ "What do you think of Western Civilization?"
"I think it would be a good idea!"
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
I'm with Oscar on this one, "just the facts, ma'am." We have a hard enough time getting Patrick to let us tout the actual features Making up wildly un-Patrick-like (Jobsian) quotes from him isn't going to help.
Plus, we can include user reaction in the *Press Kit*, which is linked from the bottom of the release.
I also am wary of having NeoOffice.org linked anywhere ahead of planamesa.com, for two reasons: 1) it's not multilingual and 2) with Ed and Jake doing so many other things, it tends to be quite behind in its updates (and was touting 1.1 beta for a week or more after 1.1rc).
Besides, if we want to have a URL for "the NeoOffice.org community," isn't trinity really a better one?
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
Last edited by sardisson on Tue Apr 26, 2005 4:09 pm; edited 2 times in total
Fortunately, NeoOffice has some improvements which seems to put it on top in some categories where it was running behind. Though some of the bottom categories make no sense to make (why so detailed?).
Mellel still won, but the apfelwiki test seems less bogged down in minutiae, which is where Mellel excels (it's a really good program with lots of power, and was probably the first non-"Apple system utility" program to support RTL on Mac OS X; I just think most "normal" people are probably better served by AbiWord or Neo/J...)
And we came in second in the apfelwiki tests, too
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
Well, I do think personality is a good thing. This release isn't coming from robots, it's coming from actual people who put blood and sweat in the development, and there's no reason that I can think of not to reflect that in the press release.
If the "blown away" stuff is too much, then kill it. I'm just trying to give it some personality in the sense that there are passionate people behind this project. Plus, putting quotes around the "facts" allows you to take a more informal tone, which makes it a little bit more readable.
Personality, IMO, is what makes companies and OSs and everything more likeable and accessible...
Anyway, I worked on the press release a bit, added stuff, etc. I'll leave it alone now for you all to mess with Go at it.
W
sardisson wrote:
I'm with Oscar on this one, "just the facts, ma'am." We have a hard enough time getting Patrick to let us tout the actual features Making up wildly un-Patrick-like (Jobsian) quotes from him isn't going to help.
Plus, we can include user reaction in the *Press Kit*, which is linked from the bottom of the release.
I also am wary of having NeoOffice.org linked anywhere ahead of planamesa.com, for two reasons: 1) it's not multilingual and 2) with Ed and Jake doing so many other things, it tends to be quite behind in its updates (and was touting 1.1 beta for a week or more after 1.1rc).
Besides, if we want to have a URL for "the NeoOffice.org community," isn't trinity really a better one?
BTW-- I should apologize in advance to Pat & Ed if they don't like the proposed quotes, in which case of course we should change/kill them. I know neither guy likes to toot their own horn, but it's a press release after all, and that's what you're supposed to do In any event, It's just a draft and-- I don't want to suggest putting words in people's mouths they wouldn't ordinarily say. I was actually hoping to include some end user testimonials as well.
Anyway, it's there for discussion and review, obviously, so Pat & Ed, I'd appreciate your thoughts.
I also am wary of having NeoOffice.org linked anywhere ahead of planamesa.com, for two reasons: 1) it's not multilingual and 2) with Ed and Jake doing so many other things, it tends to be quite behind in its updates (and was touting 1.1 beta for a week or more after 1.1rc).
Besides, if we want to have a URL for "the NeoOffice.org community," isn't trinity really a better one?
Smokey
Sure, change it. The idea is just to make sure you have an URL in the top paragraph because a lot of times the ending gets clipped off.
I liked most of the Ed quotes; they sound more-or-less like things Ed has said in articles I've read. I agree we should have some quotes from Patrick, too, since he's done 60-hour weeks for six months now and is, after all, the primary developer. But we need to ask him for some real quotes (And of course get Ed's approval on the "Ed quotes." I got rid of one because it just sounded strange and not meaningful enough to be a quote.)
I commented out the section on Beta-testing (with the very un-Patrick quotes), but the latter pgh about saving $ should probably stay. I'm not sure the press or the world cares about the length of our release cycle.
If Ed releases and Patrick bundles the Spotlight plugin, that's great, but otherwise it draws focus away from the core message (Neo/J) and makes the announcement longer.... So it's commented out atm.
More comments in my note on the page itself.
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
Anyway, I worked on the press release a bit, added stuff, etc. I'll leave it alone now for you all to mess with Go at it.
I like Waldo's work on the press release. Using subheadings gives better overview, and I think that we should keep it. (It is always possible to discuss the number of/content of the subheadings and the paragraphs...)
Putting in quotes is a good thing, it gives the media a chance to break up the text and give the impression that they have done more work (interviewing somebody) And it's also by the book on how to write pressreleases, I believe.
Choosing the words for the quotes is another thing... Those who is quoted must axept it as something they can stand for and would/could have said themselves... they may be confronted with the quotes for years and days to come... BUT on the other hand: Someones modisty should not come in the way for selling and promoting a great product... and it must be a compromise between the (maybe unvillingly ) quoted and the purpose of the quote... And I think this also applies on the text in general.
Putting in quotes is a good thing, it gives the media a chance to break up the text and give the impression that they have done more work (interviewing somebody) And it's also by the book on how to write pressreleases, I believe.
It has been a while since I have written press release. Just scientific articles and consultancy reports, lately.
I am much happier with the current state, and attributing things to Ed that he might actually have said is good. I took out some * and ", for streamlining.
I also wrote a model bio for Patrick, which I hope is good and accurate. If other mentioned at this page could take a look and finish something similar (Ed, Dan (fa), Dan (foxcorner), Jake, Max, Fridrich. I PMed Jake, Ed and Dan (fa) about this already. Feel free to alter as you see fit, of course. _________________ "What do you think of Western Civilization?"
"I think it would be a good idea!"
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
One thing that might be neat, and which could help with the "slide in the default (impress) screenshot is garish" problem, is to take some of our Press Kit (like the features comparison) and put together an Impress presentation.
We could then have a screenshot of that that as well as export it to Flash for the web (and thus illustrate one of the features).
I am proud to say that never in my life have I put together a silly "PowerPoint" presentation (I've done a number of slideshows using real slides of real things, not text outlines!), so I'm not the man for the job, but someone else, especially with a good sense of aesthetics, is welcome. It would be nice to use the same color scheme as the planamesa/neojava website, but just be careful about abuse of the purple
I am proud to say that never in my life have I put together a silly "PowerPoint" presentation (I've done a number of slideshows using real slides of real things, not text outlines!), so I'm not the man for the job, but someone else, especially with a good sense of aesthetics, is welcome. It would be nice to use the same color scheme as the planamesa/neojava website, but just be careful about abuse of the purple
Smokey
Smokey:
Unfortunately, I work for the U.S. Government and 'Death by Powerpoint' is our motto, thus I have become very proficient in its use. I might want to look at Impress to build a Powerpoint like presentation for the Final.
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Tue May 03, 2005 7:57 pm Post subject:
That actually is quite interesting. It seems many large companies have succumbed to the powerpoint mantra. I recall hearing stories of how at some companies powerpoint has actually become a means to "infect" the company by posting presentations on internal servers and waiting for others to extract slides...
FWIW, I've had no problem doing powerpoint exports from impress. Then again, I ignore the fancy things like animations and sounds and embedded movies; I treat my presos mostly like if I had an old 3M projector and a whole bunch of transparancies I Xeroxed by hand. Thus far no one's discerned I'm not a MS Office user
[quote="OPENSTEP"]That actually is quite interesting. It seems many large companies have succumbed to the powerpoint mantra. I recall hearing stories of how at some companies powerpoint has actually become a means to "infect" the company by posting presentations on internal servers and waiting for others to extract slides...[/qoute]
Hmmm, just another way to get to those you 'love'. I try to stay away from the web site PPT files.
[quote="OPENSTEP"]FWIW, I've had no problem doing powerpoint exports from impress. Then again, I ignore the fancy things like animations and sounds and embedded movies; I treat my presos mostly like if I had an old 3M projector and a whole bunch of transparancies I Xeroxed by hand. Thus far no one's discerned I'm not a MS Office user
I try to treat my readers as if they have some sort of smarts. I've been to briefings that were piles of slides, read by a monotone zombie. I was actually warned about one briefing, so I had a dopulo (spelling is not my best point) so my eyelids would not weld shut and I was left alone in the briefing room after the briefing was over. I made a point to talk to the briefer afterwards and advise him that some of us were smarter than his pet dog and that I could read. He took that as a serious insult. Go figure...
Anyway, if I do work on a slide show, it will assume that you have a pretty good IQ and will be informative. And no 'Cow Sounds' included.
If someone comes up with a better sample document to show in the screen snapshot, don't hesitate to post it. I whipped up the current sample document in about 5 minutes and, truthfully, it is a really ugly sample document.
My only wish is that any new sample document show the multi-language support in Neo/J. Many (and maybe most) of the Neo/J users out there use Neo/J for languages other than English and, there are many downloads from Japan, China, and the Middle East.
If a Writer or Calc document looks better, then by all means use that for the sample document.
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Making up wildly un-Patrick-like (Jobsian) quotes from him isn't going to help.
