Press Release Process

Press Release Process - Draft
The goal is to have a simple and understandable process for creating, reviewing and issuing press releases. Feel free to contribute your thoughts and experience.

There are five basic steps:

1) Conception
Something newsworthy happens - a new software release, for example. The owner of said event wishes to publish this development to a wider audience.

2) Creation
The owner of the newsworthy event or their proxy writes the release to the wiki using a standard template (to come), and notifies the Visibility Committee of the url by emailing dev@visibilitycommittee.osgeo.org

3) Review
Legal review - because the foundation is a legal entity, a quick review by our legal representative is required.

If other organizations are mentioned in the release, then they will also need to be included in the review process.

Open question: is the review process driven by VisCom or the owner of the newsworthy event?

4) Approval
Open question: Is final approval done by VisCom or the board?

5) Distribution
The press release gets published to the osgeo-news-publisher alias. This alias will be seeded with journalists and others known to be interested in OSGeo activities, to include:


 * GeoPlace.com online
 * news:comp.infosystems.gis
 * submit.news@consortiuminfo.org (see: http://www.consortiuminfo.org/bulletins/ )
 * http://slashgeo.org/submit.pl
 * http://linuxtoday.com/contribute.php3
 * http://www.newsforge.com/submit.pl
 * http://programming.newsforge.com/submit.pl
 * http://osx.macnn.com/ (email to news tips)
 * http://www.gis-news.de/ (news AT gismngt.de)
 * http://www.giscafe.com/ (link: submit material, needs registration)
 * http://www.freegis.org
 * http://www.directionsmag.com/pressreleases.php (News -> Post Press Release)
 * http://www.gismonitor.com/news/submit_news.php
 * http://www.gisdevelopment.net (click on 'Submit Press Release')
 * http://news.eoportal.org
 * http://www.foss4g.org/FOSS4G/modules.php?name=Submit_News