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

By VisCom or 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