Over the past couple of years, we’ve learnt some of what works — and what doesn’t — when announcing our releases. I thought I’d share some of that here.

Style and content

Keep it:

• Relevant: announce only what is of interest to the majority of your readers and what they can use “out of the box”. Direct your most ardent readers to the relevant milestone page in your bug tracker’ for the full details. Consider direct communication with those groups who are affected by a specific change. Ignore things that help you, the developer, rather than the reader.
• Personal: “The user” is not an abstract: they’re the person reading your text. Speak directly to them and show them how each change affects them. Use examples.
• Easily understood: don’t assume too much of your reader. Give them enough background to understand the problem you’re describing and your solution.
• Well ordered: start with the exciting, most relevant, stuff. Assume your reader has a limited attention span because, y’know, they do.
• Enticing: your readers are lazy and promiscuous. Suck them in by trailing the highlights in your headline.
  • Bad: ACME releases a RoadRunnerStop v1.2
  • Better: RoadRunnerStop 1.2: now easier to catch your lunch
  • Better: Catch more road runners with ACME RoadRunnerStop 1.2
• Benefit-led: tell your reader how you’ve fixed their life.
  • Good: Save time uploading branches to Launchpad
  • Not so good: Launchpad now supports Bazaar stacked branches
  • Bad: Launchpad will no longer OOPS when you attempt to alter a conjoined slave bug-task
• Plain-speaking: your readers aren’t stupid but you should err towards commonly used words and shorter sentences with fewer clauses.

Format

Launchpad release announcements have four parts, in order of importance:

• headline/subject line
• introduction
• detail of each change
• supplemental information: where to find more detail, other announcements, etc.

Examples

Take a look at the Launchpad releases page for some examples of our past release announcements.

BBC WM seems intent on reinforcing the incorrect stereotypes of the West Midlands. Whether it’s the endless football phone-in shows or it’s guys like Les Ross - who in the example above hasn’t even done his basic research - WM appears to be a parody of local radio and, in my view, does little to represent or talk to the West Midlands beyond a narrow band of football-loving, socially conservative, pensioners.

Listening to Media Guardian’s recording of Ross’s “interview” with Singh Kohli it’s hard not to be impressed by just how determined WM’s management must be to alienate all but a very special group of listeners. The way in which Ross jerks from misunderstanding to unintended insult to poorly researched blunder is just awe-inspiring.

As it stands, BBC WM is more often an insult to the West Midlands than it is the radio service the region deserves. If it is ever to be something the people of the West Midlands can actually take pride in, it’d better cast its net far wider, rather than handing control of the airwaves to the sort of people who show Alan Partridge’s on-air persona in a favourable light.

Michael Reynolds sunk four cans of lager while he was driven to Newcastle in a car, before downing nine pints at a pub in the city’s Metro Centre shopping mall.

He then got behind the wheel and somehow made it to his flat in Edinburgh where he began drinking again.

Surely a harsh punishment was handed out for putting the lives of other motorists in such danger, right?

Sheriff Alistair Noble fined Reynolds £315 and banned him from holding or obtaining a licence for three years.

Bally hoo.

I mention this for two reasons:

• his excellent blog has moved to patrickfinch.net
• it’s the ideal opportunity to remember the classic Silicon.com headline “Peter Fuchs off to TheBrain.com“.

Patrick’s Sun blog was home to insightful and incisive comment on the free software world and I expect his new blog will continue in that way. Congrats on the new job Paddy!

Nerves are jangling here at the Institute. We’re just four days away from the very first episode of the Wolverhampton Radiophonic Institute on 101.8 WCR FM!

So, what do we have planned for this first show? Here’s a taster:

• The Cynic’s Guide to 9/11 Conspiracy Theories: a documentary looking at alternative explanations for what happened on September 11th 2001, the conspiracy theorists behind them and the sceptical response. Features former MOD UFO investigator Nick Pope on the sceptics’ side.
• The Generalist Party: interview and debate with two guys from Grimsby who’ve started a new political party.
• Dan Whitehouse live: local singer-songwriter Dan Whitehouse will be in to play live in the studio and talk about his music.
• Illustrator Sarah Ray: interview with the local illustrator.
• Musician Dan Bryk: interview with and music from the Canadian musician who has released his latest EP under a Creative Commons licence.
• Topical political debate: continuing the best of the Wolverhampton Politics Show, we’ll be discussing the political stories and themes of the day.

Plus there’ll be arts news, a run-down of what’s on in Wolverhampton, general chat and more!

Join us between 7pm and 10pm on 13th June. Tune into WCR FM on 101.8 FM if you live in Wolverhampton or go to wcrfm.com and click Listen Live.

Here’s how to get in touch:

• Email: radiophonic@wcrfm.com
• Text message: 60300 - start your message with “WCR radiophonic “
• Phone: 01902 572257 during the show.

The night was organised by Colour Promotions, who are starting to put on events such as this in the city. Wonderful to see!

I’ve only recently come across Dan’s music, thanks to Neil Calloway, my co-host on our new show The Wolverhampton Radiophonic Institute. Dan’s songs come across as snapshots of moments of realisation, told with benefit of hindsight. I was impressed by how his sound filled the venue with just a guitar and a bloke playing the box (okay, there was a proper name for it…)

I’m pleased to say Dan’s on the first episode of The Wolverhampton Radiophonic Institute on 101.8 WCR FM at around 9.30 on the 13th June. He’s also hosting a new night at the Light House called Live at Lock Works on the 19th June.

In it we interviewed Launchpad developers Graham Binns and Jono Lange, who are over at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Prague. There’s also Joey’s number of the week and Elliot talks about the best way to register a project in Launchpad.

Let me know how you think we could improve the podcast.

“Decided to have a night off writing, so hit Wolverhampton ‘city centre’ to see what was shaking.

…

Sadly, absolutely nothing was going on. Part of the problem is that it’s not really a city and it has no discernable centre. The other problem is that Wednesday nights in small West Midlands towns are not generally known for their liveliness. Was back at the hotel (and I use that term loosely) within 20 minutes.”

I’m happy to acknowledge that, if you’re looking for anonymous encounters and a panoply of entertainment choices, Wolverhampton doesn’t match up to the UK’s biggest cities on a Wednesday evening. I also don’t expect gushing praise from a journo spending a night in the city.

What irks me is James Hall’s laziness. The bloke clearly walked in the wrong direction from his hotel, as the only explanation for him believing there’s no “discernable (sic) city centre” is that he failed to find it. It’s a city centre with music venues that are a required stop on most acts’ tours, two theatres, an art gallery that attracts interesting and varied work and many pubs/bars/clubs.

As a city of 250,000 people, we’re not a small West Midlands town. We’re a city with a proud industrial heritage and, hopefully, a bright future. Maybe the explanation for the lack of people on the 14th May (when James visited) was that they were at home with their families, resting before a day of work. Seriously, dude, what did you expect?

Replacing the Wolverhampton Politics Show, the new programme will take in art, debate, politics, philosophy and more. I love radio that takes me on unexpected journeys and I hope, in some small part, The Wolverhampton Radiophonic Institute will achieve that.

Something I’m particularly excited about is that we’re planning to use a mix of pre-recorded mini-documentaries and reports, with live studio discussion. We’re also hoping to showcase the best of the other shows on WCR FM.

Naturally, a podcast of the best bits of the show will be available shortly after broadcast.

I hope to blog more about the new show, as time allows, and in particular about the process of planning and making the show.

Rather wittily, we’ve gone for the name “Launchpod”, which I think is rather excellent and was suggested by Launchpad user gschaefr.

In this first episode, amongst other things we talk to Tony Wright from RescueTime. RescueTime’s a service for tracking how you use your time and their community-developed Linux client is developed using Launchpad!