New project launch or release milestones

Owned by Jessica Rampen
Last updated: Sept 18, 2019
2 min read

The types of announcements that require a coordinated announcement plan include:

  • New projects
  • 1.0 releases (and any later full version release)
  • Initial release of an LTS version
  • Breakthrough new features (or ones that address a competitive gap)
  • Project graduations to active status

Please get in touch with pr@hyperledger.org at least one month out from the expected launch of a new project or version release, milestone etc. We realize timing is tricky and things can slip, but the more advance notice you can give PR, the better and more successful launch.

Key considerations:

  • With open development and community leadership for all projects, it’s vital to balance visibility and transparency with news value. To date, the media have not been overly aggressive about trying to break news based on developer community communications. However, the ability to “embargo” news that’s a matter of record is questionable. 
  • Once a project officially reaches a milestone, the faster we can make the news official, the stronger the potential news value and impact.
  • There are steps we can take to get ahead of the game for major news, but we also need to work on communicating with the project teams and the community at large about when, where and how to share updates or confirm plans so that we control the story line and timing.

If this is a major release, there is typically a larger marketing push including a press release and/or blog, coordinated press outreach and media interviews. An involved maintainer of the project will be asked to draft a blog on the release. If a press release is warranted, the PR team will take the first stab at a draft and allow maintainers and project leads to review for their input and/or technical accuracy. 

  1. Example project launch blog - please see blog guidelines here.
  2. Example project milestone press release.

Marketing will create a tile for the Hyperledger homepage that announces the new project with a link to the blog or press release. Example below:

The project will also be added to the Hyperledger greenhouse graphic and the drop down project menu on the Hyperledger homepage. A project page is created in addition where information about the new project can live. This is an example of the Hyperledger Burrow project page. Marketing will ask for a basic description of the project and links to other resources that can help someone get started with it including: code repository, documentation, and RocketChat. We realize it takes time to move repos over to the appropriate destinations to be a part of Hyperledger, so we can create the page the day of the launch and then later link to the code, once it is moved.