Initial Press Release - Rough Draft

I never post rough drafts. So consider yourselves all supremely beneficial to see how crappy my writing is when I don't so much as even edit for spell checks

I'm posting this for Raymond and Ryan to peruse and of course give me a few things. What I need is:

Quotes. You guys pick whatever ones you want to speak about, and I'll slap them in.

I also would like it very much if you two could collaborate amongst yourselves and determine what the Project: Name is going to be. In my divine sense of beauty and in my position as supreme commander in charge of the awards process for the continuing commitment to excellence I reccomend calling it....Project: Shoehorn.

Yes I'm serious

Without further adieu, here is my very first press release about the open source community. Being the first introduction of a new organization, it is a bit longer than will become standard:

Project and Development Team Announced!

11 APRIL 2005 - Vertexworks.com Community - (YetToBeNamedProject) is pleased to announce that an initial project team has formed. The team is comprised of seven individuals throughout the world.

The chosen selected from a large list of applicants include: Software Developers Susan Otwell (sotwell) of Israel and Jason Coward (opengeek) of San Angelo, TX., Technical Writer Dave Denis (davedenis) of Boston, MA., Project Manager and Code Optimizer Travis Sitzlar (infoclipper) of Chatanooga, TN., and Marketing and Public Relations Aid John Vilsack (SpeedStreet) of Saint Paul, MN.

The idea to develop (yetotbenamedproject) officially began in March of 2005, however it had always seemed like a logical choice. (yettobenamedproject) started out as MODx, a collaborative effort between (yettobenamedproject) founders Raymond Irving (xwisdom) of Jamaica and Ryan Thrash (rthrash) of Dallas, Texas. The founders both bring a wide variety of specialties to the table, as well as a strong commitment to a team atmosphere, positive community involvement, and the open source software movement.

MODx was a large-scale modification to the open-source project Etomite, created by Alex Butters. The modification added critical essentials to a maturing product that users found the need to address.

Due to a huge groundswell of support from the user community, the desire to expand upon MODx became almost as much of an anticipated topic as the upcoming release of the next version of Etomite. It seemed as if the MODx tool was adding functionality to the product that would have placed Etomite in the mainstream race of Content Management Systems (or CMS for short).

In early March, Etomite's software development team announced that the future of Etomite was in the commercial sector. Due to issues with the GPL License that Etomite was built upon, the name Etomite and the existing software structure as its community had known it would cease to exist.

Luckily, the GPL License allows other open source projects to establish concurrent software development known in the community as "forks." With a community up in arms after the sudden temporary shutdown of the Etomite site, Thrash and Irving moved quickly to form a small contingent of users dedicated to the continuation of open source development of an easy to use content and code manager for web sites.

"INSERT FOUNDER QUOTE HERE", [FOUNDERNAME] had to say about his decision to mature the MODx modification into it's own software package. "MORE FROM THE QUOTE HERE."

Today, the development team of (yettobenamedproject) is currently working on its initial release, which should include (NAME A FEW VERY OBVIOUS ADDITIONS TO THE CODE, PLUS MAYBE EVEN A BONE ABOUT THE FUTURE).

"INSERT OTHER FOUNDER QUOTE ABOUT THE FUTURE RELEASE", [FOUNDERNAME] said about the future of (yettobenamedproduct). "INSERT SECOND PART ABOUT HOW GREAT THE FUTURE LOOKS."

--

:lol: Can I have you just make me up some boilerplate things like this? You know, for apologies, announcements, invitations and the like?

(And, yes-- I'm semi-serious ... would make asking that attractive girl down at the coffeshop so much easier ... especially after I "INSERT SECOND PART ABOUT HOW GREAT THE FUTURE LOOKS." ops: )

All that to say: very nice draft, I look forward to seeing the final version!

And, with that, I now leave this thread up to the Powers That Be.

But, seriously, good job!

thanks

Looks awesome. I'll have some extra-schwanky quotes for you in the very near future.

Good going on the draft. Sounds great to to me

Best regards,

Thanks for all the positive feedback! I'll run it by my built-in home editor and let her take a crack at editing it

"INSERT FOUNDER QUOTE HERE", [FOUNDERNAME] had to say about his decision to mature the MODx modification into it's own software package. "MORE FROM THE QUOTE HERE."

"its" possessive does not take an apostrophe; only "it's" as a contraction of "it is" does so. (I'm sure you already know that, but it's easy for that one to slip by).

I never went to college, but my mother got her GED and a Bachelor's degree in English when I was in high school. Needless to say, I aced English all through high school, and made my kid's lives miserable (Yeah, Mom, I brung my books home...aaargh!).

haha.....Well Susan, please feel free to always make suggestions to any of the copy I write!

Unlike many other situations, I've always felt that the more grammatical watchdogs in the kitchen, the better the soup!

In that case, the phrase "...mature the MODx modification..." makes my teeth itch for some reason. Perhaps "...shift MODx into its own software package..."? "MODx modification" seems a bit redundant, and the whole phrase is almost painfully alliterative.

Once upon a time I went to my kid's middle school for parent-teacher conferences. While waiting in the office, the Principal of the school passed by. After a courteous greeting, I asked him if he had proofread the invitation letter before having it printed out and mailed to the parents. He informed me that HE wrote the letter himself! I see. I politely, quietly, questioned his use of the word "articulate" in reference to the impending graduation from middle school to high school. He actually -smirked- and, in a very superior tone, loudly asked me if I knew the meaning of the word "articulate". I likewise raised my voice and replied that I did, both meanings in fact, and added that I also understood the meaning of the word "matriculate". The look on his face! He turned and literally stomped back into his office and slammed the door. I never got to mention that "conference" is not a verb (as in "conferencing"), the verb is "confer" (as in "conferring"). And this was a middle school principal, responsible for the education of my children.:roll:

I should have the new edited version up sometime tommorrow.