Reasons I'm excited about Mageia in the order that I noticed them:
1. The name is awesome.
2. The logo is eye-catching, simple, and beautiful.
3. The focus on a collaborative, friendly, open, warm community makes me happy inside.
A little breakdown of each.
The name Mageia draws nerdy awesome ideas of magic and wizardry (supported by the logo) that are just plain cool while still maintaining enough originality and pizazz to make it in a professional setting (somehow Sorcerer just doesn't seem like an enterprise-capable product's name).
I really liked the logo in monochrome. When the beta release announcement came out on Distrowatch with the two color update, I tingled... It's a beautiful spin on a bubbling cauldron that evokes ideas of again, nerddom, as well as an exciting work in progress (a love potion maybe?).
The entire site, forum, and proposed community structure is built around the idea of being communicative, inclusive, easy to approach and friendly. This is SO important to me. Linux has a lot going for it but there are a lot of communities that have not-so-welcoming members, forum moderators, and less than receptive developers and administrators. Everyone was a newbie once. I'm mostly a Linux Mint user and I love it because the community is so welcoming. When our forum moderator, Husse, was still alive he carried the community on his shoulders, and after he passed on the community rallied together in memory and in support of all of the things he stood for. Still though, Mint is a relatively small project headed by two full time developers. On the other hand I also tried my hardest to get involved in the Fedora community, while it never seemed unwelcoming, I never really found a way to participate.
To this last point I want to praise Mageia even more on the fact that they include a section on how to contribute in the forums. I urge the project to pay special attention to this and find a way to engage every single poster who has the desire to help. Make them feel like they're being helpful and you will soon have a horde of stalwart apprentice and master magicians alike. The best potions are worked together!