I wanted to do a little presentation here at the Snow Sprint about how to get the word out about it. Now my voice is gone unfortunately but nevertheless I thought about at least posting my slides along with some notes.
Of course this not only applies to the Snow Sprint but to any other event you might want to talk about,
Notes
1: Blog about it
This is the most basic way to make it known. I suggest to use blogging platforms such as WordPress or Blogger because they get you started in a few minutes.
Plone is not that suitable yet but can of course be used, too. It might make more time to setup though.
2: Use a Blog Editor
Simply because it makes blogging easier. ScribeFire is a Firefox extension which works cross-platform, Flock is a browser based on Firefox which also has a blogging editor included. Flock esp. makes it easy to embed Flickr photos via the Web Clipboard. There are also shareware tools such as ecto and MarsEdit for Mac or Quamana for Windows/Mac (actually free).
3: Use Technorati tags
Technorati is a blog search engine which is widely used. Thus it makes sense to add tags to your post the way I show you. Blog Editors usually do that for you. Also make sure you claim your blog at technorati because you can add general tags to it and it gets listed. You should also use more general tags than snowsprint etc. because then more people might stumble across your post.
4: Post photos to flickr
According tags the same applies. Also try to find suitable groups (e.g. for portraits, people, mountains, alps, austria etc.) and add your photos to them. Try also to make some friends on flickr by looking through other people photos and leaving comments. You might also want to place those photos on the map.
5: Use Twitter
Twitter is one of the big things these days (still). It is used by a lot of people to stay uptodate and to learn about new things. Thus it makes sense to use twitter. Create an account and start talking about what you do at the sprint, what problems you encountered etc.
6: Link to other people
Blogging, Twittering etc. does not help if nobody knows about your blog or account. Thus you have to change it. This is rather easy with the following methods:
- Link to other people. E.g. follow everybody who follows http://twitter.com/plone, those are interested in Plone. Or follow people from my list. In general look out for interesting people and follow them. They get an email and might check you out and link back. The same goes for blogs so fill your blogroll.
- Get on the planet. You might want to get your blog on the Planet Plone, Planet Zope or Planet Python (or here). Instructions should be given at these sites.
- Comment on other people’s blogs. Again they might check you out and subscribe to you
- Engage in conversations. E.g. on Twitter you can simply reply to somebody using the @username syntax. This shows up in the replies-Tab of the other user.
7: Define your audience
This might be a tricky one as I know from my own experience. Basically there are the 3 groups listed and of course it would be best to address all of them. So maybe try at least sometimes to make a very general post about what you do or at least how much fun it is to be here.
8: Define your content
You might not know what to blog about. But just follow these questions to find some answers. You might also post photos etc.
9: Interviews
My goal for this sprint was to walk around and interview people both via audio and sometimes video about what they are doing. Now that my voice is gone we will see how good this will work out. But maybe later this week.
So these have been my 9 ways to spread the word. I hope you will also do at least one point of these and get the word out about the great community we have (you might also do it like I do and mix this topic with other topics such as how to get the word out ;-) ).
Tags: snowsprint, snowsprint2008, sprint, community, webdev, plone, python, zope, programming, hackathon, austria, alps