Re: [Debconf-team] volunteering for the debconf by non-locals - queries.
Hi shirish
>>>> I am involved with the Open Weekend [2], and could use help in two
>>>> areas:
>>>> 1. Information Art Exhibition - using Debian to make art, in any way
>>>> (posters, graphics, knitting, 3D printing, anything!)
>>>
>>> Do you have somebody who is dedicated to interviewing people, asking
>>> their motivations why they chose to do whatever art installation they
>>> did and from where they got the inspiration. If I am there, I would be
>>> interested to document it either via my blog or document it on a
>>> debconf blog after somebody proof-reads it as I'm not an native
>>> english speaker/writer.
>>
>> That would be great! Would you mind if I contact you with ideas around
>> marketing the concept, soon? Could you help with spreading the word
>> and thinking it through?
>
> No issues at all, you are welcome to connect off-list on this as well. I don't
> think I will be good at 'marketing' as that means being more on social media
> and just bombarding people with info. I'm not good at that.
>
> I know of two social media campaigns, one was by Debian itself when jessie
> was released. I read that it was mentioned something like 4-500 times in the
> 24 hours when jessie was released, probably with some of the new features that
> were released alongwith jessie. As I'm always on a mixed release
> (testing most of the times, with some packages from sid and 2-3 from
> experimental) I didn't take interest on it. Although
> did know that the message reached quite a number of people.
>
> The other I had come to know is about is mozilla India when they did a privacy
> month and had two teams who used to share tips on some aspect of firefox.
>
> For instance, one would be about how to know if you are on secure page
> (the lock icon)
> on the URL bar
>
> The other team would give a bit more info. about how you could
> actually find more about
> the cookie and certificate given by that site and know when it expires.
>
> Having this sort of combination of tweets helped reach a big audience
> but that happened over
> months and years of planning and people in the mozilla-india/pune
> community knew each other
> for a long time ( at least 2-3 years) so there was quite a bit of
> bonding between them.
These are great points, and I agree that marketing such as this needs
a lot of time, a solid supportive infrastructure (a good thing to
market and good material to share), a budget, and I would add a
professional marketing team. TBH the Debian community seems rather
allergic to this sort of marketing so I've really backed off from this
approach in general.
I think for our purposes we are looking to find the few people who
*really* like doing this, and that requires word of mouth. So all I'd
want from you is an awareness that these initiatives are happening,
and a willingness to engage people about it (and ask/tell us about
questions, concerns, ideas - you seem really good at that! :) ) but
we'll chat.
>
> I meant more in sense of being careful about money. For instance, here
> in India,
> if you take out funds in 100 Rupee notes, people around don't raise eye-brows,
> but if you take out Rs. 500/- or Rs. 1000/- note bundles then you can count on
> unwanted attraction.
Our biggest note is the R200 note, and while you might struggle to pay
for parking with it, most other things are fine. Don't show your
entire stash of your month's salary in cash, but I'd think you won't
do that anywhere ;)
>
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