On 20/04/15 15:44, Pierre Smits wrote:
Up to now, we have relied on a few contributors to communicate the messages regarding ApacheCon and on the trickle-down approach via the private ML of our projects. Shouldn't we be reaching out directly (and systematically) to all our contributors by mailing directly to the user and dev MLs of our project?
Sending a general "hey, come to ApacheCon" message to a user list is at best not very effective, and at worst upsets communities who feel spammed with irrelevant content.
Having a trusted community member post "hey, come to ApacheCon, Jane is talking on Monday about what's new in v2.1, Wednesday Jim talks on scaling out, and a bunch of the project members are meeting for dinner and discussions on Tuesday night! Other great stuff too, see here" is relevant and drives registrations. (It can also help build that community!)
Getting projects to be engaged enough in ApacheCon that they have both the content and enthusiasm to customise and forward messages about ApacheCon is a challenge, out side the "usual suspects".
Personally, I've tried a few different options when I was conference chair, with varying effectiveness. You can read about those in the list archives and the old board reports (search for ConCom) if you're interested. I've also given Jan some ideas and brain-dumps over drinks in Budapest and Austin.
If you have a new idea, or an updated idea, please do share it! Poor Jan may be a bit overwhelmed, but I suspect he'll appreciate the effort :) Looking through the archives a bit (where practical) can help though, receiving well-meaning suggestions for things we've seen fail can frustrate an over-worked volunteer.
Ideas with backing data or experience from elsewhere are great though, things like "FooCon tried this and it worked well" and "BarCon failed on that" may be the closest thing to reproducible testing that conference organising can use ;-)
Nick
