[Leaplist] Fwd: Re: Can kids volunteer for install fest on Saturday?

[Gavin Baker]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Phil Barnett wrote:
| On Friday 29 February 2008 08:35:28 pm you wrote:
|
|> We know that?
|>
|> I hope you'll take this as constructive criticism rather than
|> nitpicking, but I don't recall having seen a single email to the list
|> about it. Maybe it's on the Web site, or it's regularly-scheduled, but I
|> can't see the harm in posting an announcement to the list before each
|> event. That announcement should contain the basic information about the
|> event (when, where, etc.), which this email didn't.
|>
|> I have met several people over the past few months who mentioned they
|> use Linux. I ask if they've ever been to one of the LUGs in the area,
|> and they all say no. For that to change will take better communication,
|> so more people know that the group exists and what it's doing.
|>
|> If you want help with that or ideas, feel free to email me off-list.
|
| We have a web site that announces the dates of the meetings and
installfests
| at the top of the page and a mailing list that contains only emails
from an
| automated system that can warn you in advance of any meeting or
installfest.
|
| http://www.leap-cf.org
|
| http://leap-cf.org/mailinglist.php3
|
| And, most specifically, http://leap-cf.org/mailinglist.php3?list=announce
|
| I depend on these things to tell me what day of the week it is. I
would forget
| meetings if I were not a member. I suggest that anyone who wants fair
warning
| of the meetings and installfests join this mailing list. It's a gentle
| reminder that doesn't have any other traffic.

If I'm already on this list, is there a reason why I should need to join
a separate list to receive event announcements?

There's no harm in having separate discussion / announcement lists -- it
can actually be good, for people who prefer low traffic. But
announcements should be posted to both; if I'm on the discuss list, I'll
get announcements there without having to join another list.

Also, I find the announce list pretty useless. The subject lines are
utterly non-informative, and the email body similarly contains no real
information. There's no reason all the necessary information of an event
shouldn't be in the email, so it's all in one place. (It's bad to
presume the reader already knows where/when the event is, and it's also
bad to make them check the Web site to find out.) And personally, I
don't want to receive 4 emails reminding me of the same event; one
email, a day or two before the event, is sufficient. I would expect most
people are this way: of all the other mailing lists I read, no other
posts 4 reminders, one day after the other, for the same event.

If there are folks who want to get 4 reminders, keep the announce list
as-is for them, but send 1 informative announcement for each event here.

| Do you think we need more? If so, what would you suggest in addition
to that?

Besides making the announcements informative and posting them here:
* An RSS feed for announcements
* Posting announcements in the topic of the IRC channel

There are also a number of ways to publicize events to the general public:
* Send announcements to local media, e.g.:
http://wiki.floridacreatives.com/index.php/Orlando_media
* Post on online calendars such as Craigslist, Upcoming, Eventful,
icflorida.com, folioflorida.com
* Post on social networking sites such as Facebook (I saw Kevin did this
for the Feb. meeting)
* Create blog badges for people to link to LEAP
* Post announcements on related mailing lists

- --
Gavin Baker
http://www.gavinbaker.com/
gavin at gavinbaker.com

above the harbor
an autumn moon tonight.
just that.
~    L.A. Davidson
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFHyL/RtLXQdLhFpekRAjktAJ9JmnDyZv1HMV5rZ93DMdqPA/40ygCgnZoT
l8NC4h+iKx0x/3WuC7BjLyE=
=gdjn
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----