---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: DirkDn <[email protected]> Date: 2010/2/9 Subject: To: Rich Sands <[email protected]> Cc: Gabor Szabo <[email protected]>, TPF Marketing <[email protected]>, [email protected]
Hi Rich, ==> In short. - The postcards: great item to give to people, it provided them with all the known european workshops en yapc for the next 6 months. - The small cards: big hit, see below for details. - Tuits: a bit "quizzing" for most people and an excellent opportunity to get talking to people. - Banners: great item to have. - Other premiums would be nice of course. To be discussed, see below for details. - Beamer projecting eye-catchers was a very good tactical move since we were located at the inside of the corner end of a long corridor and could project on the opposite wall of our stand. Like this the projection was seen both along the long corridor behind us from where people were coming inside as well as in the place we were located. Of course people walking in front of the beamer are always a challenge. - This week I will post the pictures of FOSDEM online and blog about them. - Tape, scissors and other stuff. I'll add a section about perl promo stands to the perl event documentation we put together at "http://github.com/lordarthas/perl-events/tree/master";. This is a kind of massive braindump stating all things required for a perl event. The concerned mailing list is "[email protected]". - Schedule got sorted out just in time, for the next event this might need discussing/agreeing upon before the event. ==> Concerning the banners. - These were of the brand "flex-display". Very handy and reusable stuff. In the future we can reuse the standholders with a different banner. - We had a standing banner (+- 1.8m high and +- 0.5m wide) and a horizontal banner (+- 1m long and +- 0.5m-high). The first one we put up at the stand, the second one got duct-taped behind the O'Reilly book sales stand. - The graphics on them were great. - A second standing banner would have been handy to cover people coming from 2 instead of 1 direction. - A long banner in a flag-like cloth material that can be hung in front of the tables would be a good idea for the next event. --> I was thinking of introducing a european "pool" of event material to be passsed along among workshops and yapc's. This would be consisting of - 2 standing banners, - a long banner to be put in front of the table - and perhaps a 2m high by 3m wide banner showing the CPAN Community and the perlmongers community maps (These kind of maps were shown and talked about at the previous YAPC. Cf. http://cpan-explorer.org/ and http://www.slideshare.net/franckcuny/map-of-the-perl-and-cpan-community by Frank Cuny (paris.pm). These maps are just incredible.) - postcards mentioning all upcoming planned or foreseen european workshops - small "cue cards" covering different themes as mentioned below - wooden tuits - ... Also once the current banners have served at CEBIT, could they be passed on the nearby perl mongers so it could find its way to the next perl workshop? I discussed this with Juerd and we are both convinced that the material would get very easily passed on between the european workshops (either carried along by travelling perlmongers or by delivery services). It would be a cheap and great way to recycle and do maximum marketing with these materials. We will also need to discuss other practical details about this. The graphics you delivered to the printing company for example. ==> The cards were a big hit. What was good about them? As you can see in the attachment, we had a card with on the front Welcome to the </ a pixel-ish "Onion+Perl Tm"-logo > Community. We suck at marketing. and on the back ...but we're proud of </pm.org worldmap logo> Perl Mongers The Perl Community - A world-wide grass-roots community of Perl enthusiasts - Tech meetups and beer - http://pm.org/ --> Such "cue cards" are fantastic helpers to communicate. Similar cards having on the back a concise but adequate referral to a perl related domain would be extremely good to handover to people. It gives them the jumpstart information they need in a very concise and handy format that can easily be put into their wallet or pocket. --> The pm.org community card is a success to repeat. These were extremely handy to explain people of all sorts of countries where to find their nearest perl mongers group. That enforces the feeling of a vibrant accessible perl community. --> A "top n of perl url's" card for anyone interested in perl would be great (pm.org, perl.org, perldoc.perl.org, cpan.org, perlmonks.org, ...) --> A "cpan" card mentioning the number of cpan modules and authors, cpan testers (eg. Did you know that you can have charts mentioning all the platforms and perl versions this module runs?), cpan search (Searching cpan is a bit of big hurdle for most people.) would be great also. --> "Exclusiveness": we handed it personally over like a business card to the person discussing with, it gave the people the impression of receiving a special token of attention. --> The daring slogan: "We suck at marketing " followed by "... but we are proud of our community" really appealed to people a bit like the "William Lawson's - No Rules Great Scotch" marketing. ==> An alternative to this slogan could be something like "Marketing... not our passion. But we are proud of our community." "Marketing... not our passion. But more than 17000 free perl modules on CPAN." "Marketing... not our passion. But <some bold and proud statement>". ==> Another item that many people liked was - Perl can work on nearly any platform with nearly any device or software. - Perl is already 20 year working. - Perl, it doesn't need to be the language you work most with but it surely can be the language you use to get things done on any system. - We Perl Passionados don't mind that you use other languages or have a pure Ruby/whatever background. We are very understanding and tolerant. Just try it out and add it to your knowledge toolkit. It might come in very handy for you. - Linguists and Biologists love perl for it ease of use compared to other languages. - Perl gives you absolute freedom of expression. If you can face this kind of opportunity, not much remains a challenge. - Perl isn't a hype. Perl is all about no nonsense, get the job done, being practical. It is already around a long time and it has a solid community both online as offline ready to help you out. ==> Premiums Well premiums such as coffee mugs, thermo mugs, Tshirts with upside down print life-saving perl information on the front, ... could be very nice and not too expensive to order in relatively small amounts. These could be sold for low prices. Stuffed camels and moose embroidered with the perl onion logo would be marvellous. However for this the cost price needs to be evaluated. Promo tshirts specifically for FOSDEM/CEBIT events as mentioned by Gabor are feasible considering the low amount of required units and its relevant cost price. Promo hoodies or so ... well that may start to be a bit too expensive for what it is worth. Obviously a lot of considering, discussing and making things happen is still required here. Cheers. Dirk.
