Re: [lp-ca-on] Microblogs for Software Freedom Day

[Blaise Alleyne]

On 03/08/15 10:47 PM, Sergio Durigan Junior wrote:
> [...] in Brazil, back in 2013, I organized a Software
> Freedom Day in the city I lived without using Facebook, Twitter, or even
> GNU Social.  I just spammed some local universities, open source groups,
> and websites.  IIRC, 75 people subscribed to the event; unfortunately
> only 25 showed up (as it always happens with gratis events, I'm afraid).
> 

Also important for us to do, I think!

At U of T alone, there's the Department of Computer Science, the Faculty of
Information, the Citizen Lab... then you have address@hidden and they're huge 
open
source focus, CS department at Ryerson, etc etc. We should definitely think
about outreach to post-secondary colleges and universities for the start of
September, when people are back in class.

If we have any kind of registration at the event, we could ask people: How did
you hear about this event? Try and get some data on which outreach attempts
actually resulted in people showing up.


> I don't agree with having a Twitter account for the group, but I accept
> this decision if the group wants it (assuming all the counter-measures
> will be implemented by the group, of course).  I think you and Bob are
> in favor of it, so if nobody else opposes we can go ahead and
> keep/create the account.
> 

I'd describe myself more as "open to" it, rather than in favour for it. My
advocacy for some way to use Twitter is a bit of playing devil's advocate myself
to try and hash out these issues with the group.

If there were enough objections, I'd have no problem with staying off Twitter.

Though I do think the way forward might be to take this conversation, and put
some of the restricted usage into practice with SFD as an experiment, get some
experience with how that actually works, and then to revisit this after the
event and decide if our approach makes any sense or what to change. To iterate,
this restricted usage for a first event being the first iteration.

The only restriction I suggested that I'd be willing to lift a bit are
occasional direct posts or engagement. I still think we should avoid any
appearance that we're embracing the service, e.g. uploading media to Twitter or
having a stream of retweets or following a bunch of accounts or something. But I
could see a case for some limited direct engagement, in replying to people, or
maybe the occasional direct post with a Twitter-specific hash tag, or to
participate in an important conversation that's happening on Twitter.

(For example, if someone catches something about the election and e-voting, or
about encrypted email, or some Snowden document drops... in these cases where
there's a chance to raise the issue of software freedom using the Twitter
account by participating in a conversation, that might be a good case for
limited direct posts...)

Then, we re-evaluate after the event.

Make sense?


(I'll admit, it *does* sound very strange to be talking about "Software freedom
day as an opportunity to experiment with Twitter", but... OTOH, SFD needs to be
about reaching out to the places that need to hear the message rather than just
staying in libre safe havens...)