Jurgen Gaeremyn wrote:

I like open social media. But if that's our only outlet to promote SFD, we're preaching to the choir. If you want to reach people who aren't knee deep into open source software, you need to be where they are.

I agree with this. The target audience of people who could learn about and benefit from converting to FLOSS is more likely to be found on non-Free platforms. I was really shocked by how many tech and programming groups in my area do not use FLOSS and do not know about most of the FLOSS options. Many are currently promoting Microsoft Teams and Zoom to the public and explaining how to use them. They believe they are doing a public service helping those less knowledgeable about tech to use these types of tools. They also use tools like Meetup, Facebook, Slack and Discord to communicate. Lately, I've been feeling like talking to people in these groups is like talking to a wall, but it would be nice to reach some of the less technical people they're reaching and let them know there are other alternatives before they make their choices. Users who aren't set in their ways are more likely to adopt something different.

Secondly, I'm much in favor of the principle of doing: if you think it's important, please do it. If nobody is willing to invest the time into building up the open social media buzz around SFD, If some people are willing to promote SFD on facebook, twitter or even linkedin... great!

I also agree with this. We should hopefully have enough people involved in putting together SFD events that we can do a good job of promoting and publicizing it too. It's pretty much what I do every year. This year, I posted to every FLOSS group on Facebook that I could find and join. I posted to some of the educational groups I'm on. I posted to every FLOSS group I'm on and some of the local tech groups on LinkedIn. There is a SFD group on LinkedIn and I posted a reminder about SFD there. I also posted to Edmodo. I'm also trying to reach the CSTA (contacted three different groups in the CSTA) to try to get them to mention it to their members, but so far, they've just ignored me. Last year, I posted on Meetup on every local group I thought might be interested and on Slack for the local tech groups that ran a Slack channel and I told them at the various tech meetings in person. Had a turn-out of 4 last year, but we still had a great time. We still have some time before SFD, so I'll probably be posting to other groups as well. I'd really like to reach educators this year since they're having a lot of trouble adapting to distance learning and there are some great FLOSS tools that can help with that. I like the concept of https://gettogether.community/ If anyone wants to join and add a post there, I think it will help promote the site. If they have enough activities there, they might actually be able to give Meetup some competition. I talked to one of the local tech groups and their publicizer basically said he only sent members information about meetings from Meetup. So, if sites like https://gettogether.community/ were more popular and people were made aware of them, the general public might start using them more. I typically post a link to the SFD web page and occasionally share the wiki link as well. If people are interested, they can find out what's going on in their area or what's convenient for them to attend.