One of our major stumbling blocks in the past has been not announcing the party early enough for outside attendees to properly set up their travel. There is usually little value to advertising on campus more than a few weeks out, but outside attendees will need to book hotels, flights, possibly apply for visas, etc.
A public announcement should be made as soon as the following things are known with reasonable certainty:
- Event dates
- Event location (CMU campus is sufficient, specific rooms can be announced later)
- Ticket price (including whether there will be a shirt, final shirt design not neccessary to have)
Once these things are known, set up the Eventbrite event and start taking registrations. At this time also update the website with the three above pieces of information and anything else that is known.
Then PUBLICIZE PUBLICIZE PUBLICIZE:
- Add a news item to the club website
- Create a Facebook event
- Announce on both the Club and Demosplash Twitter accounts. Try to reannounce any new exciting information on these as well (booking a nifty speaker, things related to compo submissions, follow-up announcement a month before the event, etc.)
- Make an announcement thread on Pouet, Scene.org (if extant), and other communities
- Contact other demoparties that we have a relationship with and ask them to tweet about us. Make a slide to give out if we can get into slide decks
- NVScene - ???
- @party - Val Grimm
- Revision - Peter Smets
- Exhort members and alumni to share/retweet/yell loudly at passerby about the event