Marketing your event

Good marketing is crucial to getting people to actually attend. Marketing takes on many forms:

Your web site

Your conference web site is quite possibly to most important marketing tool you will have. Your site is the first place people will go to seek out information about your event, and they will expect to find what they are looking for there, so you better have it there for them!

Some existing Python conference web sites:

Email listserves

Announcements to email listserves is a great way to reach potential conference speakers and attendees. That said, if you join a list with the purpose of posting an announcement about your event, it is considered polite to first ask (the list admin if possible) if it’s okay to post your announcement.

Some Python conference listserves

Other types of listserves you can advertise/announce on

  • Linux user groups
  • Geographic information systems (GIS) user groups

Social media outlets

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • LinkedIn

Hardcopy materials

  • Business cards: You can get these really cheap through sites such as VistaPrint.com, or you can get them made locally. Local-made ones will probably be of better quality on nicer cardstock, but they will also cost more to produce.

Word of mouth

  • User group meetings: Not just necessarily Python user group meetings; you can attend other meetings as well
  • Other conferences: Do you go to other types of conferences? Talk to people there, pass out your conference business cards!