Ideas to promote GSOC/GCI within the community
The followings five Ideas that can promote GSOC/GCI (Drupal) within the community are as follows:
1. Involving the support structures of students/ prospective participants.
This can be summarised as involving school authorities at local level and in some instances as my small Island, Mauritius, involvement at National level and Ministry of Education. Teachers are also vital in promoting the community due to their proximity with students and they can be brought on board with incentives and systems in place for credits.
2.Advertising within the community without saturating the program and the competition.
It is my view that full on advertising brings full on attention, however to keep the integrity, and the hush word of mouth and the sense of elite to its belonging, it is imperative to control exposure while also being reasonably exposed. The influx of entries and the ability of organisers to sift through all these entries will also be taken care of. Advertising should be restricted to school magazines, school boards, stickers and banners and any channel that does not create saturation.
3.Product knowledge.
While it is already known that Google does an excellent job at advertising the program. It is imperative that Drupal provides the community with good and intricate knowledge of the program and competition. That participants know that there is an afterlife in terms of their being recognised on line. That their names and participation will eventually be on Google Code In and Google Summer Of Code. All intricate aspects of the competition and the program must be visible. This will work in tandem with the idea of adding value to the self.
4. Social networking.
With an age where three generations of one family are using computers and smart phones it begs to itself to add that this is a form of advertising that must be exploited. Newsfeed can be used to provide information of GCI/GSOC on the webpage of G mail accounts login.
I really recommend to use G mail account login to provide newsfeed because:
- Many people are not aware of Google blog.
- G mail account can provide a great support of making parents aware of GCI/GSOC competition and thus making their children to be involved in it.
5. Google Fairs.
In developing countries such as Mauritius, it is common to have students sharing computers within the family and in some instances students are borrowing computers to make ends meet. In some instances the time to surf the net and have ample time to digest what is out there can limit the reach Google would like to have. A Google fair of some sort, using Drupalicon can be beneficial because the student can have something physical and tangible in hand, perhaps the distribution of stickers and bookends . This would in my view ensure that the community is reached physically rather than just virtually.
But nevertheless, Google Code In and Google Summer Of Code are moving forward in the community by the use of:
1.Making teachers more involved.
Teachers have been contributing a lot by organizing posters, group management, support and all ancillary needs.
2.Google blog.
Google blog has been a good open source website which enable us to follow all newsfeed.
3.Platform for recognition of participant and previous tasks.
This platform helps participant by providing them a list of Organizations, task , GSOC / GCI Archive including the finalists and winners name.
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