Being an organizor emeritus (at least for the upcoming few years), I have
some counter-thoughts (which I can't back up by actions):

Advertising is important, but it's far from being the most important thing
(or even everything).
First we need to understand what are we trying to achieve. After deciding
what we want, we need to decide how to achieve this. I think that having a
good content is far more important than advertising (as otherwise you
publish a junk series). I'm not saying that PR is not important, but we
first need to create a product to "PR".

We should start as soon as we can with all fronts - deciding what we want to
show, while starting the PR ball rolling.

As for freebies - yeah, they help the PR, but are these our targets? people
who come and take the CD and do nothing with it? I personally in favor of a
small gift, but nothing too expensive. maybe hold a raffle/draw for "bigger"
prizes, e.g., shirts from printmall, etc.




On 8/22/06, Alon Altman <alon@8ln....> wrote:
>
>
> A few lessons learnt the hard way from previous W2L series:
>   - Advertising and publicity is everything. W2L must be advertised using
> our
>     media ties (nrg,nana,ynet,haaretz,walla), on forums, and via google
>     adwords. In addition, printed material should be present for our ICON
>     stand, and for the various campuses enough time in advance.
>     ==> Actcom can give us free appearance in their ads. We need to
> contact
>         Amir.
>   - If we are to use volunteer professional graphic artists, we must start
>     talking with them NOW. Coordinated poster design is not required but
> may
>     be useful, coordinated flyer design for the ICON booth is a must.
>   - Each club should maintain their own website for their series. However,
>     there must be a central site linking to the clubs' local sites. Clubs
> who
>     do not wish or cannot build their own sites could be hosted on the
>     centeral site.
>   - Dates for each of the clubs should be available a long time in
> advance.
>     Most important dates are the date for the first lecture and
> installation
>     party date. Also, each club must decide early if it wants to have an
>     installation party.
>   - Lecture slides should be left to the discretion of the lecturer in
> each
>     club. Each lecturer should be free to build his or her own slides
> based
>     on previous years' slides from his own club or other club.
>   - Personal issues:
>     * There should be one person in charge of series from Hamakor, either
> on
>       the board or outside the board, with a pre-approved budget (on the
>       order of 1000-2000 NIS). Larger expenses should be approved by the
>       board. Hamakor's bursar will be in charge of writing checks to cover
>       these expenses.
>     * There should be one person in charge of advertising in the national
>       scale that will contact sponsors and media. We should consider
> hiring a
>       PR firm.
>   - CDs and Gifts - The promise of free CDs can help people come to the
>     lectures. I suggest we order a large amount of free Ubuntu CDs from
>     https://shipit.ubuntu.com/ and perhaps burn a large amount of the new
>     Kazit CDs (~1000) via CDI so we have stuff to give at the lectures.
>   - Some tips for the various clubs:
>     * Know your audience - what are people's expectations from W2L? Do
> they
>       have time to come to all these lectures? What do they expect to
> learn?
>     * Lecture slides and dates must be prepared a long time in advance!
>     * Make sure the presentation laptop works correctly with the
> projector.
>       Especially test video direct rendering, as it might show only on
> your
>        laptop and not on the projector.
>
>    Alon
>
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