one of the things we’ve been really good at as a community at london live coding events is asking newcomers how and where they heard about the event - because it gives us some feedback on which of our efforts are finding which people
in the past we’ve seen people come from all sorts of places: our listing on the live coding promotion website, the “algorave london” instagram account, the mailing list, word of mouth, and a big one is via other London events like Peckham Digital or hearing about us from people at places like Creative Code Craft Space
and when i say “we” its not because i’m in charge of any of this stuff! i say it as a community member!
in more recent events, I’ve noticed that more and more people are finding us through luma (the website where we put our event page up). as our events go bigger, luma is recommending us to more and more people there through recommendation emails and that sort of thing.
that’s a good thing but i think it also comes with some risks
if we rely on luma to do our promotion, we’ll become reliant on them and we’ll be screwed over when they inevitably enshittify.
also, if the majority of our newcomers come from luma then we’ll slide towards monoculture. i think it’s important to reach people through a variety of sources
as a solution, i don’t think we need to reduce our activity on luma (yet) - i think we can increase our activity in other places. as much as i hate it, instagram does seem to be the place where there’s a very different kind of crowd, for example.
but also, like i said, i’m not in charge of any of this, i’m [just] a keen participant, and there are many others like me in the london scene trying to make it even better - i’m [just] the one that decides to post about it on the internet so don’t @ me
anyway, i have the instagram password now along with a few other people and will be posting some things from it but i don’t really know what i’m doing so if you, londoner, have ideas let me know!
and if you, londoner, can think of more things to do please feel free to go for it, u got this, you’re allowed to do it, no one is in charge
various people (not from london) have told me disparagingly in the past that we shouldn’t be so obsessed with “growth” and stuff but they’re really missing the point: we will grow whether we want to or not (it’s london!). if we do nothing about it, we’ll grow naturally in a monoculture and un-diverse way. by putting in effort we can take ownership of our promotion to grow in a better way
one thing seems clear from recent events: it’s seems like it’s worth staying loose about what’s considered “live coding?” or not at our events because that opens up doors to neighbouring communities in London, like it did on Wednesday
anyway, don’t @ me, this is all a summary of conversations at and around London events recently, I’m [just] the loud one posting about it! don’t assume that means I’m the one actually doing these things! go read tyranny of structurelessness or something!
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