IF Outreach
Continuing from the panel at PAX East 2010, it would seem appropriate to follow-up that discussion with actionable items.
- Mailing List
There is a new mailing list at http://lists.plover.net/listinfo/if-outreach. Please sign up if you want to volunteer your ideas and time.
- General Outreach
I (David Cornelson) think we could identify targets for outreach and tailoring packages for each one. Some of these targets might be:
- Public libraries
- School libraries
- Teachers
- Reading advocacy groups
- Literacy advocacy groups
- Public Library IF Outreach Package
I would like to start the process by volunteering to develop a Public Library IF Outreach Package. The package might contain:
- The IF Promotional CD - This is a great start, but I think it has to be looked at again. I originally developed the format six years ago and it's a Windows only CD. I think we need to develop a CD that can install on Windows or Mac. Linux is a nice to have, but I'm not sure how many public libraries are running Linux. I'll do some research to see what the OS breakup is.
- Binder with:
- Introduction to Interactive Fiction - This would be a letter targeted at librarians that offers details about IF.
- Advertisement for each game on Promotional CD - These would be a formal one page document describing a game, displaying its cover art, and offering helpful information. It's undetermined how we would develop these pages, but I talked to Mike Roberts and he mentioned the XML API and that we could develop CSS or an XLST that could take some of the IFDB data and auto-generate a one page document for a given game. A volunteer to help see if this is feasible would be great (I'm neither a CSS or an XSLT person).
- Newsletter about IF - This would be more detail about the history of IF, links to other material, reviews, and possibly even identifying some of us as stewards of the medium. A list of people and their general locations that are willing to visit a school or library for a demonstration might be helpful.
- School Libraries
This is likely to be closely tied to the public library binder, but we may have different CD's depending on the school.
- Teachers
I think we need to develop formal guidance for teachers. To give them insight into what if is, and then give them details on ways to introduce it into their classrooms.
- Reading and Literacy Advocacy groups
We should put together some type of package to share with these groups. I'm not at all sure what would pique their interest.