IF Outreach

From IFWiki

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.