I’ve just followed the Google hangout through the YouTube livecast which was announced on Facebook; great idea guys! (I should get paid for mentioning three services in one sentence.)
One of the topics discussed near the end was about reaching out trying to find many new members prior to J day, which I’ve only heard about now unfortunately since I’ve been a bit unactive lately due to real work. I checked some of the replies I missed since I last visited the forum and wanted to reply to an answer left by Sebastian. I feel it’s more constructive to talk about it in a separate topic here.
"I didn’t know there was a Biology StackExchange. Do you have any other suggestions about how to promote EyeWire on that site?"
I’ve already shortly mentioned Stack Exchange in a different thread, but I’ll go into a bit more detail about what Stack Exchange sites are, how to reach out to those sites, and how they could potentially cooperate with EyeWire.
First off: "Stack Exchange (SE) is a fast-growing network of 91 question and answer sites on diverse topics from software programming to cooking to photography and gaming. We build libraries of high-quality questions and answers, focused on the most important topics in each area of expertise. From our core of Q&A, to community blogs and real-time chat, we provide experts with the tools they need to make The Internet a better place."
SE sites can be community created by going through a staging process on Area51. This involves a process of proving the site would have a clear identity and a big enough community to sustain itself. The two most relevant sites for Eyewire that made it through this staging process and are now in beta, awaiting ‘graduation’ are Biology (1205 visits a day) and Cognitive Sciences (349 visits a day). Neuroscience questions are welcome on both, but Biology focuses on the physiology while Cognitive Sciences focuses on the functioning and resulting cognitive aspects.
There are several ways in which to reach out to them:
- Ask relevant questions which you would otherwise ask here on those sites. (E.g. a well received example of mine) You can easily link back to EyeWire. The framework SE is built upon is much more robust than the EyeWire forums. It has great search engine optimization so people googling for relating topics could more easily come into contact with EyeWire.
- Every SE site has a ‘meta’ section. This is where the site itself can be discussed. Start a post there asking whether they see a possibility of any possible cooperation.
- SE sites have the possibility of ‘pinning’ topics they find relevant to the Community Bullitin which is shown on the front page. Discuss on meta whether EyeWire could be announced there.
- From time to time, some SE sites are allowed to organize some promotional events. I don’t know whether beta sites are allowed to do this, but it is definitely worth asking. E.g. Possibly you could discuss an event where EyeWire related questions could lead to a chance of winning something. SE actively invests in this in order to expand their network.
There are just the ideas I can come up with now, but the message is, reach out to those communities!