shadowcat_mdk

This week I will be starting the company promotion that I mentioned in my last blog post (https://blogs.perl.org/users/shadowcat_mdk/2015/03/perl-and-the-company-culture.html). I thought I would take a few moments to explain some more what I am doing and what the process will be.

As I said previously this is not a structured approach, there is no definite action or reward to be achieved and no promises on time. My plan is to keep collecting the information and to promote one company each week until I run out of information and/or companies.

The companies will all receive a little more community exposure, and if we make enough noise a little outside exposure, about who they are and how they connect to the Perl language and maybe the Perl community. I, apparently, have somewhat of a soapbox in the community and access to a number of sites so I am able to get the data to a number of locations. I hope that others in the community will help with this by pushing it through their own channels, or by positive encouragement (likes, +1, favourites, LinkedIn recommends and re-tweets).

Dependent on the level of information that is given to me the company will appear in a number of locations in a number of ways. The more data, the more I can manipulate the information and present it on more channels without too much tautology.

I have a marketing and communication plan that I implement each week for myself. I intend to add the company of the week to a plan of their own that will run alongside my plan. It will always start in the same way which will be a blog post about them on my Perl blog. So you will see one of those today.

I am aware that some will care very little about this, and that it may annoy others if they see promotion of someone they have little relationship with. That's always bound to happen. I am not immune to people's concerns of this being non-relevant chatter in their feeds, or that there will be a certain level of tautology.

However I also feel strongly that we can build a much larger community by including everyone who actually connects to us, and I am happy to include those people who some would consider our detractors. If I am approached by a company that primarily uses another language but contributes in some part to Perl then I am likely to equally promote them. I am not going to grade the value or importance, I think that being a member is an equal position and we should all be treated that way.

I would love to hear people's feedback and to hear from more companies, the first company will be being promoted this week. Stay awake and help me out in sharing the love.

If you have trouble commenting on this post just email me and we can discuss this further - use m.keating@shadowcat.co.uk.