There's a variety of things you can do to help evangelise Padre.
With your help, together we can built a hype machine of epic proportions!
Blog About Padre
Humans pay more attention to things they hear other people talking about a lot. You can help provide the continuous dripping of awareness and name recognition by talking about your experiences with Padre, both the good things and (well deserved) criticism about things you need that Padre does not do yet. For bonus points, spend a little time and make sure your blog is being seen by the masses. Join the Iron Man blogging competition, and make sure that your blog is registered with blogging engines such as Google Blog Search and the other Blog Search website. If you write about Padre tell us so we can include your blog in Padre Blogs Even if you write only once or for other reasons you don't wish to be added the the syndication we would like to add a link to your blog on our About page. So make sure we know about your blog entry. If you Twitter, fire off a tweet when Padre gets a new feature that you think is awesome.Screenshots
Screenshots add a sense of tangibility to an application and screenshots that effectively show off an application make a great resource for people giving talks. Especially useful are screenshots that demonstrate new features, localisation, or show off your plugin at it's best! Even though it's size is just a little too big, here's one example of a great screenshot.
Screencasts
Equally useful, if you are a video type of person, are screencasts (both on the Padre website and/or on !YouTube) that demonstrate Padre. If you have the time, of particular interest are any "Getting Started" type videos that we could embed on the Padre download page so people can see how to use Padre while they are waiting for it to download or install.Speak at User Groups and Conferences
If you are using Padre regularly, show it off at local user groups and any conferences you are going to. For one thing, speakers usually get in free! Once you've done your talk, be ready to help interested audience members install Padre on their machines, and for bonus points get them on the mailing list or lurking in the IRC channel (so we can help them with any problems and indoctrinate them futher) :) If you do a talk at a conference, help out the other Padre speakers by contributing all your slides (in their original format) and any source materials you used to build the slides. If your talk is recorded (even if those videos never get posted anywhere) make sure to follow up, get hold of the video in a high quality format, and post it on !YouTube/etc and in the Screencasts/Videos part of our website.The Padre Website
A trac site simply isn't good enough when it comes to making an application look like a "Real Product". A beautiful, informative, and easy to use website provides a huge confidence boost to anyone arriving at the site interested in using Padre and acts as a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth Shibboleth]. A visual and sexy website helps users, company managers, the media, and non-Perl people in general to draw a conclusion that Padre is something worth paying attention to even if they know nothing about it. And Padre (and Perl in general) will benefit from it.Spread the Word
Be ready to talk about Padre. If you go to your local Perl Mongers meetings, take your laptop with you and have Padre installed and up to date (and working!). Secret insider knowledge is attractive to humans, so if you have an updated SVN checkout and you can demo shiny brand new features, or the latest experimental plugins, even better. As with the Talks section, be ready to help people install Padre if they are interested, and point them in the direction of the mailing list or the IRC channel.Social Proof
"Social Proof" is the name for the effect where humans intuitively like something more if other people like it. So here are some simple steps you can take to generate social proof for Padre.- If you use Padre, write a CPAN Ratings review for it! If you can't because you don't have a CPAN log or a BitCard account, register for one.
- If you are using any Padre plugins on a regular basis, write reviews for those as well.
- Padre is listed on FreshMeat. If you have an account there, subscribe for updates and leave comments and rating.
- Add yourself to the Ohloh "I Use This!" counter for Padre. If you have an account, write or copy your review and rating to here as well.
- Add yourself to Padre on OpenHatch
- If you use an operating system like Debian with a popularity contest or other use tracking built in, and you are using the OS packages for Padre, make sure you have the popularity contest installed and running.
- If you are writing a Plugin and can tolerate SVN, keep the plugin inside the Padre repository so that the development activity, lines of code, and contributor count is attributed to Padre as a whole in tracking sites like Ohloh. Using our repository also helps other Padre developers and translators to help you out and improve your plugin for you.
- Padre group on LinkedIN
- Padre fan page on Facebook
- Padre entry on Prolinux.de, a German Linux/Free Software website: