Hello Apache Pulsar Community, I would like to propose that the PMC create an Outreach Working Group.
Here’s why it is needed: The Apache Pulsar community currently doesn't have community-driven content channels that are unaffiliated with any vendor. We also don't have an active effort to help identify people/organizations who are using Pulsar, nor do we have resources who are helping to tell their stories and educate the broader industry about these users and organizations where Pulsar is being used successfully. In my experience, this is the single most important factor in helping a new infrastructure “cross the chasm” from early adopters who are willing to roll up their sleeves, do their own research and help find bugs, to “early majority” where people feel confident in adopting it because peer groups that they trust have already done that research and hardening. In other words, there are many great things happening around the Apache Pulsar community, but there is no unified effort to push that information out. For example, we could do a LOT more to publicize the Pulsar Summit Europe. Instead of a website going live a month before the event with no awareness, the working group would be responsible for having the webpage go live well in advance, for contacting the relevant press to set up interviews with Pulsar Summit speakers, for helping the PMC define a theme of the event, for setting up social media & targeted ad campaigns, and for engaging with content creators like podcast interviews. Blogs and interviews would be completed in advance and set to roll out on a predetermined cadence. During the event, social media posts will be ready to go and augmented with news made the day of the event. Afterwards, there needs to be follow up blogs, pointing people to the content that they missed and how to get to it. Then this same content can be placed in the newsletter and recycled in other posts later on. This is a lot of work that doesn’t “just happen”; it takes a lot of volunteers to get everything done. And right now it doesn’t look like it is getting done, or at least the community has no insight into the current status of the event. Thus, community members who want to volunteer, don’t know how to start. I hope this helps illustrate how an Outreach Working Group could help organize and promote the community. I look forward to hearing from the community about this proposal. Thank you, Aaron Williams
