Confessions of a Reluctant Tweeter: Social Media for Open Source Projects

Do you cringe when you see #hashtags? Do you roll your eyes at "social media gurus"? Social media should save time (not suck it), but you don't have to be a community manager or have a communications background to leverage the power of 140 characters. With a few quick and easy tips, your open source project can use social media to communicate with contributors, grow its community, and share news and announcements.

Already love IRC and email lists? Great! This talk will explain how using social media -- such as Twitter, G+, and Facebook -- can complement those good ole reliable communication methods. You also will learn how to determine which social media accounts your project needs, what content to post (and when to post it), who to follow, and how to determine whether your approach is working. Find out how to avoid being the center of an ugly Twitter storm (or pull yourself out when it's too late), and how to keep from being super boring or becoming a spamtastic yawn fest.

Using well-known open source projects as examples, this talk will show how one account doubled its followers in three months, and a new open source project had 435 followers the week it launched. This talk provides a crash course in social media to help your project effectively manage its messages and connect with its community. (* Drinking the social media Kool-aid not required.)