Advertising for GP

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MSandro
Posts: 162
Joined: Jul 26th, '17, 21:12

Advertising for GP

Post by MSandro » Apr 5th, '18, 08:34

--- This is not ment as suggestion/request but I am not sure where I should place this post ---
I think GP needs a bit more attention. It is very quiet in the forum and I suppose GP is not downturned too often.
That's why I think about how and where to advertise people to GP. I think on the scratch platform you could arouse interest in many people for GP.
I've already started creating an interactive presentation for GP on Scratch. I also want to write a comprehensive forum article there.

I am interested in what you think about this idea? I would also be happy about suggestions.
~MSandro

SimpleSi
Posts: 330
Joined: Jul 2nd, '17, 13:47

Re: Advertising for GP

Post by SimpleSi » Apr 5th, '18, 17:58

I've thought about this but I'm not sure GP is quite ready for an influx of young scratchers quite yet

MSandro
Posts: 162
Joined: Jul 26th, '17, 21:12

Re: Advertising for GP

Post by MSandro » Apr 5th, '18, 21:00

Good argument, but on the other hand, most are not so extremely young. Of course, GP is still in beta, but it has a lot of potential. Such a project should not fail due to the insufficient user base. So I want to support it, but of course maybe we should wait a few more months to advertise, but best of all John should decide that, I think.
I would like to help, yet I try to avoid being too hasty...

JohnM
Posts: 379
Joined: Sep 11th, '15, 14:42

Re: Advertising for GP

Post by JohnM » Apr 6th, '18, 21:04

I agree that it would be great get the word out about GP. I also think that there might be a lot of older Scratchers who would love GP. For someone just learning programming, Scratch is better, but GP allows people to go deeper and do things you can't do in Scratch.

So, how do we get the word out?

In the short term, I've submitted an article about GP to "Hello World" magazine, a free publication of the Raspberry Pi Foundation aimed at computer science educators. That will come out in May, I believe. As SimpleSI knows, we have a Twitter feed that is (very) gradually developing a following. Jen Lavalle and I are planning to offer a GP workshop the day before the Scratch@MIT conference and I will do a 5 minute "ignite" talk/demo during the conference.

Hopefully, those things will help.

Keep in mind that these forums represent only a fraction of the GP users.

Hundreds of people continue to explore GP's three Hour of Code activities every week, even though CS Education week was back in December. And GP has been downloaded over a thousand times in the past six months. Unfortunately, it's difficult to tell how much people actually use GP after they've downloaded or what sorts of things they are doing.

In the longer term, it would be great to create a GP website that allows people to share GP projects. I believe that would get more people interested in GP and, at the same time, we'd all have a better sense of what people were doing with it.

As some of you know, the GP project lost its funding last August. That has slowed progress considerably. I'm actively looking for funding for both GP and the related MicroBlocks project (MicroBlocks is a programming environment for the BBC micro:bit based on GP). I'll be giving a "track keynote" talk at an internal InfoSys Foundation conference in May that may help me connect to potential funders and/or collaborators. We'll see.

Meanwhile, it's great to know (from these forums) that there *are* folks using GP. Thanks!

MSandro
Posts: 162
Joined: Jul 26th, '17, 21:12

Re: Advertising for GP

Post by MSandro » Apr 7th, '18, 14:08

Nice to know and good luck for your conferences! I hope you are successful in finding new sponsors and co-workers for these projects.

I have a few years experience in web design and would like to offer my help for a new GP website. I already have a lot of experience with HTML (5), PHP, JavaScript, SQL. I'm not a fan of CMS systems like Joomla or WordPress and prefer the hardcoding of websites from the ground up. I attach great importance to design and user-friendliness (including accessibility). Bootstrap has long been an optimal and effective solution for me.

I did not know anything about a Twitter feed for GP so far, where can I find it?
Never heard of MicroBlocks / micro:bit, but it sounds interesting.

Does it make sense to continue my work on my interactive GP presentation on Scratch? Also, I am thinking of publishing a post in the Scratch Forum under "Advanced Topics". In this post I would like to introduce GP and draw attention to it. Does that make sense or should I refrain from doing that?

Nevertheless, I try to avoid acting hastily and possibly unintentionally messing up your plans. Therefore, I think it would be better to discuss these topics with you beforehand. I want to help and I do not want to hurt the project in any way.

JohnM
Posts: 379
Joined: Sep 11th, '15, 14:42

Re: Advertising for GP

Post by JohnM » Apr 10th, '18, 20:12

The GP Twitter feed is: https://twitter.com/gpblocks

Thanks for the offer to help with the website. I will keep you in mind.

I already have a particular website framework in mind, It was created by Bernat Romagosa to share Snap! and Snap4Arduino projects. It's built on a variation of Nginx with Lua built in. Bernat and I share your dislike of CMS systems so Bernat has created an extremely simple templating system. (By simple, I mean less than 100 lines of code!)

Bernat is still in the process of rolling out the new framework for the Snap! community, so I plan to wait until he's worked the kinks out of it before considering switching the GP site over to it.

That said, we might start using his template system sooner, perhaps this fall. In that case, I would welcome your help in converting the current GP website CSS and HTML templates over to Bernat's system, while also designing some new page layouts.

JohnM
Posts: 379
Joined: Sep 11th, '15, 14:42

Re: Advertising for GP

Post by JohnM » Apr 10th, '18, 20:16

MSandro wrote:
Apr 7th, '18, 14:08
Does it make sense to continue my work on my interactive GP presentation on Scratch? Also, I am thinking of publishing a post in the Scratch Forum under "Advanced Topics". In this post I would like to introduce GP and draw attention to it. Does that make sense or should I refrain from doing that?

Nevertheless, I try to avoid acting hastily and possibly unintentionally messing up your plans. Therefore, I think it would be better to discuss these topics with you beforehand. I want to help and I do not want to hurt the project in any way.
Yes, please do! I agree that there are probably many advanced Scratchers who would like GP, and a post in "Advanced Topics" would reach many of them.

Thanks for asking. I appreciate your enthusiasm for GP and willingness to help.

MSandro
Posts: 162
Joined: Jul 26th, '17, 21:12

Re: Advertising for GP

Post by MSandro » Apr 10th, '18, 20:58

Good to know and I am glad that you are of the same opinion.

Edit: I have overlooked this post from you :D
JohnM wrote:
Apr 10th, '18, 20:12
The GP Twitter feed is: https://twitter.com/gpblocks

Thanks for the offer to help with the website. I will keep you in mind.

I already have a particular website framework in mind, It was created by Bernat Romagosa to share Snap! and Snap4Arduino projects. It's built on a variation of Nginx with Lua built in. Bernat and I share your dislike of CMS systems so Bernat has created an extremely simple templating system. (By simple, I mean less than 100 lines of code!)

Bernat is still in the process of rolling out the new framework for the Snap! community, so I plan to wait until he's worked the kinks out of it before considering switching the GP site over to it.

That said, we might start using his template system sooner, perhaps this fall. In that case, I would welcome your help in converting the current GP website CSS and HTML templates over to Bernat's system, while also designing some new page layouts.
It seems to be very interessting and usefull but I've never heard of it. Nevertheless, I like to help where I can!

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