channels.rst

Communication Channels

Currently the Dask project communicate with the general public through a few different media

Twitter

The @dask_dev Twitter account is available to promote information like the following:

1. New releases or important features that arrive in the Dask project
2. Important or interesting uses of Dask in the broader community
3. Documentation, talks, blogposts, or other knowledge artifacts produced by Dask contributors in the past that remain relevant but may not be broadly known.

However, as with any communication medium we should beware of misusing the twitter account. In particular

1. We tend not to broadcast for-profit promotional or sales material. It is important that Dask's brand remains trusted and neutral to corporate interests.

   That being said, we do not mind retweeting for-profit products if there is not a conflict of interest, and if those products are likely of value to our users. This is often a judgment call. We endeavor to remove conflicts of interest from those making these judgements.

2. We tend not to over-broadcast, out of respect for those that subscribe.

Trusted members of the Dask community are given access to the @dask_dev team account through https://tweetdeck.twitter.com . On this site they can operate either as their personal account or the Dask account either by authoring their own tweets or interacting with existing tweets. We also endeavor to maintain a one-tweet-per-day schedule of existing content. Often sourced from our documentation, examples, stories, blog, or Youtube channel.

Here are some suggestions to guide new tweeters in this process:

1. Aim for no more than one or two tweets per day, out of respect for our subscribers
2. Try to include an image in the tweet to help it stand out
3. Engage with the tweet yourself, perhaps by adding personal context in a reply. People seem to be more willing to engage with a tweet once someone else has broken the ice.
4. Be mindful of the time that the tweet will occur. If you're aiming for a particular region of the world (like the US) then you may want to target times during the day, and in particular during commuting hours.
5. Anecdotally, people seem to engage more in the middle of the work week, and less on Monday (presumably they're busy), Friday afternoon and Saturday (hopefully they have something better to do).
6. Mix up content a bit. We can keep our messaging fresh by interleaving documentation content with blogs and videos.

If you are a member of the Dask community and wish to maintain the Twitter account, please get in contact with a core maintainer for access. If you are just looking to get content retweeted the simplest thing you can do is include @dask_dev in your tweet (we track tweets that mention the account), and make sure that your tweet follows our tone guidelines.

Blog

The Dask blog is published at blog.dask.org/ with an Atom feed at blog.dask.org/atom.xml.

Content resides at github.com/dask/dask-blog and anyone can contribute content by submitting a pull request with markdown or HTML to that repository (markdown preferred).

In particular we highly encourage Dask users to contribute stories of how they have used Dask to solve interesting problems.

Youtube

The Dask Youtube channel holds content that we generate as part of our documentation. We also maintain playlists to other Dask talks

For Dask contributors looking to produce screencast content we encourage the following tips:

1. Get a good microphone. Headset microphones often cost around $30, and have a large impact on audio quality.
2. Turn off external stimuli that might interrupt your recording, including calendar, e-mail, and messaging notifications
3. Consider going full screen to remove clock and OS dock bars
4. Speak clearly and at a moderate pace. Speaking too quickly can exclude users for whom English is a second language (assuming that you are speaking in English) while speaking too slowly can make a video overly long.
5. Become comfortable with screen recording software. On OS-X QuickTime is builtin and easy to use. Select the "New Screen Recording" option, verify that your microphone is set up correctly, and press the red Record button.
6. To upload your video, log into Youtube and press the upload button in the upper right, which looks like a camera icon with a + symbol. It may take Youtube an hour or more to fully process your video.

The Dask Youtube channel is a brand account for which it is easy to share access to trusted maintainers. Please contact an existing maintainer if you would like access. Alternatively, you can upload your own content and we can add it to one of the playlists mentioned above.