[users] Re: Promoting Gemini, is anyone working on outreach?

[Jason McBrayer]

karmstrong at artorinix.com writes:

> My responsibility is in the technology arena, and I have been toying
> with the idea of bringing up a 'gentle introduction to gemini'. If
> anyone has ideas as to what would be a good approach to bring new
> people into the sphere, I would welcome them. Just like the very early
> web, there was a higher-barrier to entry. Gemini has that now, but I
> was thinking of a good step-by-step starter tutorial with some
> explanations on how to get a person set up 1. on an existing gemini
> hosting service 2. on their own server. What do you all think?

After a discussion with some friends on a private Matrix room a couple
days ago, I was convinced of the need for a kind of Gemini "quickstart"
for completely non-technical users.

I've registered geminiquickst.art, and have been writing content for it,
but I haven't actually set the server up. Probably soon, once the main
page is up. So far, I have been focusing on the even more basic issue of
"what is a Gemini client, and how do I install one?", because this is
actually the first sticking point that people run into. I'm also going
to address the issue of how to find things to read.

*Hosting* is going to be a bigger issue, IMO. To my eyes, sites like
flounder.online and midnight.pub go a long way to make getting a Gemini
presence set up easier, but in discussion with my less technical
friends, I learned that things about their sign-up processes can be
off-putting and feel unsafe. I have thoughts about how to handle this,
but for now, I'm probably going to punt on the hosting section.

I'd *like* to fairly rapidly get hosting a Gemini capsule to be "as
simple as hosting a Geocities site in 1996", and from there, make
progress towards "as simple as having a LiveJournal in 2004", the catch
being is that I want to do this with as little Web Platform technology
as possible, and preferably none.

-- 
Jason McBrayer      | ?Strange is the night where black stars rise,
jmcbray at carcosa.net | and strange moons circle through the skies,
                    | but stranger still is lost Carcosa.?
                    | ? Robert W. Chambers,The King in Yellow