[ruby-talk:28732] How can we get publicity for 1.8 release?

Consider this a brainstorming session:

Ruby 1.8 is apparently coming out soon (based on recent posts from Matz) - 
perhaps by year's end.

It seems that on a lot of open source news sites (slashdot, linuxtoday, 
linux weekly news, newsforge, linuxprogramming...) that whenever a new 
version of Perl or Python come out a story gets posted - and its often 
not even a major version release.  Ruby deserves to be as well known and 
publisized as Perl and Python and to some extent I think it's up to us 
(the current Ruby community) to make that happen.

So... with the imminent release of Ruby 1.8 it would be nice if we could 
get the announcement of the release posted on several of the mentioned 
sites.  Ruby isn't as well known as Perl or Python (in the US anyway), 
but are there things we can do that will change that?  

Here are some ideas:

* If you're a Linux user, approach your local LUG (Linux user's group) 
about doing a presentation on Ruby at one of their meetings.  I did this a 
few months back - these LUGs are generally always looking for people to 
make knowledgable presentations at their meetings.

* How about approaching your local Perl Monger's group and making a 
presentation on Ruby?  I think somebody actually did this several months 
back and they lived to tell the tale.  (I'd do it here, but I can't find 
our local Perl Mongers group - it's supposed to exist, but nobody's 
there...)

* Write articles on various aspects of Ruby - I think there are several of 
these in the works.  If programmers start seeing a lot of articles on Ruby 
in various popular periodicals some of them will start to take notice.  I 
think the Dr. Dobb's article last year probably provided a big infusion 
of new Ruby users (I was one).

* submit news items to sites like the ones mentioned above.  Especially 
when 1.8 is released.

* post items to related programming newsgroups - but not offtopic.  For 
example, somebody recently posted a question to comp.object about the best 
way to learn OOP.  There were about four of the responders (me included) 
that told the seeker to go and learn Ruby as a means of learning OOP (in 
addition to other suggestions as well).  
Of all the language responses, I think Ruby turned out to be one of the 
most recomended.
[NOTE: we want positive publicity, and not 'language wars' type postings.
It often just means mentioning Ruby in a post so that people know it 
exists and the name gets out there]

* talk to co-workers about it and try to get it into your workplace for an 
internal project.


other ideas?  To some extent, I think that in order to enlarge the Ruby 
community we need to at least look bigger than we might really be right 
now.  I think a lot of us (those of us who use Ruby now) tend to 
be the early adopters, now we need to go after the 'second tier' not-as- 
early-adopters and convince them that there are good reasons to learn and 
use Ruby.

I know a lot of folks shy away from language advocacy - there has been a 
lot of bad advocacy (for languages, OSs, etc...) so I'm differentiating 
advocacy from publicity (or PR).  Publicity/PR being a means of letting 
people know about something they may not know about and explaining 
(rationally) how it might benefit them.

Phil