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

Jason McBrayer jmcbray at carcosa.net

Wed Feb 10 15:15:18 GMT 2021

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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 coupledays 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 mainpage 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 isactually the first sticking point that people run into. I'm also goingto address the issue of how to find things to read.

Hosting* is going to be a bigger issue, IMO. To my eyes, sites likeflounder.online and midnight.pub go a long way to make getting a Geminipresence set up easier, but in discussion with my less technicalfriends, I learned that things about their sign-up processes can beoff-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 "assimple as hosting a Geocities site in 1996", and from there, makeprogress towards "as simple as having a LiveJournal in 2004", the catchbeing is that I want to do this with as little Web Platform technologyas 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