Free Culture

r/wikipedia

122,485 readers

Theme: Bills itself as the most interesting pages on Wikipedia, however predominantly features Wikipedia news, ideas, and relates directly to the site rather than its content. Focus is on information, not opinion, however is closely tied to free culture ideals and is generally anti-corporate, which does seem to lead to editorialised post titles.

Engagement approach: would advise that this subreddit be the primary focus for reddit engagement, and all relevant news can be posted here, and also - given the size of the subreddit, and their tolerance for editorialisation - I would attempt putting narrative spin on minor Wikimania news, posting from multiple accounts.

r/freeculture

4,411 readers

Theme: Mainly reacts against information restrictions, surveillance and DRM. Running a 27-org strong coalition for keeping DRM out of HTML5.

Engagement approach: would advise focussing on speakers whose work directly relates to information restrictions, surveillance and DRM. Perhaps also run threads asking readers what questions relating to these talking points to put to individuals speaking at Wikimania

Open Data/Big Data

r/datasets

5,819 readers

Theme: For Data Mining, Analytics and Knowledge Discovery. Mainly reports news of new dataset sources.

Engagement approach: As the largest subreddit directly relating to big data, r/datasets would be the first port of call when disseminating relevant information to data enthusiasts. Would focus on Wikimania speakers relating to the topic and directly advertise the event based on that.

r/opendata

2,498 readers

Theme: Examples of interesting/newly-released data sets, opinions on the nature of open data.

Engagement approach: Would focus on Wikimania speakers relating to the topic and directly advertise the event based on that. If we can collect data sets relating to the event somehow. Finding a volunteer to gather interesting datasets relating to the event would really help attract interest. r/bigdatajobs would be great for this.

r/bigdata

2,272 readers

Theme: See above.

Engagement approach: See above.

r/semanticweb

2,523 readers

Theme: semantic web/linked data movement for a W3C-supported push to extend the current WWW-technologies and practices towards a machine-readable web of data. Mainly an educational resource, also features news. Simplified explanation of what linked data is

Engagement approach: Would focus on Wikimania speakers relating to the topic and directly advertise the event based on that.

r/programming

465,425 readers

Theme: Soft programming news with wide appeal. Most articles are general interest, rather than being interesting specifically to programmers.

Engagement approach: Barely related to open data, but as this subreddit is so huge I think posting here should be a focus. Would focus on Wikimania speakers relating to the topic and directly advertise the event based on that.

Education reform/Edtech

r/education

28,456 readers

Theme: Discourse about educational policy, research, technology, and politics.

Engagement approach: Would focus on Wikimania speakers relating to the topic and directly advertise the event based on that. Bill it as an education reform conference in such posts.

r/teachers & r/teaching

11,631 and 7,757 readers

Theme: Teaching methods, resources, tools, and issues.

Engagement approach: Same as with r/education.

r/educationreform

241 readers

Theme: News. No opinions.

Engagement approach: Would skip this. Too few readers. Education reform is covered by other subreddits, usually in the form of sensationalised news.

r/technology

3,670,000 readers

Theme: General tech news. Is featured on the reddit frontpage, so HUGE exposure. This really extends beyond ed tech, as there is really no active ed tech community on reddit.

Engagement approach: I would post to r/technology in the same way I post to r/wikipedia, with a mix of direct news and narrative/opinion/sensational content. Would also emphasise the potential of Wikimania rather than simply listing those speaking.

UX/Collaborative Software

r/web_design

76,187 readers

Theme: Topics related to web design: HTML, CSS, JS, layout, UI, graphics, etc.

Engagement approach: Would focus on Wikimania speakers relating to the topic and directly advertise the event based on that. Would also post Kimi's work, as it's so impressive in its functionality/UI, and attract interest that way.

r/usability

2,098 readers

Theme: For interesting articles about User experience, Interface design, or Human Factors. Related subreddits: r/userexperience (1.3k readers), r/chi (1.2k), r/hci (335), r/UI_programming (664)