Should Watcamp have a newsletter?

[pnijjar]

In putting together the RSS feed code I realized that putting together an email newsletter using the same strategy would not be difficult. I have code written for most of this. The question is whether it would be a good idea.

Here is the outline:

• Python code runs on a server to generate newsletter text
• This newsletter gets mailed to an announcement-only mailing list
• Subscribers to that mailing list get the newsletter once a week (or once a fortnight, or whatever you think is appropriate).

If you have an easy way to create a mailing list then we could use that. Otherwise I could abuse my privileges at kwlug.org to create one (watcamp-announce@kwlug.org, maybe).

The front page of Watcamp would have a link so people could register themselves to the mailing list. I guess having some fancy textfield would be better, but I would prefer to keep this simple at first.

What do you think?

[pnijjar]

watcamp.txt

Here is an example newsletter. It probably has too many items (100), but this can be configured.

It is (intentionally) a plain-text newsletter. Links to calendar entries get shortened with Google's link shortening service. Locations are truncated but meeting titles are not.

Any of these things could be changed.

[pnijjar]

This newsletter now exists: https://kwlug.org/mailman/listinfo/watcamp-newsletter_kwlug.org . A few people are subscribed to it already. The code is being deployed on the KWLUG VPS, but this could easily be switched to your DigitalOcean droplet.

@spaetzel : do you want admin access to this mailing list? (I have not subscribed you either, but I figure you can do that yourself if you are interested.)

[pnijjar]

Also: I think that there should be a link to the newsletter subscription page on the front page of WatCamp. I do not have a pull request for this yet, however.