BarCamp - How to Run Your Own/Telling people about it

• Firstly, list your BarCamp at barcamp.org
• If you use Twitter and Facebook, promote it on there.
• Set up a Twitter account for your event (see, for example, @barcamplondon)
• Be sure to promote BarCamp to a wide variety of people: if there are geek communities in your city, approach those. Ask them if they can promote it to their community, and to ask any companies involved in that community if they are interested in sponsoring.
  • Language or technology communities might include something like a Python user group or a hardware hacker group.
• Ask other BarCamp organisers if they could promote the event: many will retweet your announcement, blog about it and so on.
• Try and reach out to under-represented communities: some cities have a group for "girl geeks", women in technology etc. Some BarCamps have given a handful of tickets to such communities to hand out at events, although some find this practice slightly controversial.

Register interest

If you are planning an event but are not ready to start giving out tickets, make a form to just register interest: that way you can get people to just add their e-mail address, and they will get a message when there is a venue and date with instructions on how and when to register for tickets.

After you've given out tickets

Once people have registered, you need to work out how to keep them engaged. Sending people reminder e-mails is one good way. For BarCampLondon8, the organisers sent out numerous reminder e-mails, and all attendees had to confirm their attendance a week before the event by clicking a link in an e-mail. Using this kind of approach, the organisers reduced the number of people not turning up quite dramatically.