Dask Marketing Guidelines
Contents
Dask Marketing Guidelines¶
This site includes both resources and guidelines for presenting and communicating Dask to a broad audience. We hope that this serves to generate a strong and consistent message among the many groups that contribute to Dask and it’s surrounding software projects.
We hope that these resources make your job easier, and we thank you for your efforts in communicating about the project.
Tone¶
The Dask community is broad and diverse, mixing a volunteer open source community, academics and government workers, and for-profit corporations. These sub-communities understandably have different needs and expectations around communication, which can sometimes conflict with each other.
For official Dask communications we try to strike a balance that is exciting while genuine, and informative while light-hearted. In particular …
We strive to promote positive news about Dask, either its technical features:
Did you know that Dask can integrate well with Scikit-Learn? Read more here!
or interesting and important ways in which the project has been used
We’re excited to see Dask used in the fight against Malaria. Read more in this article.
We avoid overt self-praise, especially if it is not very well proven.
Dask is 100x faster than Spark!We temper positive results with ways in which we can improve, and highlight opportunities for others to engage.
We’re excited to announce Dask integration with Cassandra!
…
But there is still plenty to do.
We don’t linger long on negative results, but we do make sure to acknowledge them in order to maintain an honest reputation.
While running this benchmark we actually found that Dask performed worse for one part of it. That led us to fix a bug (see PR #1234) and now things are running smoothly again.
We endeavor to highlight the work of others, both among our own contributors, and among the project that are adjacent to Dask
Next, we apply the new dask.dataframe.foo operation (recently contributed by Alice Chen)
For non-official Dask communications, either by individuals or associated corporations we can make no expectations of tone. So while speaking about Dask with your own voice, or the voice of your company, please do not feel burdened by the expectations of this document. We trust that you know best how to speak with your audience.
Communication Channels¶
Currently the Dask project communicate with the general public through a few different media
Twitter¶
The @dask_dev Twitter account is available to promote information like the following:
New releases or important features that arrive in the Dask project
Important or interesting uses of Dask in the broader community
Documentation, talks, blogposts, or other knowledge artifacts produced by Dask contributors in the past that remain relevant but may not be broadly known.
However, as with any communication medium we should beware of misusing the twitter account. In particular
We tend not to broadcast for-profit promotional or sales material. It is important that Dask’s brand remains trusted and neutral to corporate interests.
That being said, we do not mind retweeting for-profit products if there is not a conflict of interest, and if those products are likely of value to our users. This is often a judgment call. We endeavor to remove conflicts of interest from those making these judgements.
We tend not to over-broadcast, out of respect for those that subscribe.
Trusted members of the Dask community are given access to the @dask_dev team account through https://tweetdeck.twitter.com . On this site they can operate either as their personal account or the Dask account either by authoring their own tweets or interacting with existing tweets. We also endeavor to maintain a one-tweet-per-day schedule of existing content. Often sourced from our documentation, examples, stories, blog, or Youtube channel.
Here are some suggestions to guide new tweeters in this process:
Aim for no more than one or two tweets per day, out of respect for our subscribers
Try to include an image in the tweet to help it stand out
Engage with the tweet yourself, perhaps by adding personal context in a reply. People seem to be more willing to engage with a tweet once someone else has broken the ice.
Be mindful of the time that the tweet will occur. If you’re aiming for a particular region of the world (like the US) then you may want to target times during the day, and in particular during commuting hours.
Anecdotally, people seem to engage more in the middle of the work week, and less on Monday (presumably they’re busy), Friday afternoon and Saturday (hopefully they have something better to do).
Mix up content a bit. We can keep our messaging fresh by interleaving documentation content with blogs and videos.
If you are a member of the Dask community and wish to maintain the Twitter account, please get in contact with a core maintainer for access. If you are just looking to get content retweeted the simplest thing you can do is include @dask_dev in your tweet (we track tweets that mention the account), and make sure that your tweet follows our Tone guidelines.
Blog¶
The Dask blog is published at blog.dask.org/ with an Atom feed at blog.dask.org/atom.xml.
Content resides at github.com/dask/dask-blog and anyone can contribute content by submitting a pull request with markdown or HTML to that repository (markdown preferred).
In particular we highly encourage Dask users to contribute stories of how they have used Dask to solve interesting problems.
Youtube¶
The Dask Youtube channel holds content that we generate as part of our documentation. We also maintain playlists to other Dask talks
For Dask contributors looking to produce screencast content we encourage the following tips:
Get a good microphone. Headset microphones often cost around $30, and have a large impact on audio quality.
Turn off external stimuli that might interrupt your recording, including calendar, e-mail, and messaging notifications
Consider going full screen to remove clock and OS dock bars
Speak clearly and at a moderate pace. Speaking too quickly can exclude users for whom English is a second language (assuming that you are speaking in English) while speaking too slowly can make a video overly long.
Become comfortable with screen recording software. On OS-X QuickTime is builtin and easy to use. Select the “New Screen Recording” option, verify that your microphone is set up correctly, and press the red Record button.
To upload your video, log into Youtube and press the upload button in the upper right, which looks like a camera icon with a
+
symbol. It may take Youtube an hour or more to fully process your video.
The Dask Youtube channel is a brand account for which it is easy to share access to trusted maintainers. Please contact an existing maintainer if you would like access. Alternatively, you can upload your own content and we can add it to one of the playlists mentioned above.
Referring to Dask¶
We refer to Dask as “Dask”, capitalizing the first letter and leaving the rest lower case:
- Dask
daskDASK
We do not have to prefix Dask with any organization, however if necessary to associate Dask with a fiscal entity, we mention that Dask is fiscally sponsorted by NumFOCUS, or that it is a NumFOCUS sponsored project.
If appropriate, hyperlinks from Dask should point to dask.org in general, or to docs.dask.org if we specifically want to point readers to documentation.
Dask Logos¶
Dask logos are available below. There are options for light or dark backgrounds, and for horizontal and vertical orientation.
Style and Colors¶
These are guidelines for using the Dask logo with community-approved color palettes and typography.
Logos¶
Logos for Dask are available at Dask Logos. The Dask logo is made up of two components: The Logo Mark and the Word Mark, which together make up the Horizontal Logo. Using the Logo Mark alone should be reserved for instances where the Horizontal Logo is already present, or as an avatar when “Dask” appears alongside the Logo Mark in plain text.
Additional logo considerations:
Typography¶
Roboto and Roboto Mono are the primary Dask typefaces. Roboto is best for for H-level titles and longform body copy. Roboto Mono should be used when displaying syntax/code snippets or as a labeling device for charts, graphics, and specialty layout components.
Colors¶
For colors, we typically choose from the orange gradient on the Logo Mark itself (shown in top right-hand corner of the figure below). You can use the following grid to select color for text, graphical elements, and general layout. Note that text should meet a “Pass” qualification to meet AA (or AAA) requirements.