How to share links offline?
February 17, 2020 7:49 AM   Subscribe

I'm facilitating a table discussion next week at a local software user group meeting. I want to put together some resources that participants can refer to after the event. Think YouTube videos, blog posts, white papers, etc. What is the easiest way to share links to these resources offline?

I'm thinking that ideally I'd just have everyone write down a short url (or have small cards printed with the url/QR code) which would lead to some page with all of the links on it. However, I really don't want to try to build/maintain a website to store those links. Have you done something like this before? If so, how did you do it? Do you know of any services that could help with something like this?

Of note, attendees are all coming from different companies, so there is no shared platform for us to directly share content on. Also, most people don't bring laptops to these meetings, and would likely just have a pen/paper to take notes with.
posted by noneuclidean to Computers & Internet (7 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: It's traditional in my circles to put all that in a shared Google Doc and create a tinyurl (or goo.gl shortened link) to it.
posted by Lyn Never at 7:57 AM on February 17, 2020 [6 favorites]


Of note, attendees are all coming from different companies, so there is no shared platform for us to directly share content on.

How does the user group inform members of events? Several groups I'm a part of either send out slides/notes in an email or Meetup.com/Facebook notification the day after an event, or just send them out a few weeks later when the details for the next meeting are ready.

If that's not viable, I've seen people put together a final slide with a QR code and short URL for people to capture with their smartphone or pen and paper. If you use LinkedIn you could write up the links as a post, which has the added benefit of discoverability as long as people have a record of your name. (Worth signing up for as a one-off maybe, even if you don't use it today.) GitHub or other industry platform could also work.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 7:58 AM on February 17, 2020 [1 favorite]


Best answer: I love it when people use GitHub for this.
posted by oceanjesse at 8:04 AM on February 17, 2020 [1 favorite]


Pastebin allows you to share stuff with folks
posted by nostrada at 8:19 AM on February 17, 2020


Best answer: Yeah, depending on various attributes of your usergroup, Google Drive or Github seem like pretty good options. You could do both, assuming you don't anticipate needing to update the resources often.
posted by Rock Steady at 8:54 AM on February 17, 2020


Best answer: A github gist is really useful for this when the audience is software developers. You will probably get some useful pull requests to add other relevant things during your talk.
posted by rockindata at 9:09 AM on February 17, 2020 [2 favorites]


Response by poster: I'm going to try out GitHub and go with a Google Doc as a backup.

How does the user group inform members of events?

Really poorly. I've been involved in this user group for a little over a year now, and communication is a constant struggle. Sounds like they may be launching on a new platform soon which should help and hopefully that will have a better way for participants to share information. For now though, I think GitHub or Google Docs will work.
posted by noneuclidean at 5:55 PM on February 17, 2020


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