Promotion de French Language ? — Promoting French Language?

Question

En 2012 l'invité d'honneur du salon Expolangues (qui a lieu du 1 au 4 février) est le français et la francophonie. Est-ce que ça semblerait une bonne idée de promouvoir French Language à cette occasion ? Je ne suggère pas d'avoir un stand au salon (très cher) mais, par exemple, d'avoir des affiches ou des dépliants qu'on demanderait à des connaissances de distribuer/afficher. Si oui, il faudrait que la communauté prenne en charge rédaction et production. Je peux intervenir pour des contacts.
D'ailleurs ce salon étant fréquenté par des enseignants et étudiants de toutes les langues (pas que français), peut-être que la promotion des autres sites comme EL&U et les autres sites de langues pourrait être envisagé.

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In 2012 the guest of honour of Expolangues, an exhibition dedicated to the teaching and learning of languages held in Paris every winter (1–4 February in 2012), is the French language. Does it sound like a good idea to promote French Language on that occasion ? I'm not suggesting to have our own exhibition stall (very expensive) but we could have posters or leaflets that we'd ask other exhibitors to have on their stalls. I could arrange the contacts but the whole community should take charge of creation and production of material.
And this yearly exhibition being essentially visited by teachers and learners from all languages and from different countries, we could promote other Stackexchange language sites (EL&U but not only...) as well.

Answer 1

Well, I love the idea of at least putting some sort of handout together. Talking to the gal who's done some promotional stuff for EL&U in the past to see if there's any cross-site interest.

If anyone else here is planning to be there (either as an attendee or an exhibitor), speak up!

Answer 2

So if the idea of promotion takes on I'll propose a few guidelines for the promotion - it's expandable of course but there are a few points that shouldn't be missed considering the people coming there. I've ticked the community wiki box so everybody can add or cross out.

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Any handout that people will have to read has to be in French - (or French & English...). ¹. Has Stack Exchange already got a poster? That could be in English of course.

Points that I think should be mentioned:

• difference from other forums ; question & answer format

• emphasis on creating a lasting resource:

  • Q&A's are tagged for easier thematic searching
  • there is a single question per page so each question has a clear link
  • there is no need to answer the same questions over and over again: new questions that repeat existing questions are closed as duplicates
• peer control
• moderated, moderators elected by the community and none can take a decision singly
• community is a meeting place of laymen and experts (at least as far as I can judge on FL&U and EL&U)
• questions can be rejected if too simple (i.e. whose answers are found in a dictionary) and answers are discussed and can be upvoted and downvoted
• very good layout and technical functioning, the technical team are professional computer experts
• CC attribution

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¹ _{Let's do it in English first and translate later.}

Answer 3

Here's an adaptation of the text of the existing EL&U leaflet (PDF link) with more emphasis on a teacher audience. The French version explores both FLU and ELU, while the English version focuses on the more mature ELU. I've posted the English version on the English L&U. Comment welcome, but since the event is very soon, I don't even know if we'll manage to get something printed in time.

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French.StackExchange.com est un site participatif de questions-réponses au sujet de la langue française : des points fins de grammaire, le sens d'une expression inhabituelle ou encore la recherche du mot juste. On peut poser des questions en français ou en anglais.

Quelques exemples de questions :

L'histoire du vouvoiement
http://french.stackexchange.com/q/3

When does one pronounce the 's' in plus?
http://french.stackexchange.com/q/268

Pourquoi trente-six ?
http://french.stackexchange.com/q/150

Quel intérêt ?

Le site est entièrement public et la participation est libre. Les questions touvent des réponses rapidement, ce qui en fait une ressource intéressante pour les étudiants comme pour les enseignants. C'est aussi un endroit où l'on peut nouer des contacts avec d'autres professionnels de la langue et se faire une réputation, voire financer certains projets.

Et les autres langues ?

Stack Exchange est un réseau de sites de questions-réponses sur des sujets divers. Le site English.StackExchange.com est consacré à la langue anglaise ; sur le réseau, c'est le site linguistique le plus ancien. Anglophone, il rassemble des locuteurs natifs comme des enseignants, apprenants et autres pratiquants étrangers. Il existe actuellement également des sites sur l'allemand, le japonais, l'espagnol et le chinois, avec d'autres en préparation. Vous trouverez la liste complète sur http://stackexchange.com/sites

Answer 4

Thanks for the French version @Gilles. Stack Exchange graphic designer made the pdf files and Stack Exchange paid for the flyers to be printed. I made them publicly available at Expolangues and handed some out as well whenever I could, even to journalists; this one had his own tour of StackExchange afterwards and wrote an article : La langue anglaise en questions-réponses.

Here are both pdf files:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/62542206/english-a5.pdf
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/62542206/french-a5.pdf