A Little Peek Inside Medium's Pub Crawl
A cat walks into a pub. The bartender says "what'll you have?"
Happy Friday,
Don’t know if you’ve heard, but next week Medium is hosting a pub crawl. The idea is to help writers find new publications and help publications find new writers.
Honestly, my first thought was that it’s kind of silly because it’s not that hard to find publications to write for. Just search the topic you write about and click over to look at publications, not posts or people. Then I checked the Loom video out of curiosity and found publications I’d never heard of. So there’s that. Color me wrong.
Basically, it works like an expo. You walk into a large room and there’s a whole bunch of booths. Every booth is a publication. So I grabbed some screen captures and thought I’d give you a sneak peek inside. In case you haven’t seen this yet.
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The Lobby
Y’all know what a lobby is. When you first log in, you’ll either see a live video if there’s an event happening. Or you’ll see event notes. Up at the top is navigation.
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Sessions
Under the sessions tab, you’ll find all the scheduled talks. First event is a kickoff interview with Tony. There will be other stuff. Ariel is doing one, I don’t know who else. There’s also two speed networking sessions, which are like speed dating.10 minute talk sessions with publishers who signed up to participate.
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Your Agenda
On the sessions page, you can scroll through the list of videos and webinars and bookmark any you want to watch. They’ll appear on your agenda so you can save a list of just the stuff that interests you. Everything will be saved as video so if the time of a live presentation doesn’t work, you’ll be able to watch the video later.
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Publishers and Expo Tab
Outside of watching videos and webinars, the action with publications happens on the Expo page. The publishers page lists all the publishers participating, but the Expo page is where you can go visit their booths. You’ll see an icon for each publisher attending. It’s a pretty long list. Click on any publication to go to their page.
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Sample Publication Page:
Every publication gets to decide what they want to put on their page from simple text to video, audio and downloads. In this sample publisher page, Pearl Street has a video and a download for new writers that includes their submission info. Publishers can also schedule events like a live chat or Q/A sessions. Not everyone can hang around all day on a random Tuesday so additional events are optional and will vary from publisher to publisher.
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Maybe some food for thought…
When Medium used the term “pub crawl” I kind of cringed. Because, you know. Have a beer here, move on, have a beer there, move on. Writers do that, too.
As I publisher I don’t want 200 writers that submit one post and move on. I want to know my writers. Know their strengths and weak spots. It makes editing easier and when editing is easier it’s more likely they submit posts I can nominate for a boost.
Maybe some publishers don’t agree, and don’t care if you write for them once a year or once ever. But I think the tighter the focus of a publication the more they maybe care about that. If you’re writing self help, maybe they don’t care because there’s so many people writing self help. But if it’s a niche publication, maybe they do care.
So I think that’s worth keeping in mind.
Think of it this way. If you asked every publication owner if they are looking for strong writers who turn in great posts regularly, how many do you think would say no?
If you want more information or to sign up either as a publication or a writer, you can find the links in the blog post on Medium. And if you want to see a video preview of the pub crawl event, here’s a short video on loom.
Are you planning to attend? Any thoughts or hopes on what you’re looking for?
On Medium…
Why Do We Need A Man’s Permission To Celebrate Women’s History?
Why Do We Make Such A Big Deal Out Of Women Aging Naturally?
P.S. In case you wondered…
A cat walks into a pub. The bartender says "what'll you have?" The cat says a shot of rum. The bartender puts a shot of rum in front of him. The cat reaches out a paw and slowly pushes it off the bar.
I found what you said about building pub editors building relationship with writers a crucial but often overlooked point - in my three years on Medium, I have seen a scant few who actually focus on that aspect - I guess they are too busy to see the trees for the forest - in my opinion, if you own a pub and your intention is to make it known as a pub where good writers want to be published - then you have to nurture them - but then again my def of 'good' is completely different from a pub editor - especially one with no clue about the nitty gritty 🤷♀️
I signed up to host a booth. I feel it's an opportunity for readers, writers, and other Medium personalities to stop by and say hello. I did a talk on Medium Day too. With a thing like this, I feel kind of uncertain about the technological side. It looks like playing a video game but instead of a talk with an NPC, you can enter a room and talk to a personality from Medium (at least, that's how I understand it). Perhaps this is something they'll start to offer every 6 months or so. I'm always much better at something the 2nd time I try it :).