[Project] Bringing the spaghetti western community together

Bureau đź“‹
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My dear friends. Travelling without laptop or work stuff gives me some time to think, and even though this is a digital semi-timeout also from the SWDb, it isn’t from emails, social media or this lovely forum. Lovely because of all of you.

Sometimes I would like to think that the SWDb is the meeting point for the world wide fan community. But it isn’t quite that (let me explain in a second) and I would like us to do what we can to change that at least for as much as possible: the SWDb is still a very US/Euro-centric place dominated by the English-speaking parts of the internet. The share of Italians, Spaniards, French or Portiguese is very small, just as a (glaring) example.

I think the world is a better place with strong networks of like minded folks keeping the spaghetti western alive. And just as much the SWDb will be an even greater place if it gained in size and depth around the world.

So here are a few things (aside from the technical and editorial work being discussed in the improvement topic) that we could do to broaden our community and make its network effect, reach and quality even better:

  • gather info about where fans are all over the net (Facebook groups, message boards etc)
  • explore other channels of communication, such as Instagram
  • send more newsletters (multilingual)
  • do we need more swdb content in oyher languages and advertise this content better?
  • is the swdb still too hard to find (test it with a google search for a movie or actor)
  • do we have creative artists ans marketing gurus among us to create banners, buttons and social media posts in many langauges for us all to use?
  • have YOU ever tried the invite tool in your swdb forum account, or were you not even aware of it
  • which parts of the swdb could draw more people if maintained better (e.g. screenings ticker, posters)?

What are your thoughts? What else could we do and what are examples of things you’ve done or that you’re doing?

Growing list of “other” communities (you can post these or send them to me and I will update this list):

FB groups

FB pages (update: unsorted, still collecting)

FB pages (home cinema labels)

FB Pages (movies)

FB Pages Almeria related

Sites/boards

Spanish channels

Italian channels

French channels

Portuguese channels

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I think part of the problem you’ll always face is that this is a niche interest…I, for instance, have never used the invite tool, because the only people I know in my life who like spaghetti westerns are here. I don’t know who else I’d invite! Here is my attempt to help, though, in gathering info!

Facebook Groups of which I’m a member:

Blog-style sites I visit regularly:

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I would like to get in touch with “AL P. Mangini”, who used to run this website. Please send me a message, grazie. Does anyone know how to contact that person?

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I want to reopen this project and slow prep it to make it a priority for next year. After the massive work we’re doing on the database this year I think next year we can work on bringing more people to enjoying it and also reach more people who speak other languages etc.

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By the way, I had an idea and I want to share it, hoping someone with excellent graphic design skills can turn it into a reality.
First of all, one of my initial ideas was always that we had multi-lingual “ads” for the SWDb, like shareable posters etc to promote the SWDb in various languages.
Now, here’s my idea: these posters/graphics could actually mimick spaghetti western lobby cards in their design, composition and all that, but we’re not doing one in multiple languages, we’d be using a French style lobby card for the French ad for the SWDb, an Italian style lobby card for the Italian, and so on…
Imagine if we had a really really amazing SWDb ad graphic in lobby card style for every major language on the internet, we could use that really well to share on social media and elsewhere.

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Great idea. Wish I could help but that is not my piece of cake unfortunately.

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