CodeDay is a wonderful and, in most places, unparalleled opportunity for students to make friends and develop their interest in technology. That also means, however, that in most places, you'll have a limited distribution network for reaching students who might want to attend CodeDay.
Finding and building a network of students interested in CodeDay is one of the most time-consuming and difficult aspects of organizing a CodeDay, but it's also (obviously) the most important.
More than any other part of organizing, early work pays large dividends in promotion. Typically, early promotion will only lead to three-to-four registrations when you start reaching out, but the relationships you build early will result in many more registrations as the event draws near. More visually, here's a typical registration graph for CodeDay:
Because of this effect, we recommend you start working on promotion two months before the event starts, and make it your number one priority in the final month.
In this section of the guide, we'll help you develop and execute a promotion strategy which targets school and club partnerships, student word-of-mouth, direct marketing, and press to get the largest possible group of students to attend CodeDay.