I just had a few ideas which may help EFnet get some more users in the long run. Feel free to add some stuff or comment on this.
1. Do interviews with various people.
For example, get a team together who would be able to contact various people of different companies and projects to come an do a Q&A session on EFnet. There would be a global notice 1 hour before the session starts for users to join a certain channel in which the interview would be held in. The room would be set +m, and various people would be picked at random to ask the person a question. Possible people to interview would include Microsoft staff, Developers of various Linux distributions, creators of various IRC clients, etc. It would boost interest in EFnet, and would encourage people to join the network.
2. Get some community-oriented things going
Maybe have a pseudo-official channel in which users are encouraged to come and have a nice chat. It would make users feel welcomed, and would remind them of a small-close knit community. Maybe an official support channel would help out too.
3. Offer something new to IRC
Maybe if EFnet brought something new to the IRC community, like Dalnet did with services, there would be an increase in user population, because EFnet would be the first and only network to offer this new feature. I was thinking of perhaps some new channel modes or something. Maybe even a way to link to channel together. Lets say a channel named #chat wanted to link with the channel #chatterz. They would set a mode like +L (link maybe?) and would specify the channel they wish to link with. Then, when a user joins #chat, people on #chatterz would see him as if he had just joined #chatterz, and vice-versa.
I'll add some more ideas when I get them
