As most of you know, the Communications Committee has, in the past, taken responsibility for producing The Catch and the NHRC listserve. At the recent Board meeting it was decided that to improve cohesion in all club communications, the committee would be restructured and expanded.
Claire Potter will continue as the Board member chairing the committee, in partnership with John Poole. Nancy Brackett has agreed to serve on the Sunshine Committee, which will now be a sub-committee of Communications. Sam Gambrell, the webmaster, will also be part of the committee.
Here is a brief review of our procedures and platforms, so that you may direct any news to the correct people. Please copy Claire and John on any communications with a committee member so that they can double-check that your message is going to the right place and/or speak to you about the appropriateness of the platform you have chosen.
The Sunshine Committee: This committee is primarily tasked with circulating news of life events that club members wish to be generally known within our community: births, deaths, adoptions, illnesses, graduations, a new home, marriages and new jobs are all good examples of news that you might wish to have shared. Nancy will also make arrangements on behalf of the club, paid for from money raised by our Saturday breakfasts (thank you, Dianne Kelley for agreeing to coordinate these for another year!), in the event that flowers or a donation in lieu of flowers is appropriate for a given occasion.
Sunshine Committee news will be sent out via the list serve, unless you indicate a desire for your news to go on The Catch as well. Please remember, however, that The Catch is not restricted to club members, and that any news put up there is accessible to anyone in a routine Google search. The list serve is semi-private: only registered users (specifically, people with registered email addresses) can submit and receive email, and the communications committee controls who these registered users are. Non-registered email addresses cannot send to, or receive mail from, the list serve. Being on it does not make you vulnerable to unwanted email from spammers or non-members.
That said, please be aware that news sent out via the list serve ends up on the desktops of around a hundred people: all active members from the roster, and a few selected coaches and friends. Any messages that you wish to send only to closest friends or boat mates within the club should go out via your own email lists: you will periodically receive an updated membership roll from Dianne Kelly so that you can create them yourself.
The Catch: What you are reading now is a blog (short for "web log") that, several years ago, replaced the digital newsletter ably produced for many years by Baxter Walsh. Primarily written by John and Claire, contributors to The Catch include other members of the club as well. If you would like to be one of them, let us know! You may also send us things you have written, reports on events, links to other sites, and issues you would like covered. We vet all posts for good taste, including our own, but we have a broad editorial policy.
Our view is that The Catch should contain items that are of interest to the club. It might be a link to a good article, regatta photos, or posts like this one that notify the membership at large about an organizational matter. As we said above, please remember that anyone in the world can access The Catch. It is not an appropriate place for information that you would consider too personal for anyone other than a friend -- an employer, a landlord, an estranged family member -- to know.
The NHRC website: This is the most public face of the club; it is the site to which we direct prospective members and participants in our regattas (several thousand people a year fall into this second category, hence its importance.) Its use is highly restricted. We are happy to accept any suggestions about improvements that can be made. Please make those suggestions directly to Sam, and copy to Claire Potter and the president of the club, Wayne Huskes.
A Final (But Important) Note: Any member of the club can send an email to the membership via the listserve, either by initiating an email with the correct group address (contact John Poole if you don't have it) or by hitting "reply all" to an email you have received from the listserve. In the past, club members have complained about being deluged with emails from the club that were unwanted, irrelevant and/or in bad taste. Please remember that when you hit "reply all," you reply to the whole club, cluttering their inboxes and perhaps broadcasting a message you intended for only one person. By hitting only "reply" you can respond directly to the person who wrote the email without involving the rest of us.
In addition, we ask you to restrict any use of the listserve to club business only. When in doubt, view this narrowly and ask for the opinion of a member of the communications committee before you send the email. Please do not use the listserve to:
*Air personal disputes, grievances or misunderstandings;
*Advertise business or commercial opportunities;
*Sell personal goods that are not rowing-related;
*Recruit for a charity (these items may be sent to The Catch for publication, however);
*Forward amusing or any other type of spam you have received;
*Participate in club-wide banter about a message received via the listserve.
The committee will be meeting soon as a group to discuss our agenda for the coming year: please send any suggestions and/or concerns about the committee' work to Claire at tenured DOT radical AT gmail DOT com. Click here if you are in any doubt that we wish to communicate with you!
Showing posts with label Communications Committee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Communications Committee. Show all posts
Friday, April 16, 2010
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Charge for the Communications Committee for 2008 – 09
Audrey Novak, the President of the New Haven Rowing Club, has asked all the committee chairs to post a charge for 2008-09: the purpose is to explain what we do -- both to ourselves and to the membership at large; to set goals; and to let the membership know who they can turn to when an issue needs to be addressed. This charge was written by the Communications Committee
Maintain the Yahoo News Groups. This is something that John is primarily responsible for maintaining. John makes sure all member email addresses are registered with the newsgroup, and that all members can access it, but the members themselves are responsible for formulating their own emails and disseminating them via the newsgroup. We strongly encourage them to do so, rather than send emails to John to put on the newsgroup. Items that will be sent out this way are time-sensitive materials; materials that contain members’ private information (email addresses, phone numbers, addresses); club documents that ought not to be widely circulated (minutes, agendas, reports); messages letting members know that The Catch has been updated; and complex documents (PDF’s and Excel files primarily: the cleaning schedule, volunteer rosters for regattas, updated club directories.)
Maintain the club blog, The Catch. The Catch will be monitored, edited, updated and partly written by both John and Claire, the blog managers/editors. Each of us will take primary responsibility for half the month: Claire for the first two weeks and John for the second two weeks. Maintenance will include updating the template and widgets as necessary to respond to club needs and to make full use of the potential of a blog as a democratic sphere for discussion among the membership. The Club Secretary will post documents on the blog that the whole club needs to have access to. Club officers and committee chairs are invited (and strongly encouraged) to write postings. Ideally, they would post their own items, but until they get used to that, completed items can be emailed to the managers and posted by them. Members who want to contribute may also write to the blog, save posts, and then ask either John or Claire to review and publish them. The Secretary, in particular, is encouraged to make regular use of the blog in disseminating (non-sensitive) information regarding club activities, events, and dates.
John and Claire urge any member of the club who wishes to write for The Catch to do so: the blog is particularly useful for starting discussion topics, as the comment function enables all members to have an exchange. Members are encouraged to engage in active, constructive discussions. We also know from experience that many club members are good writers, and we urge members to submit items, reports on regattas, pictures, announcements, and whatever else they have.
What is to be achieved in 2008-09. Introducing these new technologies has been a big step forward in our view, but it has happened through a significant time commitment on the part of the committee that needs to be reduced. We propose to:
a. Reduce redundancy between the Yahoo Newsgroups and The Catch. There are very few items that need to be published both places, and doing so increases the time commitment to this committee. We also want to encourage club members to learn to publish on their own, rather than sending information and expecting the managers to write the story. In particular, the managers’ primary responsibilities are to keep the publishing infrastructure going, and provide editorial review of submitted material. Managers will frequently submit their own material (subject to cross-review by the managers themselves), but are not expected to directly write material on the behalf of members who wish to contribute.
b. There seems to be uneven technology skills across the club, although most members seem to have adapted to Yahoo newsgroups and The Catch blog. Nevertheless, some members appear to need more help than we can give them through email. Therefore, John and Claire will run a couple hands-on sessions after Saturday breakfast to show people how to post to the blog, how to access it independent of a link, how to use browsers and book marking functions. We could also show members how to set up their own RSS feed, so they would automatically be notified when new items are posted to The Catch.
c. We propose that The Catch regularize its publishing schedule, trying to post 2-3 times a week minimum. This will make it a more lively and useful vehicle, and one that promotes a healthy club atmosphere, but also will train club members to check it independently of an email prompt.
d. What we need is another member of our committee,* or an outside consultant, who is skilled at managing the club webpage. We propose that such a person be recruited/hired in the next sixty days. A club volunteer is preferable, since we would require no budget, and because a more informal relationship would probably be more efficient and flexible for the other members of the committee. Complex documents cannot be stored on the blog – they can only be linked to the blog – and as of now, we cannot establish those links unless documents can be easily uploaded to the club’s web domain.
John Poole and Claire Potter; Claire Potter, Board Liaison
*applications are currently being accepted by John Poole, as Claire is on vacation until June 5.
Maintain the Yahoo News Groups. This is something that John is primarily responsible for maintaining. John makes sure all member email addresses are registered with the newsgroup, and that all members can access it, but the members themselves are responsible for formulating their own emails and disseminating them via the newsgroup. We strongly encourage them to do so, rather than send emails to John to put on the newsgroup. Items that will be sent out this way are time-sensitive materials; materials that contain members’ private information (email addresses, phone numbers, addresses); club documents that ought not to be widely circulated (minutes, agendas, reports); messages letting members know that The Catch has been updated; and complex documents (PDF’s and Excel files primarily: the cleaning schedule, volunteer rosters for regattas, updated club directories.)
Maintain the club blog, The Catch. The Catch will be monitored, edited, updated and partly written by both John and Claire, the blog managers/editors. Each of us will take primary responsibility for half the month: Claire for the first two weeks and John for the second two weeks. Maintenance will include updating the template and widgets as necessary to respond to club needs and to make full use of the potential of a blog as a democratic sphere for discussion among the membership. The Club Secretary will post documents on the blog that the whole club needs to have access to. Club officers and committee chairs are invited (and strongly encouraged) to write postings. Ideally, they would post their own items, but until they get used to that, completed items can be emailed to the managers and posted by them. Members who want to contribute may also write to the blog, save posts, and then ask either John or Claire to review and publish them. The Secretary, in particular, is encouraged to make regular use of the blog in disseminating (non-sensitive) information regarding club activities, events, and dates.
John and Claire urge any member of the club who wishes to write for The Catch to do so: the blog is particularly useful for starting discussion topics, as the comment function enables all members to have an exchange. Members are encouraged to engage in active, constructive discussions. We also know from experience that many club members are good writers, and we urge members to submit items, reports on regattas, pictures, announcements, and whatever else they have.
What is to be achieved in 2008-09. Introducing these new technologies has been a big step forward in our view, but it has happened through a significant time commitment on the part of the committee that needs to be reduced. We propose to:
a. Reduce redundancy between the Yahoo Newsgroups and The Catch. There are very few items that need to be published both places, and doing so increases the time commitment to this committee. We also want to encourage club members to learn to publish on their own, rather than sending information and expecting the managers to write the story. In particular, the managers’ primary responsibilities are to keep the publishing infrastructure going, and provide editorial review of submitted material. Managers will frequently submit their own material (subject to cross-review by the managers themselves), but are not expected to directly write material on the behalf of members who wish to contribute.
b. There seems to be uneven technology skills across the club, although most members seem to have adapted to Yahoo newsgroups and The Catch blog. Nevertheless, some members appear to need more help than we can give them through email. Therefore, John and Claire will run a couple hands-on sessions after Saturday breakfast to show people how to post to the blog, how to access it independent of a link, how to use browsers and book marking functions. We could also show members how to set up their own RSS feed, so they would automatically be notified when new items are posted to The Catch.
c. We propose that The Catch regularize its publishing schedule, trying to post 2-3 times a week minimum. This will make it a more lively and useful vehicle, and one that promotes a healthy club atmosphere, but also will train club members to check it independently of an email prompt.
d. What we need is another member of our committee,* or an outside consultant, who is skilled at managing the club webpage. We propose that such a person be recruited/hired in the next sixty days. A club volunteer is preferable, since we would require no budget, and because a more informal relationship would probably be more efficient and flexible for the other members of the committee. Complex documents cannot be stored on the blog – they can only be linked to the blog – and as of now, we cannot establish those links unless documents can be easily uploaded to the club’s web domain.
John Poole and Claire Potter; Claire Potter, Board Liaison
*applications are currently being accepted by John Poole, as Claire is on vacation until June 5.
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