User talk:Renee

Proposal for a newsletter:
TO: FG PR Committee DATE: 6/2009 SUBJECT: Newsletter proposal FROM: Renee Harger

The following is a proposal for resuming a FG newsletter with example newsletter and experiences from another group.

Proposal For A Newsletter (Committee?): The Funding Group would like to propose that a weekly, bi-monthly, monthly or quarterly newsletter resume at Free Geek. The format would most likely be e-mail and maybe hard copies for those volunteers, and others who do not have e-mail.

In an attempt to combat the apparent lack of communication about what is going on at Free Geek, a newsletter may be able to include those members of the FG community that are only at the facility infrequently and reach out to members of the community of the Portland Metro Area. In addition to providing updates to people who are not often here (ex. Board members), a newsletter can serve as a way of communicating within Free Geek as the different components and programs “report” on their own developments, ideas, plans in order for them to appear in the newsletter.

Possible content: The newsletter would ideally have: Updates of the different Free Geek programs: tasks, developments, needs Events that are going on within Free Geek. Larger volunteer milestones Special projects Call for help, Changes in staff Classes offered Special events Submissions from various departments and individuals Calendar of events for the term of the newsletter Art, poetry, interviews, profiles, etc.

Process: This project would most likely require a point person and a meeting to gather and make decisions on information and submissions for the newsletter. The person (people) that would be needed to start on such a project have not been identified. When identified, a time determination would need to be assessed to get an idea of how much time staff and volunteers are able to commit to a newsletter and how much time a newsletter might require.

LESSONS FROM ANOTHER GROUP'S NEWSLETTER PROCESS.

For the community that puts out this example newsletter (Ganas), it takes a full workday for each issue, but the work is distributed across a group of people who each know their parts pretty well and have lots of experience.

The main person puts in roughly 4 hours, inserting the articles, formatting text, cleaning up the type, selecting pictures, arranging the newsletter, and final layout.

A second person puts in maybe 1-hour editing time,

A third puts in a couple of hours doing graphics editing.

If they write articles themselves or do fancier stuff their time goes up.

The good thing is that much of the time people send their articles ready-to-go to a specific email address, so it's mostly a matter of cut-and-paste from email to Quark (for them, but Free Geek would probably want to use Scribus?) for layout.

Apparently, in the past, Shawn put out a quarterly or biannual newsletter in plain text email. Kevin experimented with one in HTML. Matteo suggests a new one might best have a text and pdf version. (See example newsletter attached)