Team/Communications

Primary contact: Jonty
Secondary contact: martind

Remit

The Communications team is in charge of email communications, Twitter, the blog, announcements on the website, public outreach communication with various communities, and communication with the press.

Much of all camp communication will be focused on community outreach: how to make announcements, how to inspire people and communities to participate, but also how to pull people into the organisation (e.g. as staff or volunteers.) Consequently communication with communities is what the Communications team specialises in, and what we are good at, and in a sense this part is much more important to us than traditional "PR".

The Communications team aims to develop a deliberate pace when sending out announcements. This involves the development of a communications strategy, an understanding of our audiences, and relates to our visual design, community interactions, planning schedule, promotion, sponsors, etc.

Our work does not involve any internal communication (within our org team.)

Team

Staff

Jonty
martind
amx109 ("free agent")
SamLR

To contact the team: communications at emfcamp.org

We work closely with:

Team/Admin who sets the event schedule and timeline
Team/Infodesk who produces information that needs to be distributed
Team/Volunteers who seeks volunteers (we help create an audience for that)
Team/Events who seeks speakers and contributors (we help create an audience for that)
Team/Web and Team/Internet who own some of our communications infrastructure
...?

Assets

Event Description

An internal document with an authoritative event description and some key facts; this will likely not be shared in this raw form, but it is a starting point to create all kinds of other documents.)

Working draft https://emfcamp.pads.ccc.de/event-description
Static snapshot for the public /Event Description
An updated version used for posters https://emfcamp.pads.ccc.de/poster2

Logo Pack

The logo was made by Stavros Georgakopoulos.

Posters and Flyers

gmjhowe made a first poster/flyer for us, in colour and b/w: https://www.emfcamp.org/static/EMF-Flyer:Poster-2012.pdf

Would be good if we also had a poster toolkit/template as it would help immensely with promotion. (To encourage teams and villages to make their own posters and send them around.) Here's the brief I sent to one developer: https://emfcamp.pads.ccc.de/poster-dev

Audio Ads

Audio ad by solexious for the camp to be sent to relevant podcasts:

Sent to:

Ubuntu UK Podcast
The Hackables (yes it counts :p)

Suggestions:

Projects

Event Promotion

This is a larger effort, constituent tasks are broken out below into more discrete projects.

In broad phases:

~~Put fundamentals in place: make plans, build team, get tools, write docs~~
Reach out to communities (mostly done, but ongoing)
Reach out to key individuals and self-facilitating media nodes (now)
Independent media (now)
Media

Contact List

Orgs/communities to contact.

http://typewith.me/p/SDOhibbzkh

Community Outreach

It is a priority for our team to increase the list of attending organisations, and to ensure a broad spectrum of backgrounds. This means:

getting them interested, giving them time to ask questions; having them witness a planning meeting where practicable
where possible: connecting them to the right people to start building early contacts, inside our team or in other communities
once they're committing to come: ask if we can mention them on our website

The list of participating orgs is helpful in community outreach. It very quickly and directly addresses a few recurring fundamental questions:

Does this warrant my attention at all? (Is there enough activity? Who is affiliated with it?)
Will it be worth my time to attend this? (Can I expect good times? What activities can I expect there?)
Will it be worth the effort to prepare contributions? (What audience will I have for my projects?)

Cf mailing list discussion

Ticket Sales Promo

Speakers & contributors

Cf. Talks

Volunteers

TODO. This is partially a side-effect of our event promotion.

Need to help teams grow their staff (though we're not a job centre; it's mostly their own responsibility) Teams#Open_Positions and rally many volunteers for the camp Volunteers#Staff

Blog Posts and Tweets

We should post more detailed articles about the following before the event starts (and would like help by other teams/individuals in writing them):

An introduction to the location and camp layout (with pics, maps, etc)
An introduction to the basic camp community setup, the camp ethos, and our need for volunteers
An introduction to the misc event formats, and how to participate
A quick review of the participating orgs and villages

Optionally:

A review of our basic infrastructure (power etc)

We should aim to tweet frequently, e.g. once a day. A pad with tweet ideas:

https://emfcamp.pads.ccc.de/532452352351

Pre- and Post-Event Attendee Emails

Just a reminder of things to mention in our pre-event messaging to camp attendees. Please record anything that needs to be mentioned on behalf of any team.

Pre-Event Email:

See: FAQ#Planning_your_Attendance
See: Example Packing List
Food situation
CarShares
Requirement to register u18s
Request to tag photos/videos with "emfcamp", tweets with #emfcamp
How to get in touch with other attendees (mailing list, #emfcamp Twitter tag, #emfcamp IRC channel, ...)
IMPORTANT: A request to consider volunteering (include an updated list of requests for help for each team)
IMPORTANT: and a separate mailing to everyone who volunteered during ticket purchase
...

Post-Event Email:

Links to any media coverage
...

Documentation

Comms Discipline

Consistent, friendly voice
Considerate pacing (don't spam)
Completeness (e.g., mention all participating communities, as far as known)
Accurate information dispersal (make sure all staff are briefed well; manage expectations; damage control.)

Approach

Focus on approaching existing communities, they will understand us right away.
- People unfamiliar with hackspace-type communities will have a hard time understanding us; you cannot easily explain that which they should rather personally experience.
- We can still talk to everyone else in a second pass, if we think we need to.
Map out a broad spectrum of topics and activities, then research & contact communities in those areas
Prefer to approach them in person. Give them time to poke us and ask questions. Have them witness our activities up close (e.g. invite them to our planning meetings.)
Prominently announce each participating community once they are ready to commit.

Timeline

Keeping track of key messages we sent out (esp direct emails.)

In the Past

Message	Recipient	When	Details
Email Survey	Email subscribers	27 Apr
CfP open	All community groups	17 May	Team/Events/CfP
Ticket Pre-sales	Email subscribers	2 June 11am	"Electromagnetic Field pre-sale tickets are now available!"
Pre-sales blog post	Blog, Twitter	22 June	Reminder of pre-sales; full ticket sales soon (get reduced ticket price while they last); quick comment on u18
Planning update	Blog, Twitter	27 June	"these orgs are coming", our current thinking about event structure, looking for more staff, u18 updates

Now/Ongoing

Message	Recipient	When	Details
Full ticket sales	All of them: email subscribers, all mailing lists, blog, twitter, ...	early July	May be worth announcing in stages, like last time.
Approaching speakers	Contacts	Early July	Would be nice to have some speakers lined up for when tickets go on sale

Coming Up

Message	Recipient	When	Details
U18's announcement	Email subscribers	mid-July ?	Need to clarify position (U18's likely allowed but not a kid's event)
Call for volunteers	All paid/pre-paid tickets?	End of July	Need a lot of volunteers (~250)
Pre-Event Email	Attendees	Late Aug	A reminder email with some key documentation, cf. /Pre-Event_Emails

Resources

Tools:

Lighthouse project for task management (this is public)

Useful:

Page of various printing costs & lead times for various formats (leaflet, t-shirt, banner)

Minutes

/Minutes/2012-06-12