Month: October 2024

In the SCA, “electronic newsletters” generally take the form of infrequently-published PDFs that have a unique content and format and production infrastructure and distribution calendar, making them very different communications channels than branch websites and outwards-facing social media channels — but it doesn’t need to be like this.

One possible step along the path suggested in yesterday’s post would be for the web ministry to provide publishing solutions for electronic newsletters that could be used by the two hundred baronies which are required to produce them, as well as the smaller number of shires and cantons that produce them by choice.

Continue reading “A Better Solution for Local Branch Electronic Newsletters”

Every few months, I run into another discussion about modernizing the SCA’s communications offices. There is widespread agreement on many of the problems — information about events and activities routinely appears only in one channel or another, with key details of an upcoming championship to be found only on a Facebook group, and a fighter practice being announced only on a closed Discord server, and discussion of a feast menu happening on a mailing list which only a fraction of the populace receives, and court reports being included in a PDF “newsletter” which almost nobody reads.

The fact that these communications channels are siloed into separate offices is frequently identified as a problem — with Chroniclers producing newsletters, Web Ministers maintaining Society-run websites, and Social Media Officers administering Society-organized online discussion channels, perhaps it is no surprise that communications end up fragmented as well… And it’s natural to suspect that if we merged those offices into a single team, that would allow our communications to be more coherent across that entire spectrum.

Continue reading “One Path Towards Modernizing the Society’s Communications Offices”