Communications – Creative Administration

A Better Solution for Local Branch Electronic Newsletters

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.

One Path Towards Modernizing the Society’s Communications Offices

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.

Local Branches Shouldn’t Be Required to Publish Newsletters

There have been ongoing discussions for many years about how local branches can best manage communications with their populace in light of the changing media landscape.

Decades ago, the Society established a policy that each local barony and province should publish a newsletter to get information out to the membership and the public, but given the increasing importance of websites and social media, a growing number of branches find that those newsletters no longer play a meaningful role in their communications portfolio.

Recent Board Minutes Posted

The minutes from the first two quarterly meetings of the SCA Board of Directors for 2023 have now been posted to their website in the usual location, along with the minutes from the first four conference calls of the year:
https://sca.app.neoncrm.com/np/clients/sca/neonPage.jsp?pageId=10

Correspondence follows, for those curious.

From the Archives: The “SCA Gazette” Proposal of 2015–2017

In April 2015, the Society’s Publications Office undertook a survey, variously referred to as the “Evolution of SCA Communications” or “Newsletter & Communications Survey,” which asked participants about the channels they used to obtain information about SCA activities.

Survey announcement sent to kingdom chroniclers

At the next quarterly meeting of the Board of Directors, the Publications Office submitted a flurry of proposed policies and actions based on the survey results.

The SCA Lists Archive Breach

TL/DR: An SCA IT web configuration error exposed confidential email messages.

For three years, the SCA mistakenly published all email sent to Board of Directors’ feedback address, allowing anyone on the Internet to read messages that had been sent in confidence, including reports of harassment and sexual assault.
If you emailed sca-comments@sca.org between March 6, 2020 and February 2, 2023, you should be aware that the message you sent is no longer secret and has likely been read by other people outside of the organization’s leadership.
Six mailing lists used by committees for internal communication were also affected.

Questioning An “Optical Illusion”

At the end of March, the SCA announced the availability of a t-shirt being sold as a fundraiser for the Society’s Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

I am always glad to see the Society taking steps to promote inclusion, and in general I like the design of this shirt, but I was one of several people who wryly noted that the placement of the of the white chivalric arming sword as the first item, and just a bit larger than any of the other items, somewhat undercut the message.

Limitations on Local Control

The ongoing debate about allowing individual events to set masking requirements has been heated, and I think others have done a good job of laying out the argument, but one particular salvo in this dispute caught my eye and seemed worth of note:

The Society’s leadership says that it decided against allowing individual groups to set their own masking policies because “to do so would be cumbersome and problematic for people traveling outside their home groups.”