Communications Archives - Creative Administration

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.”