@Jast, thank you for sharing that perspective.
I can see how largely silent PR committees from the past would make our current crop of PR members look unusual. Under the leadership of @anonymous_bosh and @apparently_weird, we have a shared task list of things we, as a committee, want to accomplish.
We don’t have a central talk account, so you’ll see the requests come from individual committee members. Some of these things are going to require member input, which is why you can expect to see more posts like this, especially from myself and @noblegoblin.
Since the Public Relations thread is public, I posted here, but upon further reflection will move it to that category unless I’m given a good reason to make it private again.
The specific goal of this particular post is to create an events media list, which is a list of people and media outlets where we can send our events to get outside publicity to attract non-members to the space. Yes, the DMS calendar is the definitive internal event calendar for classes and events, but it is only viewed by members. That’s different from what I’m asking.
What I’m talking about is the kind of thing you see published in media like The Observer, D Magazine, etc. I can get those contacts easily.
What I don’t know, and what I’d like to find out from members, is where they personally go to look for craft fairs, special events for the family, etc. where we can post our events to the outside community.
This is important, because it brings new eyes and hopefully feet to DMS. For example, there’s chatter here on talk about a Maker Made Fair (or something like that) that had very low attendance numbers, and the previous PR committee was specifically mentioned as not being as active as some members thought they should be.
Both @noblegoblin and I (and probably @anonymous_bosh, though I haven’t asked him) have experience leading social media teams, and I have Public Relations experience with multinational agencies that live or die by their media coverage. I’m not promising I can do that here to the extent a regular employee could do, but I want to at least put some effort into it.
In the case of social media posts on @noblegoblin’s thread, we need permission to post photos of members and their projects. Many people have said they are fine posting to the show and tell category, but don’t want to end up on Facebook. Other people are fine with it. Her post gives us a way to tell the difference.
I hope I’ve clarified things, but if you still have questions or concerns, please let me know and I’ll try to address them.