[wplug-plan] PR committee

[David Ostroske]

On 12/7/05, Vance Kochenderfer <vkochend at nyx.net> wrote:
> Thanks for the responses.  To answer your last point, Dave,
> procedural issues weren't really my concern.  (Although on that
> topic, it might be a good idea to make the WPLUG Vice-Chair an
> ex-officio member of any PR committee.)

Works for me. She might want to participate as a full-fledged member,
but that's up to her to decide.

> What I had trouble with was figuring out what the committee
> would actually *do*.  Outreach events, like Marketpro shows or
> Software Freedom Day, already seem to fall under the scope of
> the program committee (and of course nothing says you have to
> be a member of that committee to help out at an event!).

But how? The Program Committee's primarily in charge of planning and
making arrangements for WPLUG events. Their focus is mainly inward,
though they'd welcome new people who come to the meetings. But PR is
about letting people know that we're here and inviting them to come
in.

> I feel that inter-LUG communications and contacts with possible
> partners/sponsors are sufficiently high-level that the board is
> going to be involved anyway.  So in that case a committee would
> tend to be duplicative.

I don't see redundancy as being a serious problem here. The PR
Committee would be putting out feelers to other groups, which can be
done independently of the Board. If official joint action needed to be
taken, though, then the entire Board, and not just the Vice-Chair,
would step in at that point.

> Don't get me wrong; I agree with the view that PR is an
> important and under-served function right now.  My main concern
> is whether a new committee is the right way to go, or if it
> would work better to have the board set PR as a priority and
> work with the program, newsletter, internet, and ErieLUG
> committees to achieve that.

Well, the Program Committee can bring in outside presenters, but that
helps to promote the presenters more than it does to promote WPLUG,
which is only fair. Of the existing committees, only ErieLUG Revival
is outwardly focused, and they've got enough to deal with as it is. If
you can promote WPLUG through the newsletter (and folks do love the
newsletter), be my guest. But the sort of PR stuff that we need to do
hasn't been fully addressed yet. That's what a PR Committee could
offer.

> IMO, it's important that any new committee that is created
> expand participation.  It does little good to have 27 different
> committees if they all draw from the same pool of 10 people.

You're absolutely right about that. But looking at that pool, I see 13
people, 4 or 5 of which only just recently volunteered. If we had a PR
Committee, then no doubt that our pool would grow.

To address a point you made earlier, it's true that people can help
out without joining a committee. But we're also interested in
long-term growth. If people make a committment by joining a PR
committee, then learn what sort of PR actions work best, then they can
pass that knowledge on very readily, to similarly committed
volunteers, who just happen to be PR committee members, too!

> If you've ever worked in a decent-sized company, you've probably
> seen slogans like "safety is everybody's job."  The idea being
> that just because there's someone who's the safety guy, doesn't
> mean you don't have to watch out for hazards.  I'd like to make
> sure we don't give the impression to the members that PR is
> someone else's job.

At least it's someone's job. That's where we've got to start. We need
to concentrate on PR strategies, and to date, nobody's really taken a
lead on that effort.

Well, except maybe Greg Simkins. Hey Greg, wanna lend a hand? :)

--
David Ostroske <eksortso at gmail.com>