[Comms] Minutes and decisions from today's meeting

[Myfanwy Nixon]

The Communications subcommittee met today. Here is a brief overview of our discussion. Thanks to everyone who contributed,and especially to Lucha for taking notes.

I have added action points and assigned names. Please feel free to unassign yourself if you don't agree with my choices!

Attendees:

Ernesto Gimeno, Jen Bramley, Gemma Humphreys, Khairil Yousof, Myf Nixon, Lucha Sotomayor, Zarino Zappia

New website

We agreed that it's good to go live. Zarino needs to set up some page redirects so he'll be in touch with Felipe Alvarez.

Some changes/additions we'd like to see in the next iteration of the site:

• The FCI video (ACTION - Lucha to ticket the request on Github, including a suggestion for where it should go on the site)
• More images (ACTION - Myf to ticket the addition of some image elements to the site's interior pages)
• A clearer description of what happened at the Poplus conference with perhaps a round-up of the posts from around the world (that are seen in a Google Groups thread) Action: Myf to write this copy.
• Links to sites where Components have been deployed. This is for the non-developer groups who might want to use Components but can't see at a glance what they are for or how they work. (ACTION - Jen to decide which current sites are the best examples and to make a ticket requesting a page where we include screenshots and links - Myf can help write the copy if required)

We decided that

- The Github pull request system currently means that anyone can suggest changes, but that someone can still have an overall say for the tone and voice of the website, which is good, but:

- the interface is highly tecchy and will dissuade anyone non-technical from contributing.

- As things stand it's currently ok. We might want to look at a more accessible platform, like Wordpress, or http://prose.io/,  in the future.

- At the moment we'd like it if people pointed us towards their own blog posts (in any language) about Poplus activities, or sent us text, so we can paste it into the Poplus blog.(ACTION - Myf to start a Google Groups thread asking people to do this, also see below re tweets)

- Everyone within the Comms sub-committee should have different tasks; one of them can be reminding people to write up their activities (Volunteer wanted to be this person)

- The facilitator of each sub-committee should also be responsible for making sure summaries of their activity appear on the blog at regular intervals. (ACTION - as above - Myf can put into same thread as the blogs one)

- We need to set up an email address for press enquiries - eg pr...@poplus.org. (ACTION-  Lucha to make a ticket requesting this)

- We should incorporate the events calendar that the Events committee discussed yesterday. (ACTION  Gemma to see what needs to be done, and ticket it)

- We should add a link to the promotional materials, as discussed in Events yesterday (ACTION - Lucha to decide where the link should go and add, or ask someone to add it).

Outreach

Jen said that the current strategy is to look at the attendee lists for the events we know we're attending, and contact people by email beforehand.

We'd encourage others to do the same with events worldwide, but only if they are comfortable doing so. The materials download pack should help.

This strategy is good so far, but may leave out the groups who do not attend such events.

To reach less tecchy groups, we need to show results: how Components are useful and how they’ve been deployed.

Maybe a video? Lucha will speak to an advertisement company who are friendly with FCI in order to see if they have any good ideas. (OGP did this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bq_ZWl1ZXA0)

Translation

We’re not truly global if we don’t translate.

Key sections of the website should be translated into key languages.

- Spanish (FCI)

- Chinese (Mandarin)

First ask if there are any volunteers for translation, and then see if we need to pay anyone. (ACTION - Myf to ask on Google Groups; Khairil to ask Sinar and G0v.tw about Mandarin. Isabel has volunteered Portuguese)

Community

The Poplus Twitter account could be wider-ranging.

We suggested changing curator for the Twitter account, passing a new password along to whoever is hosting an event.

What do we tweet about?

- Development

- What organizations are doing

In between times, everyone should tweet from their own accounts and include @poplus, and we'll retweet. (ACTION: Myf add to the same Google Groups thread as the one about blog posts).

Comms meetings

Will be every fortnight. We'll monitor to see whether this is too frequent or not enough, and change acordingly as time passes.

Next meeting 6th June, all welcome. (ACTION - Myf to calendarise)

Keep a rolling agenda on this same document. (ACTION  - All: Everyone is welcome to contribute points for discussion)

[Gemma Humphrys]

Hi Myf,

 

Thanks for this excellent summary.

 

I volunteer to remind people to write up their activities after Poplus specific events or after attending other events where they spoke about Poplus/met new Poplus members etc.

 

Best,

 

Gemma.

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[Martín Szyszlican]

Hi, I'm sorry I couln't attend to this meeting.

Thanks for the summary.

1) You say you need posts in any language, there was already a thread here about poplus posts, you can see it here:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/poplus/1EZieFMv92EQ

Also, there's a planet set-up, that consumes the RSS of some blogs and then produces a unified page:
http://planet.poplus.org/

2) If you want to embed the calendar in the website, you should follow this simple steps:
https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/41207?hl=en

Or directly going to this page, customize the options and copy the code:
https://www.google.com/calendar/embedhelper?src=sunlightfoundation.com_c7b7172oeaeqakuabuhuaemnn4%40group.calendar.google.com

3) I see there was no conversation about the process for gathering feedback... does that belong in communications or in components?

Thanks,

Martín.

--

Martín Szyszlican

Desarrollo web usable y accesible

martinszyszlican.com

[James McKinney]

On May 23, 2014, at 12:05 PM, Martín Szyszlican <mart...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi, I'm sorry I couln't attend to this meeting.

Thanks for the summary.

1) You say you need posts in any language, there was already a thread here about poplus posts, you can see it here:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/poplus/1EZieFMv92EQ

I got “invalid topic ID” but this URL works for me: https://groups.google.com/d/topic/poplus/1EZieFMv92E/discussion

Also, there's a planet set-up, that consumes the RSS of some blogs and then produces a unified page:
http://planet.poplus.org/

Where is the planet code? I can only find the code for http://planet.ciudadanointeligente.org/ at https://github.com/ciudadanointeligente/planet

James

[Juan Pablo Pérez Trabucco]

Hi, in this moment the planet poplus code is in the same repo, but in the poplus branch (master is the planetplanet software untouch).

https://github.com/ciudadanointeligente/planet/tree/poplus

Best,

JP

Juan Pablo Pérez Trabucco

Dev, dev, dev /o/

github | @rezzo | (+56 9) 9789 6805

Fundación Ciudadano Inteligente

Holanda 895 - Providencia, Santiago de Chile.

ciudadanointeligente.org | @ciudadanoi | (+56 2) 2419 2770

[Pedro Daire]

great to hear that a committee is already working and making things happen.

Regarding the "more accessible technology" for posting, we could use the planet solution as well; having the proper feeds the post could be written in whatever platform.

My only concern related the new design of the website because is not using the poplus logo as it is. The "POPLUS" word is part of the logo including the font. In order to keep coherent with the t-shirts, stickers, notebooks, etc. @Zarino is it possible to correct that? I think in the rest of the sites the application of the brackets is is good, but for the main site I rather like the full logo.

Congrats to the communications committee (AKA: comms-comm)

Pedro Daire Letelier

Director LATAM Lab

Fundación Ciudadano Inteligente 

Holanda 895 - Providencia, Santiago de Chile. 

CiudadanoInteligente.org | @Ciudadanoi |  (56-2) 2419 2770

[Myfanwy Nixon]

On Friday, May 23, 2014 4:53:54 PM UTC+1, Gemma Humphrys wrote:

I volunteer to remind people to write up their activities after Poplus specific events or after attending other events where they spoke about Poplus/met new Poplus members etc.

 

That's great - thanks Gemma.

Myf

[Myfanwy Nixon]

Thanks Martín, useful stuff.

On Friday, May 23, 2014 5:05:10 PM UTC+1, Martín Szyszlican wrote:

3) I see there was no conversation about the process for gathering feedback... does that belong in communications or in components?

You're right that we didn't manage to cover that this time. I noted your and Isabel's comments on the agenda document too:

"How do we establish use cases, share user research and define user stories? I think this should all be shared so one project without funds for user research can benefit from other projects."

You know, it seems to me that the obvious place for people to share their experience and feedback is:
a) Here, when it's in a nascent state that would benefit from debate and input, and
b) On the Poplus blog, once it's in a form where it includes some reflection and useful pointers for other people to learn from.

Any thoughts about that?

In any case, it would be really good if part of the natural process of building or using a Poplus Component was ALWAYS to write up your experiences and thoughts. So, if we already have a 'ready for launch' checklist, the last item on the list could be 'write it up'.
 
Myf

[Myfanwy Nixon]

On Friday, May 23, 2014 6:35:53 PM UTC+1, Pedro Daire wrote:

My only concern related the new design of the website because is not using the poplus logo as it is. The "POPLUS" word is part of the logo including the font. In order to keep coherent with the t-shirts, stickers, notebooks, etc. @Zarino is it possible to correct that? I think in the rest of the sites the application of the brackets is is good, but for the main site I rather like the full logo.

Thanks Pedro! Zarino says he is sure that's no problem.

Our two designers are away or on other projects this coming week, but I'm going to create a ticket and they will get onto it when they can. However with the relative urgency of getting the site live in time for Transparency Camp, can we go ahead and launch, and fix the logo retrospectively?

Cheers,
Myf