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Documents regarding governance and management of Quants and Quills
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Newsletter proposal #32

Closed drzax closed 4 years ago

drzax commented 5 years ago

Below is a proposal for a new Hacks/Hackers Brisbane email newsletter from @kcassowary as discussed at the AGM. I've copied her proposal here for further discussion.

How:

At this stage, I'm just thinking of using MailChimp - but let me know if there's any issue with that/a better option. Is there a central H/H email I could be using for it? Otherwise I'll just set up a "personal" one (ie, something like katie.hhbne@gmail etc,) just for the newsletter distribution.

Rosie has collected a bunch of emails to kick it off with, from people who attended the November meetup - thank you, Rosie!

We can also push out links on FB and Twitter, if people want to sign up. My hope is that the newsletter will attract more people/diverse crowd to the Wed talks. But having said that, I think it could also be a good resource for people who aren't able to make it from week to week.

When:

I think the H/H newsletter can be sent out the Monday before a meetup, and the Friday after a meetup. One would preview what's coming up, and the other a re-cap.

I can kick it off on the Monday before our February meetup.

What (to include):

What's coming up this month

Recap on last month's presentation

What we're into it - best reads/listens/watches

Place for ads/services/shout-outs

Something about Brisbane we want to mention

Official stuff for the end

Why:

Who:

Well, me. I'm keen to write and produce the newsletter, which I'm sure I'll be able to manage.

However, I think we'll all need to pitch in with the suggestion sections (!!). There's only so much media I can consume, but also, the newsletter should be reflective of the group - rather than me and what I like!

drzax commented 5 years ago

Thanks for the fantastic proposal. I love it and I'm super keen to help make it happen. A few thoughts below.

Choice of provider: I'm in favour of MailChimp. One thing I'd like to give consideration to early is how we archive. To this end, it would be great if we could do most of the authoring in Markdown (Craig Mod has a long video explaining why Markdown is good for archiving). Aside from anything else, I think it's important that Quants & Quills 'owns' the content, in as much as it's not locked into a provider's ecosystem.

From address: I can setup an email address — probably something like newsletter@@quantsquills.com and we can just forward it to whoever is running the newsletter!

When: My inclination would be to start with monthly and go more frequent once we know we have the capacity. But happy to go with your schedule if you think you can commit to it.

Content: I like all your proposed sections, though I'm not sure how I see the Brisbane section working. I wonder if it would be an opportunity to seek new sponsorship, like: This section brought to you by BNE MKTING, for example.

Who: Brilliant. I reckon if you can write/produce the newsletter with input for specific sections from the rest of us that would work well. I think a presence from all of us would work especially well in the 'what we're into' section. We could all submit a link/whatever to each one.

Other thoughts

I've been reading through https://newsletterguide.org/ which is very comprehensive. I think it's worth a browse.

Branding

I wonder if it's worth thinking about a name for the newsletter.

Design

FWIW, I'm hugely in favour of minimalist design in email newsletters. Something that promotes clarity, is easy to skim and uses clear, direct, simple language (both visual and written).

Newsletters I like and why

A lot of my favourite email newsletters a quite personal in tone — I feel like I've got some kind of relationship with the writer. Here are a few of my faves:

That'll do for now.

drzax commented 5 years ago

Aside: This is an interesting read from Craig Mod about the future of the book. I think a lot of this translates to journalism pretty neatly.

kcassowary commented 5 years ago

Re, Content: I like all your proposed sections, though I'm not sure how I see the Brisbane section working. I wonder if it would be an opportunity to seek new sponsorship, like: This section brought to you by BNE MKTING, for example.

Re, branding & design:

Newsletters I like and why:

Ann Friedman - Ann is a feminist writer and podcast host from the US. I like Ann's voice, mostly. She's positive, eloquent, passionate.

Ren LaForme's Tools for Journalism - I honestly always read to the bottom. Yes, it's relevant to my industry but the clear headings, dot points, links etc make it easy to scan.

Best of Pocket - This isn't even really a newsletter. But I often use these round-ups to read the best stuff I've missed during the week. The takeaway from this is the simplicity of it.

kcassowary commented 5 years ago

Just a quick one: This week I received the first of a new newsletter I had signed up to. It was a MailChimp one - but the font size/formatting on my phone was bad, ie, really small. If anyone has used MailChimp before and is aware of this and has tips to avoid it, I'd appreciate it!

drzax commented 5 years ago

As far as I understand it, this is an email design issue and not a Mailchimp issue—we can use whatever design/code we like with Mailchimp. However they do, I'm sure, offer some stock/template designs. I would hope and expect that these all played well with mobile clients.

Email design/dev is a very difficult endeavour.

On Fri, 25 Jan 2019 at 11:41, Katie Cassidy notifications@github.com wrote:

Just a quick one: This week I received the first of a new newsletter I had signed up to. It was a MailChimp one - but the font size/formatting on my phone was bad, ie, really small. If anyone has used MailChimp before and is aware of this and has tips to avoid it, I'd appreciate it!

— You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/quantsquills/governance/issues/32#issuecomment-457424699, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAkaUzMp29rpSAp-IKDj736Cyfaq65OYks5vGmCvgaJpZM4aJ-30 .

drzax commented 5 years ago

Design inspiration:

drzax commented 5 years ago

I think if we find one we can all agree on in the Campaign Monitor free templates gallery then we should just go with that for now and evolve it as necessary.

kcassowary commented 5 years ago

So this is Canva for newsletters? And the build happens there, then we distribute via MailChimp?

I would vote for this one, cause it doesn't rely on pics so much

drzax commented 5 years ago

Campaign Monitor is a competitor to MailChimp, but I think that builder can be used to create a template we could potentially use on any platform.

On Wed, 6 Feb 2019 at 10:12, Katie Cassidy notifications@github.com wrote:

So this is Canva for newsletters? And the build happens there, then we distribute via MailChimp?

I would vote for this one https://templates.campaignmonitor.com/canvas/design/13-the-blueprint-3#/editor, cause it doesn't rely on pics so much

— You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/quantsquills/governance/issues/32#issuecomment-460855725, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAkaU2qIdOfhC0RnvxU8ejIkdzapKmnwks5vKh4EgaJpZM4aJ-30 .

kcassowary commented 5 years ago

First newsletter is sent!

Here's our signup page, if we want to push it out via the social media...

Thanks @drzax @rosieryan and Jonathan :)

drzax commented 5 years ago

Great work, thanks @kcassowary.

drzax commented 5 years ago

Potential sponsors:

drzax commented 4 years ago

I'm closing this issue because it got done (thanks @kcassowary!). But it still has quite a bit of useful information and I might open a new, more specific task for email re-design which points here. But I want to prioritise the website first.