Greater Seattle Chapter of ARMA International

SEATTLE CHAPTER EXPERIMENTS WITH COMMUNICATION METHODS
by Roger Winters, Chapter President

In June of this year, I wrote about change and challenged our chapter to review the things we do, to re-evaluate them, to consider how they are related to the Mission, Vision, and Values of ARMA International.

The "traditional" way for an ARMA chapter to communicate with its members has been through a monthly newsletter. We are all familiar with mailed newsletters--perhaps you have had the chance to be involved in producing one.

Newsletter technology has certainly changed! I remember using mimeograph and hectograph systems to produce and print newsletters in high school, college, church, and other groups in which I was involved. Word processing and the ability to have newsletters printed relatively quickly and easily changed all of that. As you know, our chapter moved away from the printed, postally-mailed newsletter to a PDF-formatted electronic newsletter posted on our Chapter Web Site (examples here).

Electronic mail and the Internet have given us a dramatic expansion of the tools we have for communicating within our chapter. When just a few of us had e-mail or Internet access, during the '90s until just a few years ago, we could not use these electronic media very successfully. Today, it seems that every member of the Greater Seattle Chapter has an e-mail address and, presumably, access to the Internet.

(It is essential today that a records and information management professional have these tools, not because they are "modern" or "cool," but because they have become part of the fabric of how business is done in today's world. If you do not have e-mail and Internet access yet, [you might be reading this as a printout someone brought you], talk with any of us on the Communications Committee--see message below--so we can help you with developing your connectivity and skills.)

The communications we need to send and receive as ARMA chapter members range from "hot" (notices of time-sensitive events or opportunities, like a chapter meeting) to "warm" (information on news or events that are current, but not immediate) to "cool" (generally, more lengthy matter that is informative, educational, entertaining, but not something that must be seen soon in order to have value to the reader). There is "cold" information, too--information not worth seeing, let alone reading: spam, most forwarded jokes and stories, rambles, etc.

Several of us realized that we have been beating ourselves up regularly because we were mixing "hot" and other messages in a single communication vehicle, the monthly Newsletter. If a deadline loomed because of the necessity of informing people about a dated event (the chapter meeting, a seminar, etc.), anyone who was slow in producing a less "hot" item (an article, artwork, etc.) had to be pressured to meet the deadline. If production were delayed for any reason, the tension and stress around the possibility of being too late to give members time to make the meeting ran high. Always, there remained proofreading, publishing, and posting tasks as a source of further stress as deadlines loomed. (You may remember that we used to send postcards in the U.S. Mail to remind people about membership meetings, as a hedge against problems in getting the Newsletter together timely.)

Why live with such stress when there are multiple tools and media for our communications?

We have realized that different media are appropriate for different kinds of messages:

E-Mail: Quick, easy-to-read e-mail messages are great for drawing attention to a time-sensitive matter. E-mail is not very good as a way to share lengthy articles, multi-part publications, Newsletters, and so forth.

Web Sites: A Web site offers many possibilities for communication. "Hot" news can appear on the "Home Page." Links direct a reader to more and more details, as one "drills down" to a level of detail that suits her. A Web site can be a "portal" to a wide variety of information: the ARMA International site offers a rich and diverse variety of resources, accessible from its opening page. We have used our Web site as the location where we have published our chapter newsletters. We know there is much potential in our chapter Web site that we haven't begun to tap! Contact Dawn Presler, our Web Master, if you have questions or ideas about our site.

Printed Matter: Traditional printed materials are best for such things as promotional brochures and flyers, professional journals, and even chapter newsletters. We have great examples of effective printed newsletters near by. Most noteworthy is the "2003 Newsletter of the Year" publication produced by the Puget Sound Chapter. (Puget Sound, by the way, again won the "Chapter of the Year (COTY)" award at the 2003 ARMA International Conference in Boston in October!) Our Communications Committee is already planning a Seattle Chapter printed publication to promote ARMA membership and highlight the accomplishments of our members and their organizations. We plan to produce occasional PDF and printed "journal" type newsletters to deliver more lengthy communications to our membership and other interested people. Such messages are important, but not "urgent" (in the sense of "time-driven"). It is often more convenient for a person to carry a printed article to a comfortable place and position for reading than to sit still in front of a computer screen and scroll from page to page.

Web Logs (Blogs): As you can see, we believe a Web Log ("blog") can be a most effective tool for communicating a variety of things to our members. "Blog" messages can be brief or lengthy. They typically involve information with links to other resources. They are similar to Web pages, except they change daily. They are similar to diaries or journals, since they are organized by date of posting, not by topic or other indices. Multiple people can post to them, eliminating the necessity of an editioral board or editor to manage publication. (Moderating, to ensure messages are relevant, on-topic, and so forth, is not the same as editing.) We will learn from our experience, as we get more and more participation from our members in adding to this Seattle Chapter Blog. (Please share the URL for our Blog with others, making sure to point out there is no "www" in the address: seattlearma.blogspot.com.

I hope you will use the Blog as a way to share information you have that may be of interest or use to other members of our chapter. It could be a sample of something you are writing, a link to an article you found interesting, a question or argument to stimulate a discussion, links to favorite computer utilities that help you professionally, ideas for future programs and other things.

As a reader, the key to finding a Blog useful is to return to it periodically, regularly. You may be able to set your software to notify you whenever a change has occurred in the Blog. You might return when we remind the membership to take a look, in a periodic, but brief e-mail message with a link to it. Let us know how you think we might make your experience with the Blog and with other forms of communication most valuable for you.

As a member, you can volunteer to be involved in our communicating. Sometimes people say "Communication is everything!" In a sense, that is quite true. The benefits of volunteering--learning and contributing--are available to you. You don't have to wait for us to ask! We hope you'll follow your impulse to contribute with communications, sharing what you know or want to learn with the rest of us.

Together, we will raise all of our boats!