[Sca-cooks] Missed announcements in Kingdom newsletter

[Stefan li Rous]

Kiri replied to me with:
> Thanks, Stefan, for the advice. To be honest, I am trying to get the
> autocrat to do all of these.
Yep. That is the person who should be overseeing this or at least 
coordinating it or delegating it to someone who can. But not all Event 
Stewards are going to think of these things, which is why I mentioned a 
few ideas that came to me.
> However, trying to get the event on the
> Kingdom web site is virtually impossible...the web minister has made a
> rule that event announcements don't show up on the web site until
> they've been published in the newsletter
I can see reasons, sometimes good ones, for this. Among them, he 
probably doesn't want to continually "scoop" the kingdom newsletter. If 
he does then folks might stop buying it. I purposely will send my 
monthly Florilegium articles to newsletter editors on my list several 
weeks ahead of when I post it to the lists so they don't get 
continually scooped by the email lists.

I didn't want to get into an argument over who screwed up on getting 
the announcement into the newsletter but in this case I think an 
exception can, and should, be made and the announcement posted on the 
kingdom web calendar. Hopefully you already have the event announcement 
up on another website somewhere and all you need on the kingdom website 
is a link or an entry in the calender.
> ...and even then, he runs a couple of weeks behind.
If he/she is doing their job, it shouldn't take that long. Especially 
in a case like this when there is a reasonable reason to push and get 
it up sooner.

For various reasons it can take a while for something to show up in the 
Florilegium, so I understand some of the problems. But I can, and have, 
gotten new material on line much quicker when needed.
> Part of the reason for the delay is that we have
> been told by our Kingdom Chronicler that she won't publish our event
> listing, even to just list it on the calendar, until we have a site for
> the event. Seems a little odd as I've seen numerous events from other
> groups published with a "TBA" listed for the site.
Yes, one of the strong advantages to web publishing is that things can 
be easily changed and updated. Not listing it at all, especially in a 
kingdom calendar listing which is frequently updated anyway, seems 
strange. Perhaps your kingdom has been hit by an extremely large number 
of events which have been cancelled after being announced. A calendar 
like this really wouldn't have to be updated once a week, it seems.
> I have a feeling that
> I should have autocrated this event rather than cooking it...I tend to
> be a little more "pushy" about such things since I've been around since
> rocks were soft...and I really hold very few people in this Kingdom in
> awe, unlike a lot of the newbies.
Yes, and unless you made enemies as Baroness, you do have that to fall 
back upon.

Use, or get your Event Steward to use perhaps with the help of your 
current B&B the unofficial channels. Get the local Peers to mention it 
in their circles and lists for instance. This is why I mentioned 
letters to the representatives of groups around you. I think these 
letters may in fact be a standard policy around here, but it has been 
years since I was an Event Steward for a major local event. One thing 
that has often boosted our event attendance, although I don't think it 
was specifically planned this way, was the King deciding he wanted a 
Peerage Circle or two at our event. Again, getting that to happen is 
one of those unofficial things, and the event has to be on the Royal 
Progress circuit. Of course our two baronial events always seem to be 
Royal Progress events.
>
> But yeah, we're trying to do all of what you suggested. In fact, I plan
> to take flyers and hand them out at Coronation this next weekend.
Good. Get some folks to take flyers to the other events before your 
event. Sometimes you can get a stack of these placed on the tables at 
gate. Sometimes not. I can often place a stack of Florilegium flyers on 
the gate table at other events, but I've given up even trying to at my 
home group's events. They "mess up the period atmosphere we are trying 
to project" is the excuse I used to get.

Maybe I ought to write up some of these ideas and put them somewhere in 
the Florilegium under event planning or in their own file. But truly, I 
don't really know which of these are of use outside my local area. If 
folks have ideas on how to publicize their events, perhaps they should 
email me and I can include those.

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****