[nfbmi-talk] NFBMI List and Reporting

[Fred Wurtzel]

Hello,

 

Well, Mark, I can understand your frustration.  You are reacting to a
certain kind of list content that annoys you.  Some others are responding to
other content that annoys them.  Despite all this annoyance, I feel we have
begun a positive discussion of how to make our list the most effective tool
for our organization to use to do all the things Terry mentioned in his
post.

 

I especially like the point about reporting on events.  For example, I
recorded quite a few interviews of people who went to Baltimore.  At the
time, I did not know for sure what I would do with these interviews.  They
remain raw material for use to develop an article about that event.  I
believe that if we see a job that needs doing we ought to help get it done,
or do it ourselves.  I sometimes live up to my own expectations and
sometimes don't.  

 

This topic of reportage of our organization activities brings up a hole
which is left by not publishing a regular newsletter.  Our publication is
the Michigan Focus.  As a past editor, I can say it is a lot of work and
getting material and resources can be hard.  These are not reasons not to do
it. Of course, this list could fill in some of that gap and does to an
extent.  

 

In emergency preparedness training people are taught that when a task needs
to be done, it gets done much faster when someone specific is called on to
do it.  For example it is much better to say "Fred, call 911, rather than
saying "Someone call 911.  My point is that it is good to appoint someone
who attends an event to do follow-up publicity.  No one asked anyone nor did
anyone volunteer to report about Washington Seminar.  It is reasonable that
people are curious to know what happened and what follow-up we can do with
our delegation.  Since no one was in charge of that, it hasn't happened.
That is not anyone's fault, it simply was not planned into the event.

 

Now that this expectation or desire has been expressed, we can work on
planning that into future events.  We have some events coming up.  The most
prominent is National Convention. We could begin thinking about how we want
that to be publicized from our delegation point of view.  Of course, the
Monitor covers it in detail from our National perspective, but we may want
some reflection from our state point of view.  We have Braille and Science
programs this summer.  These are very important events to publicize and
report on. I am fully responsible to work on these things since I am part of
the outfit as are all of the rest of us.  

 

Thinking about and formulating a structured and clear public relations plan
will benefit us.  I have only touched on a few things.  There are lots of
ways in which our image is developed and projected.  A key part of this has
been identified with the discussion of reporting to our members and friends
about our activities.  We can think of lots of other things we do to make a
difference.

 

Thanks for reading.

 

Warmest Regards,

 

Fred