DRAFT Covid19 Response Team: What the communications team does

Workspaces Community Outreach & Coordination
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Hi everyone! This is a draft of a collaboratively drafted call for a communication team to support the efforts of people to cope with/respond to the COVID19 pandemic. As well as to set the foundation for effective community responses to future crises. Please feel free to add your comments below with proposals/questions etc add things you see are missing etc. OR even put yourself forward to take one of the roles on yourself already now. The idea here is to make space for anyone and everyone who wants to contribute in a way that works for them!

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This is a call for a team of people who can together build and run great communication campaigns to help us ensure that the activities manage to reach and engage the needed audience for them to meet their objectives.

The background to this work is that there are different teams working on different activities which will require different kinds of communication efforts. What they all have in common is that they are aimed at improving our ability to collectively respond to the ongoing pandemic crises, as well as to future ones.

There are three different kinds of campaigns:

  1. Campaigns to engage people to shape and join online activities like collaboration sprints or hackathons. Each online activity is designed and launched whenever we are asked for help from those working “in the field” to tackle the crisis.
  2. Campaigns to engage people to contribute high-quality content on topics aimed to help people connect the dots between different topics, activities and sources information. In order to make sense of the current situation and its implications. With a view to learn from what is happening now, to define concrete actions that we can take to better prepare us for future crises.
  3. Campaigns to draw financial and nonfinancial support to finance projects and activities (Crowdfunding campaigns, Client/funding/Sponsorship Lead generation, Sales of tickets to online events). Many important initiatives are cronichally under-resourced which threatens their ability to achieve impact at scale. So we leverage our capacity as large distributed network of people to help them get the word out to people who can help them the support they need.

Each campaign is expected to last 3 months. The communication team will coordinate with the organisers of the activities and producers of the content on our online workspace. All communication material are to be presented to the other teams on the online workspaces ahead of publication for 24 hrs so that community members can comment/make proposals for changes etc. The final decisions about use of materials, design of campaigns will be made by Edgeryders community managers so as to avoid “getting stuck”. however this will be done in close consultation with the community of collaborators around the initiatives:

So as to enable decentralised work, the communications team will deliver on a running basis all the communication materials produced, including editable design files, to an online repository provided by Edgeryders.

  1. The conception of a social media strategy for the campaign
  2. Content creation for the campaign
  3. Animation and moderation of The projects’ social networks and the Project’s account on the Edgeryders.eu Platform
  4. Setting up and running the curation rotation program for the Edgeryders social media accounts to connect the campaign with the Edgeryders organisation online presence

Scope of responsibilities

1 - The creation of a social media strategy for the campaign which includes:

  • Proposal of editorial lines for six types of content to in this list:

    • Thematic infographics (event calendar)
    • Featured articles and discussion threads from the edgeryders.eu platform
    • Portraits of selected individuals as part of the activities
    • Promotion of “goodies/rewards” such as posters
    • Acknowledgement of community hero of the week
    • Calls for contribution of input (crowdsourcing information)

  • Definition of an editorial calendar validated by the teams organising the activities that are being promoted through the campaign

  • Uploading, creation and dissemination of content according to the editorial plan validated beforehand with the team running the activities for which the campaign is intended to draw engagement:

2 - The administration and management of the campaigns social profiles, which are:

  • Linkedin Page
  • Facebook fan page
  • Twitter account
  • Account on the Edgeryders.eu platform

3 - Active one on one outreach to super-connectors on social media

  • Produce a list of “leads” for individuals who are especially relevant active in the context of thematics and activities that the campaign is promoting, and have a large audience
  • Reach out to them on a one to one basis and inform them about/invite them to participate in the activity

Paid vs unpaid work

Each activity will have a communication budget of X Eur attached to it. These are solidarity funds intended to support volunteers who really want to be involved but cannot otherwise participate. It is up to each team to decide together how to allocate those resources. The funds have different requirements for how they can be spent as defined by the rules of the funding sources - the designated community manager and administration assistant for each will know what they are. We need a nice document for shared management of the budget that makes it easier for us to be compliant with the funding sources! Help @Marina?

How the work will be organised

To keep things simple and fun we will keep the communication team for each project limited to do 3 people who work together. The teams will also have access to designers, copywriters, video makers and others who are on standby to quickly produce any needed communication materials requested by the team. The team will be expected to self organise the work - but will have support from an experienced Edgeryders community manager who can help show how we have done things in the past and where to find materials etc, tech support to help do things like set up minisites etc.

How to join the team

Fill in this form where you will be asked a bit about yourself and pick a time for a call where you can meet the rest of the teams: We need to make a simple form form people to fill in - who can help with this?

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For the two Horizon projects, the overview is available in the magic budgets and I would suggest we stick to them. Each team leader is responsible for managing his part of the budget and inform me when it comes to allocation so we make sure we comply with the rules. If we are using these budgets to fund activities that weren’t planned beforehand (understandable considering the situation) things to make sure are:

  • the work of the collaborator will contribute to the achievement of the specific task as per the GAs and any deviation from this can be fully justified if needed.
  • the budget category is respected, together with the administrative procedures: hiring collaborators as staff implies having a contract and monthly reporting the time; paying for a service implies respecting the procurement rules.
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no i meant we need something public facing that is simple to understand and which then translates easilyt to time reporting for those roles - the overhead for time reporting has to be kept reasonable for people doing short stints.

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We can define internally what budget are we planning to use and for what roles and then publish how much is available for each task, if it is really necessary to have a public facing budget.

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its necessary - @kajafarszky can you help with this?

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we should have a call about this. will this concern only your part of the budget?

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The one I manage and possibly the one @noemi manages - @noemi and I have a call at 11 tomorrow in the Now room, maybe join us there?

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I join you tomorrow as well, so we see how to go further with it.

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I think this probably needs simplifying/shortening down. Maybe it is better to split this into three separate calls, one for each role? What do you think @noemi ?

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Yes.
I would say partnership builder is the one which needs a different skillset from the other two, so different call.

The collaboration dj call you already put out covers some communication, but I would insert there info about the channels which are described here above. As it is written now, it’s not v different from comm journalist.

This last one should just be - producing 2 stories for 4 hrs of your time. Seems more sensible and in line with the comm journalism resources.

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See above now?

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Yes, I am seeing the separate calls and can edit further tomorrow.
Which one do you want to get out first? Ideally the one that helps us set up the webinars… the collaboration dj?

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collaboration DJ for the webinars, yes.

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Of all the roles we advertise: can we clarify which ones are paid?

Collaboration Dj/ Webinar? (one and the same?) yes?
Community journalists? yes?
Community connector? no?

I edited this but not sure if I got it right:

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The edit work, thanks/

Colloaboration Djs yes
Connectors no.
Community Journalists: No.

In all cases social contract probably needs to be made explicit. Still working on that so that it is aligned/covered the different calls for action/levels of contributions.

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Hi! I’m not sure where to find you in hangouts - if you want to add me please use orangekaja@gmail.com I’m online now.@noemi @nadia

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Yes, I think having the info out there makes it easier down the line!

Roles that are more long term should be covered, those that are shorter should have a system of rewards or a path to becoming a freelance collaborator that is clear. Working on it!