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Are there community members that would be interested in working to sustain the FOSSIL quarterly newsletter?
The current newsletter is aggregated by 3 staff members. The protocol includes reaching out to people for each of the categories, sometimes including prompts with guiding questions to answer, and then assembling the content on the WordPress website.
Categories include: Featured Professional, Amateur Spotlight, Club Corner, Featured Fossil, Research, Education, Paleoart, Upcoming Events, and whatever else sparks interest
Please tag in other folks that may be interested or that are avid readers of the newsletter, so we can begin this conversation!
@jbauer @bheimbrock Bill is the only Dredger I know who has the talent to do this. I don’t know about his availability though. Maybe Bill can suggest others.
Jack
I personally have very little free time to be a Myfossil Newsletter editor. I’m having trouble keeping up with the drydredgers.org and geofair.com websites because I do the “Cincinnati Fossils” kits and the resin and plaster 4.5 inch trilobite casts that we now offer to various local shops. I’m sure Jack would love to have a real Dry Dredgers Bulletin editor. He has been standing in as editor (and doing a great job with it) after Greg Hand retired and no one in the club stepped forward to take over the job.
We should prepare a Dry Dredgers Bulletin article explaining the situation with sustaining Myfossil and asking for volunteers for newsletter editor and specific positions related to the newsletter.
@jbauer how long do we have before we loose the UF staff? What will be the situation and level of involvement of the existing key individuals after the funding cessation? If the Dry Dredgers membership had a clear picture of the situation it may be easier to motivate people to help.
@joyce-drakeford @lmccall @jkallmeyer @lconeHi, all –
@bheimbrock– yes, we understand everyone is strapped for time. To be frank, the newsletter took up a lot of time – mostly concerning emailing people requesting them to write for us (and then reminding and reminding). But the way we had been running the newsletter can certainly change depending on the motivations and time of people willing to organize it.
The last day for paid staff is Sept. 30. I am leaving at the end of August for my new position. I will still be an active myFOSSIL member but no longer paid staff. I can’t speak for the other staff members since they all are in different career stages and with different interests. There may be someone to take over my role as managing curator but we have not yet worked out those details.
I can certainly draft up something for the next Dry Dredgers Bulletin (and/or for other clubs) if that is something of interest.
@bheimbrock Hey Bill! Don’t be trying to replace me as Dry Dredgers bulletin editor. I like doing that 🙂
@jbauer @bheimbrock I could put a plea in the next DD bulletin but it won’t come out until mid-September. My only other option is a mass email to DD members ahead of that.
@jkallmeyer,
I think it’s awesome you can do a job so well that you had no choice but to do AND you are still enjoying it!Don’t worry Jack. As the chair of the nominating committee I have no power over committee chairs. Only your office. 🙂
But I digress. @jbauer Jen, I would be happy to write something up for the Dry Dredgers Bulletin if it would help. It will be simple. You may have specific things you can say. Let’s talk more via email regarding the content of the Dry Dredgers Bulletin article. I’ll Cc Jack.
Note to everyone reading this post. If you or someone you know is able to help sustain the operation of the FOSSIL Quarterly Newsletter, speak up. Spread the word! Let’s keep this organization going.
Bill
Thanks, @bheimbrock. I’ll look out for your email.
Yes – I 100% agree – we need to get the conversation moving if this is something that the community finds valuable!! Any one interested in contributing or helping organize please connect with us in this thread!
Maybe @kyle-hartshorn
(did that work?)
After some emails with @bheimbrock & @jkallmeyer here is a distilled version of what we think would be needed for the newsletter:
- A coordinator to moderate and keep track of articles, other volunteers, coordinate with social media volunteers etc.
- Someone who uploads the posts to the website, will require some WordPress familiarity
- 1-3 people to help recruit and write newsletter articles
@joyce-drakeford– what responsibility are you interested in and do you know anyone else who would have interest in this?
A FOSSIL team member is working on a social media post to request volunteers to chime in to this forum thread. I have also requested the newsletter open rate to get some numbers.
I would love to coordinate. I know Cam Muskelly is interested in recruiting for articles and writing himself. If I can get some wordpress education (I’ve only used Constant Contact for content layout.) I would be more than happy to assist with that. I, however, am not much in the editing dept I’m afraid.
See above 🙂
Hi, @joyce-drakeford
It would be excellent if you would be the lead coordinator. I think you will still need to recruit several volunteers to help manage the content. So, we have an ad going out in the next Dry Dredgers bulletin – thanks to @bheimbrock – and we have a social media announcement for volunteers that is going out on Monday. Everything will lead them to this forum so the conversation can continue. We did very minor edits on the actual articles but the role as editor was to combine the articles into the newsletter and have a little introductory page. But the structure of the newsletter is open to change to however the volunteer team can best create and distribute the newsletter. We have been using Adobe InDesign and MailChimp but this also may not be possible given limitations of the volunteer team and lack of formal institutional support.
@cameron-muskelly has a broad network of paleontologists but he also has a lot on his plate right now. He may be a good liaison for finding folks to write articles but he also must guard his time and work toward his personal goals.Hello! Jen is right, I do indeed have a lot I am currently wokring on so I might not have enough time on my hands. There are plenty of other paleontologists that I know who might be interested in writing articles.
Hi, all –
I would like to loop in @i-edwards so he can meet @joyce-drakeford and others interested in supporting the continuation of the newsletter.
Isaac is an up-and-coming geologist interested in helping out where he can. Feel free to chime in and share your ideas about sustaining the newsletter!
Jen
Thank you, @jbauer! As Jen said, I am a high school-aged geologist-in-training with a great interest in sedimentology and paleontology, which I have studied to graduate-level readings. While most of the time I am studying Quaternary geology, my ‘specialties’ in paleontology would be ichnology, diapsids, and cephalopods, although I investigate other subjects as well. I am currently studying part-time at Centralia College focusing on geology and mathematics until I can commence full-time study next year. I greatly look forward to meeting my fellow paleontology enthusiasts and learning from you all.
Sincerely,
Isaac Pope
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