Newsletter?

[bethschechter]

Is this something we want? If so, who wants to do it?

[kkowalsky]

think we can use the xyHT blog series as this? I think it'd work nicely as one in the same?

[bethschechter]

Works for me. The main goal is for people to be writing about what's going on at their chapters :) //typed with thumbs

[shawnmgoulet]

Hi @bethschechter @kkowalsky ... I believe I saw a sign up sheet for blogging for xyHT somewhere possibly in a Google doc? I might've been dreaming however 😴. If it exists, possibly link it to the resources page under a new hashtag for this kind of outreach? Maybe not there, but somewhere central maybe, possibly? Cc: @lyzidiamond et al

[bethschechter]

@SGoulet, yes! It's here https://github.com/maptime/maptime-admin/wiki/xyHt-Monthly-Sign-up Hopefully the Wiki is just as easy as Google Docs :)

[shawnmgoulet]

Thanks @bethschechter. The wiki so easy! 👌

[bethschechter]

great! that's what I love to hear :)

[kkowalsky]

Things I think we should include:

1. Announcements
2. Maptime in the News (if applicable)
3. Applause section (I love the idea of hearing about the cool things we're doing!)
4. Highlight on one Maptime chapter (rotating)
5. Events calendar (I think we should also have an event calendar on the website?)

[geobrando]

Events calendar (I think we should also have an event calendar on the website?)

See PR waiting for review in maptime/maptime.github.io#192 submitted by @rhewitt22

[bethschechter]

@kkowalsky I love this idea. ...how do you feel about running with it?
or do have too much on your plate as it is?

[kkowalsky]

Yeah, I think it'll be consolidating a lot of info so I don't mind! I'll take sometime on this first one, see how I feel about it (just thought of it: popular tweets to include)

[bethschechter]

sounds great, Katie! thank you!

[kkowalsky]

Hey @geobrando or anyone, is there a way we can speed up the event calendar on the website? I'm not sure how i'll assemble the events section in the maptime newsletter w/o it

[geobrando]

Hi @kkowalsky. I can merge but we should get someone from HQ to sign off on it first.

But note that this calendar will only be populated once organizers add their events via a google form which will look something like this. So the website calendar won't be very useful in the short term.

[bethschechter]

Ahoy @geobrando and @kkowalsky: part of the reason the calendar hasn't been implemented is just that: how do we make it easy for people to get their events on there? If we had everything on Eventbrite or Meetup that would be one thing; we could scrape and pull. But if it's a manual process then I'm not sure how well this would be maintained. Any advice for the easiest workflow here would be super appreciated!

[geobrando]

@bethschechter You're absolutely right. I expect a pretty low participation rate as most won't want to bother with both creating a meetup/eventbrite event and filling out a google form. Pulling directly is the ultimate answer and I think @rhewitt22's solution is just a temporary one.

So the question for you is, would you prefer a website calendar that's missing the majority of events or none at all? We could absolutely use the Eventbrite and Meetup APIs to get most of the events but I'm not sure if anyone currently has the bandwidth to tackle that. It doesn't matter to me either way.