WAPA Communications Committee Report

The WAPA Communications Committee was formed at the November 2004 meeting. The committee consists of

The work of the committee was accomplished using e-mail, and some informal discussions at WAPA meetings.

Original Brainstorming List from November 2004

  • More EMail + Planning about meetings
  • Educational Topic reviews at meetings
    • Mentoring,
    • Buddy Lists,
    • Safety Pilots
  • Safey Pilot Pool
  • Web Communications for non-aircraft owners
  • More activity on email list
  • Poll Safety Seminar attendees - interesting destinations
  • Web articles - Favorite Destinations, How/Where/...
  • Link on Web - EMail Member
  • E-mail every Friday night suggesting destination for Saturday Fly-out

Problem Statement

We're a broadly distributed organization that's trying to figure out how to communicate better with our membership, many of whom don't show up at the monthly meetings.

If we can't get this going without meeting face to face ourselves we're probably sunk before we begin. We need to figure out how to communicate with people without getting them together.

Through much exchanged e-mail, a number of ideas for communications have been discussed. These ranged from the minor tweaks that can be done with little or no effort, to major suggestions such as deleting the WAPA web and rebuilding from scratch with something that is easier to use. Overall our recommendation is to start with the smaller, easy to implement changes and only resort to major redesign if we don't get results.

We also had quite a bit of discussion about the apparent "catch 22" that we are in. Insufficient activity doesn't generate enough interest. And without interest, there is no participation to drive activity. We need to stay focused on activity, communicating that activity, and interest and participation will follow.

The board of directors also discussed this issue at some length, and noted the following regarding participation:

  • Participation is a symptom, not the problem. Let's focus on the problem
  • Need to get things happening and good communications flowing and people will come.
  • Will focus on our communications and activities.

Challenge to WAPA Members

  1. What is your favorite place to fly to, and why. With 60 members, we ought to get at least that many ideas. If we could get just one article a day, that would mean a submission every two months from our membership.
  2. What to do at our own local airports. Why fly to Spencer, Worcester (Higgins Armory? Museums? Mechanics Hall Brownbag Concerts? ) Gardner (Furniture stores) etc. etc. Lets try to bring pilots here too. We do get indexed by Google, and I see a number of referrals every month.
  3. Do you have a new piece of equipment? Buy some new gizmo at Oshkosh? A new paint job? A new Rating? A Maintenance Issue? Write up a small article.
  4. Have you seen something interesting on the web. A news article, information site? If so, tell us about it. This is not a world-class undertaking, just spend a few hours web-surfing something relevant and post the links with some description as to why you'd want to go there. Something like Tom's comments on the NASA form is great.
  5. Do airport reports on local airports. What's going on at each field.

The WAPA Web is essentially an "Online Magazine" about aviation in the greater Worcester area, and an online magazine for communicating to our membership. It is a resource that we should be using to a much greater extent to get publicity for WAPA and interest within WAPA.

Suggestions on "How to do it"

Easy to implement, self sustaining

The following items are all easy to implement. They should be self-sustaining once running, and should be taken immediately:

  • Mail notice of a new articles along with a link to the new article, to the entire membership (on an opt-out basis, of course) automatically. The system generates a newsletter at 0200 GMT, for stories submitted during the prior day (GMT). So it hits "the press" at 9pm in the winter, and 10pm in the summer, for all published stories that hit the web by 7pm and 9pm respectively.

  • "Lottery" to encourage web contributions To enter, you need to submit a short article to the web. (or by mail for the internet challenged). We do the drawing every quarter. $25 gift certificate to a pilot shop, or something like that.

  • Signup at Safety Seminars. Make a concerted effort to collecd and/or validate e-mail addresses at seminars.

  • Send this report to the membership to let everyone know that we are doing something, even if it doesn't get read.

  • Establish web accounts for all WAPA members with pre-assigned passwords. Get by the "register yourself" issue.

  • Reply-To Header on Unicom list. By setting the Reply-To to point back to the list, this will encourage more member to member communications, with the risk that a reply intended to be private could be sent to the list.

  • Post Membership Roster Post a complete membership roster with phone numbers and addresses on the web. This will be posted in a secure section that is only available to WAPA members. Include things like type of aircraft owned, ratings, etc. Let's learn about each other.

  • Notice in Atlantic Flyer Ensure that meeting notices are published in the Atlantic Flyer and other aviation magazines.

  • Send fly-out ideas to the unicom mailing list. Anyone can suggest a fly-out, look for a safety pilot, ask for a ride, look to fill a seat. Send to mailto:unicom@worcesterapa.org. We need to lead by example. Lets get the Board and Communications Committees to make a concerted effort to use the unicom list.

  • Other Unicom List uses Encourage use of Unicom for safety pilot requests, breakfast runs, etc.

  • Nametags Use nanetags at meetings to help everyone get to know each other.

Easy to implement, needs ongoing effort

  • Meeting Reminders Mail reminder postcards for upcoming meetings. And/or a phone-a-thon. Let's make sure that everyone knows about the upcoming meetings.

  • Mail Web newsletter Send it out to any of our members who don't have e-mail, or specify a preference for hardcopy. This will take some effort to assemble the stories on a monthly basis.

  • Verify addresses, and find missing e-mail addresses. Make a concerted effort to keep our roster up to date.

  • Get more "Web Authors". (The security level in the Slash system that lets you actually publish the story onto the web.) More members need to be able to actually clean up stories, add links, and get submissions posted. So we need a few "HTML" semi-literate volunteers to be authors. They also need to be a bit sensitive to copyright issues. (I've had some submissions that were simply cut/paste from other full newspaper articles. … I'd like to avoid getting sued).

  • Ask for renewals. Last year we never really mailed out a renewal.

  • "Web night" Teach everyone how to use the system.

Major efforts - Postpone for now

We discussed a couple of possibilities. Either a major reorganization of or a complete replacement of the slash web system. The overall slash system does not encourage full and open two-way communications. The effort to post new stories puts people off. There is some thought that we could find something easier to use than a Slash based system. But it would be a major investment in time and effort.

The other possibility is to reorganize the WAPA web into major sections especially focusing a section on fly-out destinations, activites at local airports, etc. This has some promise, but we need to get more activity on the web. THe current story or two a month just doesn't drive enough activity.

-- GeorgeClark - 01 Mar 2005
"Sure you can have eight miles behind the heavy…there'll be a United tri-jet between you and him." --ORD Tower

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