Dispatches

We’ve been thinking about how to reinvigorate our communications. Prior to the pandemic, we were using an email newsletter, blog posts, and twitter to help people stay connected to our work. During the pandemic, the demands of the response to the crisis caused us to drop the newsletter, which took several hours per issue to write, format, and send, and instead invested that time in building authentic relationships and solidarity with people and communities working to respond.  Once twitter became something different from what it was, and disinvested in many of the systems that worked to provide for a safe and harassment-free space, we stopped using that as a platform. We still infrequently write blog posts, but reserve these to specific topics, such as the release of a product or event recaps. 

We have found value in a “weeknotes” format that provides a place for personal thought and reflection. There’s no set format and no set length, and the process of writing them seems to benefit both the writer and the reader. If you’d like to learn more, we found this post that effectively summarizes the format. https://medium.com/deloitte-digital-connect/how-to-write-weeknotes-for-your-digital-project-26a6bfef38d6

We want to manage expectations around frequency, so will be calling our version “dispatches” as we try and be better about sharing our work

Our dispatches could be a place where:

• We write about what we’ve been up to;
• Share things we’ve found interesting;
• Make announcements about data and data products, such as new tools, datasets or temporarily broken data feeds;
• Promote events and activities;
• Publish reflections related to our work or the broader contexts in which we operate. 

For an example of weeknotes that we value and appreciate, please see the Connected by Data project. In their weeknotes, at least one team member publishes them weekly. https://connectedbydata.org/blog/#weeknotes

We’re also interested in exploring how we might use other platforms like newsletters and social media in concert with weeknotes/dispatches to reach a broader audience. For example, Connected by Data uses social media to point to new weeknotes as they’re published, and their email newsletter serves as an index of the weeknotes published in the past month. 

We’ll give this a try. We hope you find them valuable, and look forward to your feedback.