Tag: newsletter

The Story Behind The Newsletter

Credit: Wikipedia

When I decided to leave my corporate tech job, public speaking was part of The Plan. However I didn’t really know where to begin. I built a talk from some of my more popular blogposts and started submitting it to CfPs I happened across. Luckily, I met up with Chiu-Ki on a trip to the valley, and mentioned it. She talked about her journey into public speaking, encouraged me, and on a practical level – started sending me CfPs.

As a result, we met in Copenhagen en route to Øredev, where we were both speaking (a CfP she had sent me, and encouraged me to apply to). And we talked about building your identity after leaving an insular environment, about how we had approached it, mistakes we had made, wins, and how we could potentially help other people – especially other women – do the same.

We opted for a mailing list, because we weren’t keen on the idea of maintaining a static site and questioned the efficacy of a static site – people expect push notifications now, they rarely check, and because we liked the idea of a regular prompt in the inbox, reminding people that they have expertise to share, along with resources to make it seem more doable. Also I had finally noticed that newsletters were A Thing, everyone seemed to have one – except me.

For collaborative projects, I think there are two things that are important: a process, and your values.

We discussed and agreed on our values up front.

Whilst we had both done a lot of work to raise the profile of women, we didn’t see any need to brand what we were doing as a thing “for women”. We would brand it for everyone, and have a Secret Feminist Agenda.

Firstly, we would only share CfPs with a Code of Conduct. We believe that a Code of Conduct is necessary, but not sufficient. Not having one is a clear sign that the conference organisers are behind the times, don’t value the safety of marginalised people – or worse, don’t believe that is relevant.

Secondly, we would curate CfPs based on how they treat the speakers – we agreed that conferences should, at a minimum, cover travel.

Thirdly, at least half the content would be from women. This, to me, has been one of the most interesting aspects. Typically Chiu-Ki curates the CfPs and the inspiration, and I curate the link round up, so this falls more on me to check and balance. At first it was hard, but over time it has got much easier, to the point where sometimes I have to go looking for content from men to balance things out.

Note: whilst we actively look for content from other underrepresented groups we don’t measure or have targets for this – maybe we should.

The consequences of The Secret Feminist Agenda have been fascinating, heartening, and also sad.

Men have not seemed to notice. They say, “I love your newsletter”, comment on the need for such a thing.

Women notice. Some think it is a newsletter for women – it’s not. Is it because it’s written by two women? Because they are not used to something for everyone being relevant to them? Because they notice how much content by women is included? Because we talk about diversity?

I don’t know. But what I think that we have shown – 6 months on – is that content in tech that considers women as important consumers, can still be branded as for, and be relevant to everyone.

May 25, 2015
Running a Weekly Newsletter – 7 Things We’ve Learned
Chiu-Ki and I have been running Technically Speaking for 6 months now. Neither of us had run a newsletter before, and we learned a number of things along the way! Here are the 7 I’ve found most important.

1. Shared Values

What the values are is going to get a post of it’s own, but the important thing process-wise is that we agreed them up front and refer back to them.

The simplest value with the largest effect is that we don’t do things that we personally find annoying – so we don’t do anything to make people subscribe, for example. You don’t have to be a subscriber to come to one of our webinars, and we don’t lock content away, it’s all there to refer back to.

2. Shared Folder

Everything for Technically Speaking lives in a shared folder in Google Drive. Old editions live in a “sent” folder, webinars etc get their own, but whatever we are working on lived in the top folder. The issues are numbered, so the lowest numbered issue there is the one that will be sent out next. Usually we have about two going – because we’re ahead on some aspect which has been pushed out to the next issue.

3. Rough Division of Labour

Typically I assemble the links and write the introduction, and Chiu-Ki curates the CfPs and writes the inspiration. This isn’t hard and fast, and started because we thought about what we did already and turned it into a newsletter.

I think this helps for two reasons – firstly it makes the workload feel balanced, and secondly it gives us a place to start when the next issue is empty. This is supposed to be fun! So mostly we both do what is most interesting to us – and thankfully it usually balances out.

4. No Ego

Everything comes from both of us regardless which of us actually does it. One of us takes the week off? Doesn’t matter, it’s still from Chiu-Ki and Cate. We split credit everywhere.

5. Template

Each issue starts as a template, which we copy and fill in. The template is pretty empty, but it’s so much easier than starting with a blank page! And means that we don’t forget anything.

6. Realistic Goals

I think a lot of things fail – or never begin – because someone has a grandiose vision which they never manage to match up to. So we set the bar for ourselves low. Firstly we said “no more than weekly”, we’d originally planned bi-weekly but it was easier, and we had more content than we thought. We typically include 5 links, not because that is the minimum but because that is the maximum we defined – we’d ship with three. Likewise inspiration, we normally include a video but we’d include anything that inspired us, like a comic.

The other important goals are defining what you need to keep going. What makes a project worthwhile? What kind of impact do we need to be having for it to be worthwhile? I think it’s important to agree these things up front. One mistake that we made was that we started this conversation, but didn’t finish it because our subscriber numbers grew so quickly initially we were complacent.

7. Self-Promotion

This is probably the thing we struggled with most, and we still aren’t great at it. We had a low point where our subscription numbers weren’t moving and it looked like we would fall short of the goals we’d set to demonstrate Technically Speaking was worthwhile. But we were getting lovely emails and comments, so we knew that people were liking what we were doing… we just weren’t reaching them.

Two main things:
1. We added the line at the top “if you like it… encourage your friends”.
2. We sent personal emails to a number of people we know highlighting what we were doing and asking for feedback.
The personal emails were incredibly effective. Firstly, it was an opportunity to reach out to people that we really like (we actually had to negotiate who would email one woman we both know well). Secondly, we got valuable feedback and advice. Thirdly, some of that feedback was that they didn’t know about it – which encouraged us to be a bit more vocal about what we are doing! Now I try to tweet about Technically Speaking every week, aside from sharing the latest issue.

Creative Partnerships

Maybe these things aren’t really just about how to run a newsletter, they are also about having a productive creative partnership. Working with Chiu-Ki on Technically Speaking is one of the funnest things I do. I feel like we’ve both developed as a result – pushing ourselves to be more self-promotional as an example, but still in a relaxed and supportive way, because afterall it’s a hobby, not a job!
May 8, 2015