Procedure for when to publicize an event

From Communication Director's Procedures

Events may be created by any member of Knox Makers, although ultimate responsibility for maintaining the calendar rests with the board of directors. The first decision that must be made about any event that is created is whether or not it is an event that should be publicized by Knox Makers.

Publicized Events

Publicized events are to be those events created by our members that we want to widely advertise to the community, with the effect of possibly attracting new attendees. Knox Makers is an educational non-profit, so we want to emphasize that classes and workshops where building do/build/make/learn should fall into this category. Some examples would be:

• Regular Tuesday night classes/workshops
• Special event classes/workshops
• Outreach opportunities that are open to the public (e.g. Knox Makers will have a booth at the Dogwood Arts Festival, come see us there!)

Non-publicized events

Non-publicized events are those events created by our members that are hosted for a specific sub-community, and not intended to be generally accessible to the public. Additionally, outside groups that are hosted at Knox Makers generally fall into this category. All of these events should be listed on our calendar, and would likely be listed on our homepage, but would not be pushed to social media. Some examples would be:

• Team-oriented builds for specific projects
• Outreach opportunities that are NOT open to the public (e.g. Knox Makers has been invited to a school to do a demonstration)
• Events presented by others but hosted at Knox Makers (e.g. DC865 group meets at Knox Makers, but the group is not operated by Knox Makers)

Publicity Scheduling

Establishing calendar dates should be done with as much advance notice as feasible. This advance time should allow for time to develop event descriptions and publicity photos for event notices.

• The standard for publicizing events to social media should be 2 weeks prior to the event.
  • If a publicized event is created less than 2 weeks in advance, then publicity should proceed as soon as possible.
  • In order to prevent undue stress, the use of generic publicity photos should be used for events scheduled with short notice.
• Events should be publicized in chronological order, so as not to create confusion about class schedules.
• See specific procedures for scheduling events on social media.