A small collection of guidelines for when you try to create a newsletter for the first time in your life :First of all, be sure something will go wrong even if you planned it so that it shoudn't.
Secondly, you should have an organised team working with you (you can of course try to build a newsletter by yourself, but you'll miss a lot of fun). Finding a team was not a problem for us, the team of the Silkroads Newsletter was constituted pretty quickly and easily. But there is a but.
But, make sure that :
(I'll put numbers again, I love numbers, it makes everything seem so clear... (don't mind this little comment.).)
1) everyone is filled with motivation (that is really not easy to tell beforehand but you'll see it once the work has started)
I like brackets too even if I know it exasperates lot of people, I'll try not to put too many, promised...
2) everyone understood the goal (very important). It should save time and maybe allow people to get along a bit better (even if, anyway, someone will start a fight one day). However I'm proud of announcing that no one died yet in the Silkroads Newsletter team (we just released 2 issues until now, yeah, I know but it still counts).
3) I forgot what I wanted to put for the third one. Um, um, ... *trying to remember*
Nevermind.
Next step, organise the work. Make sure everyone has the same amount of work to do (you can give more work to the most motivated people but it should be in reasonable proportion).
Some practical tips: if you plan to get the newsletter finished over the holidays, be sure to know where everyone of the team is going (special comment for Jiani who was lost in Spain), check if they will all have internet access and a phone that is working, with plenty of battery for their mobile phones (that is a special tip for Julia and me) and be sure (one more time) that everyone knows the deadline and send them to you (the poor one that is in charge of the page setting).
If you don't get all articles by the deadline and don't manage to get ahold of your coworkers, don't panic.
Here is a special thank you for Eleonore who I could always find on messenger. And who is always there to help me when I receive only half of the "sentence of the month" in Korean or Japanese and I'm trying to find the other half.
Just one complaint: why the hell does professional design software like InDesign not recognise the Hindi language ?
Because of that I'm forced to do some weird work-arounds that just look horrible.
End of the minute of complaining.
Once you have got all articles, photos, sentences and others, and you have ordered all that in a pretty way (for this one I suggest the help of a digital artist dad, he is very useful and always happy to give a hand), and you think you are finally finished, you can be sure that something will go wrong. (No, in fact you finished if you created the newsletter only for your own pleasure but for us that planned it as a team project, the newsletter at this step is absolutely not finished).
Then comes the hard time of proofreading/checking/correcting of the newsletter by the high authority of the Sciences-Po campus of Le Havre's administration. For our first newsletter, I think I made something like 7 or 8 different versions as modifications came one after another (always put the exact word they want, it would save you a lot of emails). For the second one I think I only made 3 versions. Next time, the goal is only one version (if that happens, I'll feel really smart).
The last step is to send it. That is an opportunity for a lot of discussion: who sends it to whom, should we send it to everyone at the same time or to some first because we are really late and to others later...?
It is very philosophical.
And you end up sending the newsletter at the beginning of February when there is still "January" written on it.
Very uncool.
But this time it's really really finished.
Uh oh, not really in fact, you still have to ask for it to be on the campus website (what I forgot to ask for, so I still have to do it. The January Silkroads Newsletter was released since... what?... more than a month ago already...oops. But I'll do it...Soon...I swear...).
Now that I said all that I wanted to say (I'm sure I forgot some parts of it though), I'll do a bit of friendly advertising.
Please read the Silkroads Newsletter, at least take a look at it. Thanks.
Artwork by Cannabis.
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