We’ve had a lot of action lately that I think could be sent out the the membership through another newsletter. This includes the recent resolutions we voted on and subsequent letters sent to the council and mayor, maybe an article about the Friends of the Grove meetup, board elections, etc.
Google slides was a great way to collaborate on the last newsletter, so I started a new one with a few article topics included as headers. I’d like to encourage everyone to jump in and contribute where they can. We can also use the forum to talk about other potential articles.
Thanks for taking this initiative, @Kristen_A_Fox. I’ve invested quite a bit of time trying to find a way of easily converting the slide(s) into an HTML email (so people receiving the email can view it directly without clicking over to an attachment), but I haven’t been successful.
I love the Google Slides solution and am happy you’ve found it works well, too. I do support you, @tcb, or others experimenting with other approaches, however, if you want to do so.
Curious. @tcb, @Kristen_A_Fox, and others, what are best practices when it comes to HTML emails? I’ve been looking for a solution to convert the Google Slides into HTML, but perhaps the very idea of doing that conversion is ill conceived and unnecessary.
Maybe all we need to do is download the slide as one PNG file and embed it in the HTML email that goes out (whether via MailChimp or whatever tool)? That would be dead simple. Is there any reason not to send them that way?
But the rest of the detections on that list basically mean that the senders sent way, way too many images, and not enough readable text. Spam filters can’t read images. Spammers know that, so they often send spam that’s nothing but a big, ginormous image. And spam filters know that, so they in turn block email that they can’t read.
MailChimp/iContact/Constant Contact/etc. is fine, but it can be a pain, especially for people who don’t use email marketing tools. Hell, I use them fairly often and still get annoyed. One reason I wanted to try TinyLetter (which I haven’t used), is because it’s mostly text and maybe basic images, not fighting with layouts. Here’s a sample, though still more robust than what I envision for us: http://tinyletter.com/rena/letters/hardly-working-solstice-edition
All, I added a bunch of content to the draft newsletter. Please feel free to make additions, edits, suggestions, or comments right in the document, or if you prefer, here.
@cevangill, if we can get the CodeNEXT meeting with city staff scheduled before Thursday,we can include it in the newsletter.
@brwittstruck, we need to get the September social hour scheduled right away so we can put the correct date, time, and location in the newsletter.
@Kristen_A_Fox and @tcb, I redid the layout to use more of the native layering and vector shapes that Google Slides provides. It shouldn’t look any different, but it’s now easier to change. I did swap out a couple of the neighborhood images, which I figure we can do for each newsletter. Please feel free to restructure things as you see fit.
@Pete_Gilcrease, we’ll probably need to create a board candidate bios page on the website. Alternatively, we could do it in a Google doc or slide deck. Either way, we’ll need to be able to link to it from the newsletter.