Project Team Member Needed: AVEN Media Coordinator: Nominations

[Kelly]

We are now taking nominations for a PT member in for the office of AVEN Media Coordinator.

 

The Project Team is in charge of visibility projects on AVEN. For more information about what the Project Team does, please see this link:

 

http://avenpt.tumblr.com/projectteam

 

Possible Project Team activities include:

- dealing with AVEN's media and research requests,

- managing resources,

- giving help to others with their visibility projects.

 

All PT positions have a duration of 2 years. If anyone steps down in that time, a new election will be held and the replacement will have a new term of 2 years.

 

The office that we are presently in need of is: AVEN Media Coordinator.

 

Responsibilities: The AVEN Media Coordinator's primary responsibility is to coordinate with journalists and AVEN's media teams. This involves managing the various media teams, helping to recruit new members when necessary, and maintain relationships with the heads of media teams for various countries and languages. Media requests are recieved by email and posted on the forums, and it is AVEN Media Coordinator's responsibility to make sure that these are promptly forwarded to the appropriate people.

Other responsibilities include answering questions journalists have about the site, and to develop AVEN's media policy as and when needed.
 
Requirements: The The AVEN Media Coordinator must be good at promptly handling media requests as they come in. They must be good at speaking with journalists, and they must be good at group coordination.

 

If you think that you would be an awesome AVEN Project Team Member, please throw you hat, turnip, whatever, in here.

 

Please make sure to specify which position you are running for, and be aware that you can't run for more than one position at the same time.

 

To run, a person must have been a member for at least 6 months, and have at least 100 posts that are not in the Just For Fun or Welcome Area forums. You also cannot run with an active, current, warning. The eligibility criteria for PT are precisely the same as that for an Admod. A bio is required by voting time. Election rules are here:

 

 

 

You can run for only one office at a time.

 

Voting will be by a vote of confidence.

 

This is the timeline for this election:

Thursday, 5 December to Thursday, 12 December: Nominations.
Thursday, 12 December to Sunday, 15 December: Dedicated Q&A period.
Sunday, 15 December to Sunday, 22 December: Voting.

[daveb]

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

[Kimmie.]

3 hours ago, daveb said:

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Based on this 

 

On 12/5/2019 at 11:25 PM, Kelly said:

Requirements: The The AVEN Media Coordinator must be good at promptly handling media requests as they come in. They must be good at speaking with journalists, and they must be good at group coordination.

You basically need to be a trained professional.

[Kimmie.]

So basically not me anyway. 

[Janus the Fox]

2 hours ago, Kimmie. said:

Based on this 

 

You basically need to be a trained professional.

Not exactly like other PT positions, like a degree and experience in psychology is very high requirements.

 

But this one, is alright, needs a good confidence with talking to people, for which PT forum usually drafts the responses in ways probably.

 

I has a degree in computers, only so far I can do... or creating a system to manage data that is generated with the role, ehh thats light pink mini projects like we both in already.

[michaeld]

Yeah definitely don't have to be a trained professional. I certainly wasn't when I started (at least in this field). Though good analytical skills can help (I'd say with all PT positions actually).

 

As far as answering media requests go, a big part is delegation. Back in the day, I used to appear in a lot of media myself because it was simply easiest to answer the interviewer directly - and of course I wanted to do my part for ace vis-ed. However we obviously don't want the same people to appear in every single media piece (not to mention, there's only a certain number of times you can tell your own story before you end up repeating yourself almost word for word). Plus it's bad from a diversity point of view if one person appears in a disproportionate number of ace pieces as then their characteristics (in my case white, cisgender male, UK based, repulsed, aromantic-leaning) will become the face of asexuality in the public image.

 

Things to think about include the target demographics (whom is the piece aimed at?), the location (often they want someone at least in the same country as the reporter - for some countries this is much hadrer than others!) and other relevant criteria. (Do they care whether the person is in a relationship? Do they need to be photographed? Getting aces in rels to be photographed together for the media is about the hardest thing ever...) Sometimes for more research-based media requests, it's important to co-ordinate with the DRC and any academic contacts we have in the field.

 

I'm certainly not saying I've been perfect at this matching-up job by any means! But I do try to delegate where possible, to get more people involved. And luckily the PT media coordinator doesn't have to do this from scratch. We've built up a large media list over the years, covering people from different countries and backgrounds. (A lot of the other contacts are in my head unfortunately, which is less than ideal.) You also get help of course from other PT colleagues, especially our great social media team. They can always advertise a media request if our existing contacts are coming up short.

 

I've talked a lot about delegation but of course you can't delegate everything. What you can delegate (e.g. to members of the media team) is interviews showcasing an asexual person. If they want to talk about AVEN specifically you have to be more careful - here having an "official" line is more important, because you're now speaking not just as an ace person but as a representative of AVEN (as an organisation). However you still aren't expected to go it alone. You have colleagues in the PT, experienced admods and board members who can be asked if you ever need guidance. (I'm happy to be asked, whether or not I stay on the PT. And I'm still asking other people their opinions even after doing this job for years!)

 

I hope this gives a bit more background for anyone considering running.

[Ldlelee]

I didn't know there were two! 👀

 

Would it be okay if I run for this position instead? The research contact position sounds awesome, but considering I would like to be a journalist, myself, this sounds like it would be a perfect match. Sorry if I'm confusing anybody. 😅

[Ldlelee]

@OptimisticPessimist Got it!

 

Okay, in that case, please consider myself nominated!

[michaeld]

After thinking about this, I've decided to run as well!

[Kelly]

*closes to start campaigns*