Weekly announcements are one of the main ways we communicate with the group as a whole. The announcements are emailed to tech-squares@mit.edu, put on our homepage, and read at Squares that night. Different sets of announcements are appropriate for these different audiences.

General approach

The announcements coordinator has substantial leeway as to how they want to organize announcements. Historically, the approach was that the announcements coordinator would take a fairly active role in hunting down announcements as well as receiving emailed requests from other officers. More recently, Alex experimented with using Google Docs for announcements. The "Announcements" folder in the Tech Squares officers shared Google Drive folder contains one document per week, with the first page of each containing spoken announcements (for easy printing if desired) and later pages containing the draft emails. The idea of this approach is that at least a week in advance, the announcements coordinator creates a Google Doc for the next week's announcements (spoken and emailed) and populates it with the usual text that no other officer is responsible for and then lets the other officers fill in any other announcements. Then, on Monday, the announcements coordinator sends the weekly email and  sends the spoken announcements to whoever is doing them. Some notes about the process Alex and Veronica used are in Detailed notes on announcements (2016).

As mentioned above, certain announcements should be added by the announcements coordinator. We're current doing this by having a template that gets copied and then the fields such as caller, date, location ,etc get updated:

It's probably ideal to prepare the Google Docs several weeks in advance, so that somebody with a repeated announcement ("subscriptions are on sale") can add it all at once. Especially if you're doing that, it's probably fine to figure that (say) the publicity coordinator will add "you should pick up flyers", the rounds coordinator will add "This week we're starting the waltz class", etc. if they want them.

Emailed announcements

There's a lot of information about this, so see Emailed Announcements. 

Spoken

We aim to keep spoken announcements short and useful so we can go back to dancing. Below are some thoughts on what is and is not worth including, but it was the topic of a heated discussion on tech-squares-discuss (https://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/private/tech-squares-discuss/2015-July/thread.html), so take it with a grain of salt. At some point somebody should to work conclusions out of that discussion (and possibly run them by -discuss again...), but that hasn't happened yet. In general, if something has lots of details, it makes sense to give the highlight at the dance and end with "see email for details" (Ex: "There will be a club meeting for elections and treasurers report next week. See Alex's email for more details"). 

Announcements read at the dance:

The following are descriptions of announcements that can be read at dances. Whoever reads announcements should read what is written and not extemporize. (As Kevin says, the announcement sheet is not a PowerPoint.) 

  • Tuesday dance locations and times
    • Next week, we are in WEIRD LOCATION (Not W20). You need to do STUFF to get there. 
    • Next week we're not dancing.
  • Other club events
    • (once per thing) Let one of our callers announce a local Plus accessible dance or class that they are calling. (Plus or lower level, or an Advanced class).
    • 1& 2 weeks in advance - there's a Saturday dance (or other club dance) coming up on DATE with CALLER and CUER (same with class dance)
      • For Tech Squares Weekend and any similar reservation-required things, announce in advance of the deadline, not the dance itself...
    • Next week is graduation.
  • Rounds: Next week is a technique workshop on TOPIC, or Next week a new rounds class starts on TOPIC.
  • Meetings
    • (When determined & the week before) On DATE, we will have a club meeting to elect officers/vote on something/etc.
    • Hack tips or similar informal meetings occurring after the dance: same day (maybe week before if we pick the time in advance)
    • Officer meeting within the next week if it's going to be club discussion
    • Class starting soon, especially if there are posters for people to take (and people should be encouraged to take posters!)
    • This applies to both the first night of class and to intro night
  • Money
    • Subscriptions for the SEASON term which starts in X weeks, are now available. You can buy one at gate after this tip. (Coordinate with gate and treasurers so this statement is true)
    • Tech Squares has optional annual dues. The recommendation is $10... (2x per year when we send email as well; make sure gate is open)
  • The midway is on DATE. If you can help out or dance in the demonstration square, please talk to PERSON.
  • Thank the caller and cuer. 

Announcements not to read at the dance:

  • Soliciting officers or candidates (this is better done one-on-one, when you can answer questions; it's unlikely that a good interested candidate isn't plugged in enough to see the emails or get asked)
  • Results of officer appointment/election
  • Long details - you can mention what's happening to remind people and then tell them where to find the details (probably the email) 
  • Recurring things - if something is the same next week as this week, it's probably not worth saying in announcements

Naturally, neither of these are complete, but hopefully these can provide some guidance as to what we think is or is not worth saying. You can always ask officers (or just the P/VP or Publicity) for advice.