JISC

Session 1: Writing to get your project noticed

As a project manager, you will be familiar with writing reports to update others on your work. You may need to inform and engage senior managers, members of the public, the media, and colleagues, many of whom may not have your level of specialist knowledge. So, how do you ensure that the broadest possible range of audiences understand the key aspects of your project and are enticed to engage with it?  This session will help you to construct a short summary of your project’s goals or achievements, allowing others to understand and appreciate the relevance of your work.

You will learn what makes good writing for a general audience, and using JISC projects as examples, find out how a well-written summary can contribute to a project’s success.  Working with a partner from a project that is unfamiliar to you, you will begin to develop your own non-technical project summary. 

Once completed, this can be repurposed for web pages, project leaflets, event publicity, press releases, newsletter articles etc and hence help to increase your project’s impact.

 You should bring a copy of your project proposal or report and project plan with you to the session.

Further information

Session 2: Promoting your project to different audiences

JISC projects deal with an array of issues which affect a range of different people. Yet what is relevant to one person may be insignificant to another. This session focuses on how to tailor your communications to different stakeholders in order demonstrate the relevance of your work to each audience.

Working collaboratively in study groups of up to 6 participants, you will discuss each of their projects in outline.  Your group will then identify one project on which to work collaboratively.

Using a “proposition template” and to guide them, plus details of the characteristics and key concerns of different target audience groups, your group will develop and deliver a timed 5 minute presentation to your session colleagues which will communicate the key messages of their chosen project tailored to the needs, characteristics and concerns of a specific audience group.

By the close of the workshop, you will have gained insight into the characteristics of key audience groups and how best to target and tailor messages to respond to their stakeholders’ differing needs and concerns.

Further information

 

Session 3: Engaging with communities through social media and networking

This workshop will explore the effective use of social media and social networking to help you engage with the different audience groups for your project.

We will consider strategies for using social media and networking tools such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube as a part of your project communications, as well as how these can integrate with and enhance more traditional online resources such as websites.

You will have the opportunity to discuss issues of appropriate channels for your audiences, effective ways to use these channels to engage with your audience, as well as the practicalities of using such approaches in your JISC project.

Further information