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Penguicon Communication Best Practices

(this is just a start, needs additions and to be cleaned up and improved, feel free to help)

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” George Bernard Shaw
“To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others.” Anthony Robbins
«All effective and engaging learning experiences provide frequent and meaningful feedback. Without feedback on whether or not one is getting closer to a goal, progress is unlikely.» Unknown
- 10 best practices for better business communication

Assistance:

Please email or otherwise contact your concom member if you need help
Also feel free to contact the conchair or conchair's assistants for help
Letting others know when there are issues or you are in need of help is important.
- It is very difficult to know whether anything might be wrong from silence

Announcements:

should be made as soon as the information is known and can be made public
- for meetings sometimes time and date are known first.
  - It is important to get the date and time out
  - Then update as soon as possible when a location is found.
having them in one place is good
having each separate is good
people like it when both are done and others hate it when both are done

Long Emails:

highlighting main points is good
Drawing attention to the main point helps those of us on phone or who have ADD like me

this also helps when you are skimming an email after a first read to find the main points that you read before, adding particular strings to this could help with search-ability as well this would take some discussion to find a good string

let the list know who can outright ignore a long email up at the top or in the subject

Action Items:

it is good to remember to let it be known what if any action needs to be done
who is expected to do each action needed
if there is a due date.
have a backup line of communications for more urgent items, like a second contact or request for feedback or receipt of message to make sure they got it with enough time to respond to any due date
- with unknowns in everyone's schedules such as travel, work, family events, sickness, dead batteries etc this could help out quite a bit