Milwaukee Makerspace Wiki

1. The Communication Director’s primary responsibility is to manage media relations and public outreach as well as organizational communication, both internally and externally.

2. The Communication Director shall maintain the organization’s online presence including but not limited to the website, wiki, discord and social media accounts. These accounts should be set up through info@ and not director's personal emails whenever possible.

To Email The Communications Director Email communications@milwaukeemakerspace.org

BOD Mail

• Send directly to members via our “Wild Apricot” member portal
• Includes information key to the organization's operation and success.
• This is the bare minimum for MMS engagement.
• Please do not mark as spam.

Members@ Email List

• This is the email list of 600+ members hosted by groups.google.com
• It is best to receive individual messages and if you need to filter the threads, you can set up a folder system, using [mms] to group the emails in a folder in your inbox. If you choose, you can change the frequency of receipt, but remember that you make need to be more clear and clean up the messages when responding to digest mode.
• Please don't mark any messages as spam.

Discord

• Discord is NOT AN ARCHIVE. While discretion is requested and rage-deletion is a real bummer, anything may be deleted or rearranged by champions at any time.
• Discord is for Areas and internal groups to organize without emailing 600+ people.
• Not everyone is on Discord - please remember that if you want everyone, you should email members@
• It has a mobile app and a desktop app in case you want to limit screen time on your phone.
• MMS rules apply, and there's a #rules channel to review. There is a Server Moderator team that is there to help if something looks problematic.
• There are Bots to help out with organization and moderation More about bots we use here.

Google Calendar

• Calendar Entries can be created by any member with a milwaukeemakerspace.org email list
• Anyone who needs one can have one to manage their own events.
• Entries bridge to Discord not the other way around.
• Ask for help directly for events via DM or communications@ email so that the request can be tracked.
• Entries are added at the speed of volunteer, if you need something quickly, try Discord/DM and Text messages to express expedience.
• You can connect the calendar to the calendar on your phone if you would like via the links at calendar

Website Blog posts

• Any member can write one! Share a project with pictures and what you learned in a longer form.
• Scroll down to the bottom of the website and find the “Makerspace Login” button
• Log in with your MMS portal/Wild Apricot account
• You will now have an additional black bar at the top of the webpage.
• click +New
• Add Title, Text, and etc (Copy/Pasting in a Word Document with pictures is a quick way to work on/compose your content out of this service)
• Click “Publish!” Voila!
• ( We do not accept guest blog posts from outside agencies for SEO)

Friends of MMS Email List

• This is the email list of regional makers hosted by groups.google.com
• You can sign up for it on the webpage.
• It is not to be used for training, or MMS internal activities UNLESS there is a tech failure.
• Please don't mark any messages as spam.

For Comm Directors and Assistants

Instagram Posting Guidelines:

The point and purpose of Instagram and other MMS Socials is to as evenly as possible represent the whole space and its areas and activities available and projects completed. It is not for one area, or one member's projects, even if the area is especially active. Sometimes the social engagement are demoted in priorities in order to reduce the stress of increased new member intake.

• Grid posts/Reels are for current or past member work or activities, reflecting a balanced perspective across the whole space. Some members/areas will have posts on hold until
• Please consider representation balance of members, and/or areas shown.
  • Seek out areas and visit the spaces at times outside of your usual schedule/ friend groups.
• Stories can be for either, members or interesting or inspirational projects found around the internet.
  • Stories should be making or local maker event related.
  • Stories can be used more library and in a less “balanced perspective” though a healthy algorithm should be cultivated based on our existing offerings and membership.
  • Deprioritize stories that feel explicitly “for sale”,“like/subscribe” or lots of text.
• Text should be member project focused and engaging as time allows.
• Organize excellent archived MMS member stories in the highlights (make new ones/adjust as needed)
  • Ideally, it would be good to have a highlight for every area.
• Include hashtags #makerspace #milwaukee #stfranciswi #otherrelevanttags
• Do not post Fliers in the grid - soon the instagram will pull directly to the website and posts should be “evergreen.”
• Posts/Stories will propagate to Facebook automagically.

• If you want to share something with the Instagram folks, feel free to message the account: @themilwaukeemakerspace with pics projects, people, passion, whatever!
• Internal communications should be “liked” to indicate someone has seen and acknowledged the submission.