The Special Interest Group on Marketing and Communications (SIG-Marcomms) hosted its online Autumn meeting on October 15, 2024. The event brought together marcomms experts and representatives from various NRENs to discuss trends, challenges, and innovations. The meeting featured insightful presentations, case studies, and opportunities for participants to exchange ideas and share recent achievements.
Agenda Highlights
Rosanna Norman from GÉANT was the first to present. She introduced to the audience the new GÉANT Cybersecurity Month 2024, as part of the Cybersecurity Month initiative coordinated by ENISA and the European Commission. Spanning over the month of October, the CSM24 campaign – with the tagline “Your brain is the first line of defence” – has lots in store for our readers. From interesting articles and interviews, to useful recommendations and in-depth webinars presented by community security experts. All campaign resources are available in the Security Awareness Resource Hub, an impressive database of security awareness resources from various NRENs ready to be reused and shared, from posters to templates and training materials.
The next presenter was Laetitia Lagneau from Belnet, who walked the participants through their new branding focusing on community building and support services. Re-branding is no easy task, there are many factors to take into consideration and Laetitia showed the great work and thinking process that guided Belnet before choosing the final design.
Then, it was the turn of Naira Kocharyan from ASNET-AM, who came forward with great news: the recent opening of the Armenian National Supercomputing Centre. In order to successfully attract the right user communities, the Armenian NREN has been running a series of lectures, training courses, a summer school and a supercamp. Naira talked about the NREN’s promotion and communications in order to target the right audience.
Irina Sidorova from GÉANT closed off the first session of the meeting by introducing the GÉANT Mentoring Programme (GEM), an incredible initiative developed for the whole community to prioritise personal development and networking. After a successful pilot, the programme is now open to everybody.
SIG-marcomms meetings are designed to encourage dialogue and knowledge-sharing among attendees, hence the second session was centered around two stimulating discussion topics where participants can raise a challenge and get feedback from the group.
Alexandra van Straaten from SURF talked about the evolving social media landscape and in particular about SURF’s Mastodon pilot, which started in 2023 and since then has inspired many other NRENs and institutions to leave X and move to the new social media. Alexandra shared a few lessons learned and tips for NRENs interested in starting an account on Mastodon.
Later on, Barbara Caroll from HEAnet moderated a discussion on newsletter design and development. Ariela Herček from Arnes shared her experience with looking for the perfect service provider to ensure a usability, GDPR compliance as well as to make sure that the new newsletter look reflect the NREN and/or project’s branding and values. It followed an engaged exchange of ideas and lessons learned, including how to automate certain features on platforms most commonly used.
In line with the spirit of the GÉANT Community Programme, throughout the meeting, there was a strong emphasis on community building and innovation. Participants shared their experiences and strategies for addressing common challenges. The SIG-Marcomms Steering Committee closed the meeting by encouraging participants to continue the dialogue and leverage the community’s collective knowledge by using the mailing list – which is very active and counts over 180 subscribers!
All presentations from the meeting can be found on our community’s shared repository, Zenodo. Alternatively just click on the links on the meeting’s wiki page.
The next meeting will be hosted by HEAnet, the Irish NREN, in Dublin on 18-19 February 2025. More info about the agenda and travel arrangements will follow.
SIG-Marcomms is part of the GÉANT Community Programme. If you are interested in staying connected with the marcomms R&E community, don’t forget to subscribe to our mailing list!
