Mailinglist/Announce guidelines

The Noisebridge-announce mailing list goes to hundreds or thousands of people who range from Noisebridge members to peripherally-interested onlookers who attend one event a year; announce messages sometimes get posted to Laughingsquid and similar forums. Your announcement email should cater to all recipients to the greatest degree possible.

In particular,

• people will forward it to their friends.
• people will reply to it.
• people will not remember to follow links.

Your email to announce should:

• have a catchy subject. "Five Minutes of Fame, November 25" is good (the date is optional but beneficial). "We are having a workshop next month at Noisebridge about Processing" is not good. Frontload the subject; many email programs only show the first few words, and Mailman will put "[Noisebridge-anounce]" at the beginning.
• contain the essential information in the body of the email for better forwarding:
  • what is the event about? (One sentence and one paragraph versions.)
  • when is the event?
  • where is the event? Include the address and cross street even if it's happening at 2169, not everybody on the list is a regular at the space.
• link to a wiki page for more information.
• include any necessary information or prerequisites ("Please have Processing installed on your laptop before coming to the workshop, or show up an hour early for help getting Processing installed.")
• include a Reply-To header pointing to an appropriate mailing list or the sender.