The Communications Subcommittee oversees the Society’s various media – the Bulletin, websites, Facebook pages, Twitter, YouTube, Glebe Society Update email and Eventbrite. We make sure that these are useful and engaging for our members and the public.

This year, we welcomed Sarah Fogg onto the Subcommittee – you may have noticed that Sarah is the brains behind ‘Blasts from the Past’ that now appears in most Bulletins. We also welcomed Alice Simpson-Young who has taken over as Chief Twit – Alice knows all about ‘hashtags’ and other twitter lingo and has done a really excellent job at upping the Society’s Twitter presence. Other members of the Subcommittee are Virginia Simpson-Young (convenor and Bulletin editor), Peter Thorogood (website technical person), Andrew Botros (webmaster), Allan Hogan (Facebook admin), Phil Young (mailout team coordinator), Carole Herriman, Bruce Davis, and Bill Simpson-Young.

The Bulletin
The Bulletin continues to be sent to members in either the hard copy or email form. Each month we send out about 250 copies of the Bulletin and email about 150. Complimentary copies of the Bulletin are sent (mostly via email) to various non-members as well; including City of Sydney Councillors and staff, various media outlets, local and community organisations and libraries, to name but a few. Each month, the most recent edition of the Bulletin is made publicly available on our website and promoted via the Facebook page and Twitter. Copies are also given to the Society’s archivist, Lyn Milton, who squirrels them away in the Archives for a rainy day.

Bulletin distribution is done by our trusty ‘mailout team’ who meet on publication day at one of their homes to label and address each paper Bulletin. Many Bulletins are hand-delivered to members’ letterboxes and the remainder are posted. The mailout team comprises Jude Paul, Carole Herriman, Jeanette Knox, Bruce Davis, Bryan Herden, Edwina Doe, Madeleine Jennings, Neil & Jan Macindoe and Alison McKeown. The team is now led by Phil Young who took over from Edwina Doe.

Edwina Doe continues her involvement with the Bulletin as proof-reader, a task which she shares each month with Martin Lawrence. Edwina and Martin are sometimes all that stand between an acceptable Bulletin and a major disaster – by the time the editor (yours truly) thinks she’s finished, she is formatting – stir crazy – with only one eye open, and errors are liable to sneak past.

And finally on the Bulletin, we are pleased to say that the project to scan back-copies for electronic access via the Society’s website is now complete; all back-copies are available and searchable(!).

Glebe Society Websites
The Society has three websites –

Each can be viewed on your computer, tablet or smart phone – the last being particularly useful in the case of the Glebe Walks site.

Each month, material from the Bulletin is added to the website by Peter Thorogood. The webmaster, Andrew Botros, works with convenors as needed to share material provided by sub-committees, upload events and so on. Andrew also fields queries coming to the Society via the website.

Our main website is currently averaging about 650 hits per day. The number of visitors has been increasing throughout the year to an average of 980 a day in the last three months. A total of 434 comments have been received with 39 being received this year in response to the City of Sydney’s Safety Audit.

The Glebe Walks site, thanks to Jan Macindoe, has seen an upgrade of the Foreshore Walk section to now include the path in front of Sydney Secondary College (Blackwattle Campus) and the Tramsheds. The site is averaging around 100 hits per day.

The number of visits a day to the Glebe Island Bridge website has increased from about 15 at the beginning of the year to about 22 a day at the end of the year.

Glebe Facebook Pages
The Society’s Facebook pages are also maintained by the Communications Subcommittee. These are

  • the main page:
  • www.facebook.com/TheGlebeSociety, and the Glebe Island Bridge page:
  • http://www.facebook.com/GlebeIslandBridge. Allan Hogan and I (Virginia) share material from the Bulletin on the Facebook page, as well as any other Glebe-related information that comes our way.

Around 820 people follow our Facebook page which is a 30% increase on about this time last year. The vast majority of these people are not Society members, so Facebook is a great way to reach beyond the membership. Our posts on Facebook often generate discussion via ‘comments’ and it seems that many people look at our posts to find out what is happening in Glebe. Quite often, our ‘followers’ on-share our posts to others whom they believe may be interested in our content.

The Glebe Society Update Email
One of the Subcommittee’s roles is the compilation and distribution of the Glebe Society Update emails that are sent on an irregular basis to those members who have provided us with an email address. They contain breaking news that can’t wait for the next Bulletin and updated information on important issues that the Glebe Society is working on. 93% of our members can be contacted by email and we imagine that it won’t be too many years before we reach 100%! If you are not receiving the email update and would like to, please contact: communications@glebesociety.org.au.

YouTube Channel
The YouTube channel is a useful and growing repository for the Society’s audio-visual material, as well as video about Glebe more generally. In the last year, we uploaded five videos, one of which is of last year’s AGM speaker, Snr Constable Renee Fortuna, and an interview with Max Solling about Trams in Glebe.

The 12 videos on our YouTube channel have had a combined total of 1,845 views with the most popular being Glebe Now and Then with 925 views.

To see these and other clips on our YouTube channel, go to: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBT7r3R0FaaI_dK6kV9sCbg or search for ‘YouTube Glebe Society’.

Please get in touch if you have any suggestions, comments or complaints about our media – we’re always open to new ideas.

Events

On 29 May, the Subcommittee held another popular ‘Get more out of your Smartphone’ event. The aim was to help members learn some tips and tricks to get more out of their smartphones. Phil Young presented on the iPhone and I presented on Android phones.