How to organize your Discipline of the Month

This guide provides you with some ideas, tips and tricks on how to promote your research field as discipline of the month.

It is a very creative and highly rewarding activity to set up a webpage and have other activities. People get very excited about it and you will get a great resonance! And remember, working in teams is always more fun, so try to have at least another person from your research discipline to work with and you’ll see how easily and quickly everything gets done. This is a working document - so feel free to edit this with things you have learned from your DOM.

1. Create a logo:
   
   1. Check out http://www.apecs.is/research-fields/atmosphere upper right corner for the basic design. Jenny B. has the template with the correct colors, aspect ratios etc. So you basically need to choose which pictures represent your research area best.
   2. You can find the template for the logo here.
2. Update your research webpage:
   
   1. Do you have a web address yet? (www.apecs.is/research-fields/yourdiscipline)
   2. Decide for a layout. Basically you can have a one or a two column page (check out the atmosphere page). Ask Jenny or Allen to set the page up for you.
   3. Think of the content:
      
      1.  What’s the discipline about?
      2. Who are the coordinators?
      3. What are the members doing? You can integrate a comment section or a pin wall (check again the atmosphere page). Do they have blogs or webpages? What did they publish recently?
      4.  Who are the mentors?
      5. Any video interviews to put a link to or to upload?
      6. Anything on traditional knowledge, something we can learn from locals?
      7. How can people get involved? Do they have research sites to post? Get in contact with the Field Site WG.
      8. Any resources? You can put links to other sections of the APECS webpage where there is information on your research field.
      9. Anything else you can think of
   4. Set up the webpage. For some of the features, this just involves writing the various articles. For things like the list of mentors or resources, you’ll need to do some simple information gathering, and for things like the pin board there’s some back end work that needs to be done (talk to Jenny B.). For most of the “interactive” features (e.g., Share your article! or Share your blog!), there’s no easy way to post directly to the website. For the atmosphere page, we set it up so that when someone clicks on the link it sends an email to me with an appropriate subject (e.g. [APECS-publications]).
   5. Publish the page (which means publishing each individual article).
3. Advertise, advertise, advertise!
   1. Put a news feature on the APECS homepage where you advertize your research field with the logo you created and the link to your page. Will there be a VPS? Any other actions like workshops, conferences you can incorporate?
   2. Send an email on the first of the month to the APECS mailing list and to your discipline listserv. Ask your people to contribute to the new page.
   3. Towards the middle of the month, send another email to your list-serve encouraging participation. We got a short second burst of activity when that happened.
4. Think of a mid-month action like publishing interviews, having a workshop, a webinar, a VPS, a big report… anything that attracts attention and can rejuvenate interest. Once that’s set, send a mid-month email to the general APECS mailing list.
5. How to organize the VPS:
   
   1. As part of the DOM there is a virtual poster session with 3 to 5 speakers and a keynote speaker if you manage to find a senior scientist who can give an overview on your field of research. If you need help finding a keynote speaker ask Allen, Julia or the APECS director for help after searching through our mentor database.
   2. Find your speakers and confirm a date and time for the session. Once you have this set up a meeting in the GoToWebinar software and let the excom know when you the VPS will take place so we can add this to the GoToWebinar calendar. Also, please add the event to the APECS events in the "Meetings&Event" section.
   3. Ask your presenters to upload their posters to the VPS section of our site well before the VPS. You will need a picture of the poster to prepare the official VPS recording slides.
   4. The recording slide template can be downloaded here. This is a standardized format which the video editor can use to quickly produce the video of the live session which will be put online.
6. Don’t forget to keep your new webpage updated for the future.

Any questions? Ask Julia, Jenny, Allen or any other RAC member.