Hi, SPeaker readers! I’m Steven, the SP Newsletter Chair for this year. The Sidney-Pacific SPeaker is a monthly published newsletter that connects SP residents with the news around SP. As you may have noticed, we are making several changes to the Sidney-Pacific SPeaker in order to make this connection even stronger. In this article, I am going to introduce to you some of the changes and ideas we have for the newsletter this year. Also, I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who participated in the newsletter survey recently. Your comments and suggestions are truly valuable as they provide us directions to make the newsletter even better.

Introducing the E-Newsletter

In the survey, many of you mentioned that an electronic newsletter would be a good alternative way to deliver the newsletter. In response to that, we have worked very hard to make this become reality. It was challenging because we did not want to simply send the newsletter as an attachment in e-mails. Instead, we spent a lot of time designing a reader friendly version of the electronic newsletter. In this issue of the SPeaker, you will receive a summary of articles via e-mail. By clicking on the title link of each article, you will be directed to the newsletter website where you can read the article of interest in full. We hope this will be a convenient way for you to enjoy the articles on the newsletter and at the same time, eliminates the need to print out copies of the newsletter every month. I would also like to thank Sharon Paradesi, the Web Chair, and George Tucker, the VP of Information, for working with me to make the electronic newsletter possible.

Interactive Newsletter

One advantage of the e-newsletter is that it can be far more interactive than the traditional newsletter. We have included many new features on the newsletter website which were not possible in the paper version. One of the features you will find is the icons in the end of every article which allows you to share your favorite article on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or via email. So go ahead and read it, like it and share it. You can also comment on each article to share your opinion. We hope this will make the newsletter more fun to read than ever before.

To make the newsletter even more interactive, we plan on having polls and surveys on SP events or just SP in general in some of the future issues. Sidney-Pacific is a graduate community and to establish a strong community, it is important to have a two-way communication between the officers and residents. Therefore, we view this newsletter as a way for the officers not only to communicate to the residents but also to hear feedback and suggestions from the residents. With all of these improvements, we hope to actively engage readers of the SPeaker.

Article Variety

Many of you also mentioned that you would like to see more articles on the news impacting SP residents and on upcoming events. In addition to those types of articles, we will also try to include articles on outdoor activities you can do around SP, Cambridge, or Boston. What would be fun to do on a summer day at SP? Where are the places to go around SP during the weekends? Where to go for hiking, biking, etc.? We hope you will find useful information in those articles and give those places and activities a try sometime.

Read and Be Read

With that being said, the Sidney-Pacific SPeaker needs input from you! If you have been somewhere fun near Cambridge or tried an interesting activity, please share it with the SP community! The types of articles you can submit are not limited those mentioned above. Write to the SPeaker if you have interesting stores to share, hobby to promote and so on. We need your articles to make the newsletter fun and exciting to read! To promote submissions from residents, we are planning to award prizes to writer in future issues. If your article is chosen to be published on the SPeaker, you could win a gift card! So be sure to keep an eye out and submit your articles for prizes.

More Improvements Yet to Come

This month is the first time we are trying to make the SPeaker electronically available. We have not totally abandoned the paper version of the newsletter but we will certainly be shifting towards the electronic version if this is successful. We have worked very hard to establish this electronic version from scratch and there are certainly more improvements that can be done. You can help us to make the website better by giving us feedback on how to improve it.

Lastly, we hope you support the newsletter and our effort of making Sidney-Pacific a better community. The simplest way to support us is by simply reading the newsletter. In addition, you can give us comments on articles and submit your own articles. We hope you will find the SPeaker fun to read and get involved as a writer too.

So, do you like the electronic version of the Sidney-Pacific SPeaker? Please comment below to tell us what you think and give us some feedback!

By Shiou-chi (Steven) Chang, SP Newsletter Chair