Great suggestion. Stephen wrote up a few takes on an “Elevator pitch” version of the New Communicators description. I’ll post them here to test the waters first:

A series of events, created by you, to be held in Portland, Oregon from October 28th to the 30th.

A crowdsourced series of events held in Portland, Oregon on October 28th, 29th and 30th around the concept of how we communicate.

Exploring conversation through a series of crowdsourced events held on October 28th, 29th and 30th in Portland, Oregon.

A series of events about the way we communicate. A conference created by you, for you, in Portland, Oregon from October 28th – 30th.

A series of events created for you, by you, exploring the ways we communicate. Portland, Oregon / October 28th – 30th

I work as a User Experience Designer and Information Architect. I’m not creative. I don’t do concepting, copywriting, or design, but I do work on projects that have a message to get across, as I’m sure most of us in this conversation do, and I think I do a lot to support the creative process,.

There is almost always some debate – between the creative team, the stakeholders, managers, whoever. Public projects are, I’m learning, no different. What seems to help, when you come to a crossroads, is to look at any subjective debate as a good candidate for an experiment, to do some good user testing, and find the right answer by getting supporting facts.

There are I’m sure many ways to go about this, but the way I would do it would be to start with a little old fashioned persona development. It might be basic, but it always helps to identify the specific traits of the people you’re talking to. Are they professionals, successful entrepreneurs, early adopters, hobby bloggers, etc. I’d get more specific than that doing this for real, but you get the picture. Recognize that some people aren’t going to be the audience, and speak to the ones that share your motivations.

Once you know who to target, you can pick out some people matching that description and do some simple user testing. There are lots of low commitment, low cost ways to do this, so it’s not as big a deal as some people think it is. Come up with several taglines or paragraphs to test-you wouldn’t have to look to strike gold with just one, and send it to people and ask them to tell you what it means, how they would describe it to their friends or boss or parents. The main thing I would try to do would be to get enough people involved so you can determine what is statistically significant feedback. You won’t get everyone to agree, it’s not a realistic expectation, but with enough people involved, you can pick up on common trends, and refine as it makes sense for your target audience. You’d want to develop screening criteria for your test so you get impartial responses. For example, you’d look for people that are likely to attend or host gatherings (probably treating them as two different test groups and asking them different questions), eliminating those with personal connections to the people involved to weed out impartial responses. From there, you’d have a good indication of what, if anything, you need to work on with your message.

I think I made it sound more involved than it really needs to be. This could probably all happen over a couple days, and could give some good clarity and insight. I’m up for helping out with that if it’s something you want to try out.

I don’t think it is stated that there is “a problem” that needs fixing, necessarily. Simply that it would be great to hear both success and failure stories from people who are using both new and traditional communication channels to engage their audience, and we’d like help to provide context for presenting their stories. I don’t feel that we are “reacting” to something bad that’s happening, just excited by stories we hear everyday about people finding an audience for their…whatever they do…and feeling like it would be cool for those people to share those stories with others in an effort to inspire others.

Actually, aside from the run-on sentence, that’s pretty good.

http://ma.tt/2009/05/how-p2-changed-automattic/

It’s been stated that the genesis of this was that “what’s happening within the Portland comm arts scene, and the industry in general … is a problem for a lot of us”. But there seems to have been a problem just stating in plain language what “what’s happening” means and why it’s “a problem”.

Trying to define/describe the event itself seems like the proverbial cart before the horse. The event, it seems, it meant to address “what’s happening” and the fact that it’s “a problem”, but that doesn’t tell anyone stumbling across The New Communicators why they should care — or, for that matter, prevents them from deciding if they even happen to agree that “what’s happening” is “a problem”.

My sticking point from the beginning of my own stumbling upon this via Twitter is that people involved seem to be having trouble speaking in plain and straightforward words. Which is weird to me, because presumably when the idea first came up, they were speaking in plain and straightforward words to each other.

The reason why several of us reacted with a kind of visceral violence to the site copy, I think, was because it read like those involved were so focused on branding and identity and tag lines and messaging, they skipped over the step of just talking like regular people to explain why you were bothering to try whatever this is meant to be.

Everything reads like marketers talking to other marketers, but if you’re actually interested in conversation, you need to be speaking in ways that aren’t exclusive to the circle, and I think that’s why there’s been the pushback there’s been.

Of course, I’ve now drawn this comment out in a far less concise manner than I intended to myself.

I am really looking forward to hearing what this means to the community, and seeing a different perspective on how to communicate this concept to the audience. This is part of what The New Communicators is all about.

For me, The New Communicators is about collaboration, pushing the limits, and learning from each other. For me, The New Communicators is about addressing things differently this time. We want input. We want to be challenged. We’re inviting it. I believe that’s truly the only way to grow.

Erin I think you put it well when you said we’re expecting things to evolve. We have all accepted that this may not may not run perfectly the first time around. I don’t want to speak for everyone else, but personally, I’m pretty excited that it won’t.

This is the fundamental reason I was so determined to get involved in the first place. The team was so welcoming to the possibility of failure it was refreshing! We want to work together to move forward toward the greater good. We want to learn from our mistakes. That, to me, is the fundamental key to success.

I’ve said this or tweeted it many times, but for me it really seems appropriate here: The New Communicators IS: work together. Challenge each other. Collaborate. Break the molds. We are the new communicators. join us.