by Kevin Miller

I have been the Chair of the Information & Communication Committee for the past 11 years. Anita Miller was the only committee member in 2008.

Triathlon Manitoba uses e-mail, our website (100,000 hits in the past year), the telephone, our Spring newsletter, E-mail Contact List messages (16 in the past year), media releases, and paper leaflets to communicate information to our membership and others.

Three miscellaneous comments:

• Each year from 2000 to 2007, 15 to 35 media releases were written by the our Executive Director or Summer Program Coordinator. There were zero written in 2008. I'm assuming that's because we had a new Executive Director, and he either didn't know our history of media releases, didn't have the time to write any (or ask the Summer Program Coordinator to write any), or didn't feel they are a worthwhile investment of time. (It's true that they are rarely published, but at least our members see them on our website and know we're promoting our sport.) I've asked Anita to discuss the writing of media releases with our new-for-2008-2009 Executive Director.
  
  
• Anita wrote all the Headline Photo Story items in 2008. She received a few ideas from Angela Douklias (thanks Angela). Most of  the stories promoted  upcoming events; some highlighted a particular achievement. Anybody with an idea for a story should contact Anita.
  
  
• We again made the decision to produce our Spring newsletter without advertising; in 2005 we had concluded that the technical and logistical problems of receiving and inserting ads wasn't worth the effort. Those ad-filled newsletters were always ~24 pages. The Spring newsletters in 2006 and 2007 were 16 pages. This year's newsletter was only 6 pages because of a lack of club reports and other tidbits that we had usually received from our members.
  
  With each passing year, as people become more online / real-time oriented, motivating people to write newsletter stories has become more difficult. There's already a wealth of info on the internet about triathlon in general and triathlon in Manitoba (our website), so our Spring newsletter has evolved into a smaller document that contains some core info that we can drop at bike shops and running stores, with the hope that some new people will pick up a copy and be motivated to learn more about us by going to our website.