Community Ambassador - acmumn/officer-resources GitHub Wiki

It's the job of the community ambassador to act as an intermediary between ACM UMN and the rest of the world. The community ambassador interacts with potential and current sponsors and promotes events. Be sure to keep in touch withthe treasurer and vice president when planning events. The Community Ambassador also handles emails sent to the ACM UMN email address from companies or organizations, so keep track of sponsor contacts in the ACM Google Drive. Keep the Job Board up to date (nothing should be there for more than a year).

Most promotional materials are designed using Inkscape. It's free and relatively easy to learn.

These are the best ways to get your event out there!

• Add the event to the ACM calendar ([email protected]) and then add the event to the SESB calendar by inviting [email protected] to the event.
• Promoting via screens in Memorial Union. Use this form.
• Promoting via screens in Keller Hall. You can email your advertisements to Mark Rapacz, the Communications Coordinator for the CS Department, and he will post them on the Keller Hall Display. Send as a PDF at a ratio of 16:9 with resolution of 1920x1080. Create a document that is 34.14 inches x 19.2 inches.
• Printing glossy posters can be done by emailing designs to [email protected] or to Mark Rapacz. You can also try the CS department poster printing form. It just might work!
• Radio K might do free advertisements for student groups. Something to look into.

Class visits are one of the best ways to promote events and membership in general. There exists a (very janky) tool to generate a CSV of all the classes in a given department for the current semester. To use, make sure you have Go set up on your machine and use go build to compile it. The program accepts a department code (e.g. CSCI) on stdin, otherwise if nothing is supplied it will try to list every class at the university (this takes forever!) so just run ./class-lister <<< CSCI > classes.csv for simplicity. You can use the CSV to create a spreadsheet to delegate class visits.

• General purpose classrooms can be reserved through Astra. Beware, it is very tricky to use properly.
• To reserve the Keller Atrium and other special rooms, email [email protected]
• To reserve CS Computer Labs, use the department's form.
• Memorial Union, the St. Paul Student Center, and Outdoor Spaces can be reserved through SUA.
  • For outdoor spaces, there is another site you can use.

http://sua.umn.edu/reservations/policies/

SUA food permit: http://www.dehs.umn.edu/PDFs/foodpermit.pdf

One of the most important jobs of the Community Ambassador is to obtain and communicate with sponsors for ACM's events. For each large event, a spreadsheet containing information about sponsor companies, sponsor contacts, and each's interest in the even should be upkept. In association with the President and Vice President, the Community Ambassador must network with sponsor contacts, communicate the purpose and benefits of the event, and track funds as they are committed. The Events folder in the ACM google drive should have documents from past years that will be helpful in giving new officers an idea of what they need to do.

ACM has an extensive list of sponsor contacts from past events (i.e. MinneHack) which you can dip into. Feel free to use contacts you or others may have -- leverage connections! Make sure to keep in touch with confirmed sponsors as well. Sponsorships are often lined up several months in advance and we don't want them to forget their commitments. As the events approach, it's a good idea to start sending weekly updates (start this a month or so before the event) to sponsors to keep them in the loop as to what you need from them (e.g. for MinneHack, what their mentor/judge contacts are, whether they've paid their invoice, where they should ship swag, etc.)

Think Talks allow representatives from companies to tell students about their products, their accomplishments, and their opportunities for students and graduates. ACM organizes space and advertises the talks, and companies cover the cost of food. It is important to get students to stay for the talk, not just grab pizza and leave.

Organizing a talk is relatively simple. The following steps should cover most of the details of getting one going:

1. Find a sponsor who wants to send someone to talk about something interesting (this is often the hardest part!)
2. Reserve the room in Astra.
3. Work with the Treasurer to get a pizza permit and a food order in. Most likely, you'll go through the department for this.
4. Request that the sponsor create an advertisement for their event. Oftentimes they have a template on hand they can use or some kind of marketing/graphic design department they can use. It really makes it look more professional and it also saves us a lot of work.
5. Get the posters printed (i.e. email them to Mark Rapacz or the operator) and start hanging them around two weeks in advance. Put one on the job/event board and every pinboard in Keller.