Welcome to the SAWS News Blog
This blog is designed to share news about SAWS and its members. It is part of a broader communications effort including social media to build the brand of the organization and encourage people to join and be active in woodworking.
Putting a personal face on the organization, its members and the woodworking they do, encourages the mentorship and camaraderie that has been the foundation of the organization over many years.
We welcome member contributions for the blog and below is some background on how to do that. We also encourage members to share these blog articles with their personal or business networks. The more they are used and shared the more value SAWS gets from the effort.
Some Basic Rules of Operation
This blog is designed to be an enjoyable, manageable undertaking.
How to submit: If you have an idea or a completed article, send us an email and we will let you know our thoughts on approach and timing. We expect this to be a simple and easy going approach and we just want to avoid obvious issues such as having two members doing an article on the same topic, or figuring out best timing for the article to appear etc.
Length and type of article: There are no hard and fast rules but in general we want to keep articles fairly short and the pace brisk. Photos and illustrations that are owned by the contributor are welcome. Please don’t reproduce copyrighted material. A good rule of thumb for article length is under 500 words. But a blog entry can also be one or more photos with captions or descriptive. Visuals should be good quality and digital format. Please include some background on yourself as author as an attachment to your article.
Sample story types for member contributions: This is mostly wide open. Things you have built, tools you have used, courses you have taken, working tips and design thoughts, member success stories. As the blog grows with more entries over time, hopefully ideas for topics and article approaches will be generated.
Building respect: Online forums can sometime disintegrate into debating forums. We do not want that here. Treat people with respect in writing and comments. A good rule is no political comments. Ensure humor is respectful and that all postings are inclusive -- family, gender and age friendly.
Copyright: The copyright for articles and photos remain with the contributor. However, articles provided may be used elsewhere by SAWS. By providing the article to SAWS or agreeing to an interview, the author is providing SAWS with authority to use the material.
Links to social media, other SAWS communications efforts: Articles provided to the blog will also be linked into the SAWS social media plan and may be used in other SAWS tools such as the newsletter.
Commercial activity: This blog is not a forum for generating commercial activity. While some of that may occur as part of SAWS sponsorship or general activities, we do not want these articles to be about promotion of specific products or programs. We will not use links to commercial websites. However we expect to actively encourage woodworking activities in Western Canada.
Oversight: SAWS communications activities are overseen by a group of members. If we have questions we default to the judgment of this group for answers. A SAWS representative will review all articles for appropriate language and approach. We may do basic editing to correct obvious problems and add a headline if one is not provided, but we will not edit aggressively without writer approval. We reserve the right to refuse material deemed not appropriate, and to adjust content already posted or remove it entirely if that is recommended by our group.
