Global IGF 2013 Communications Strategy

Bali, Indonesia, 19-25 October 2013

Contacts: Analia Lavin (on-site), Mallory Knodel (off-site), and Flavia Fascendini (off-site).

APC's messaging at the LAC IGF

Check APC’s priorities document:

Dissemination activities

APC and APC WRP communications teams will be using social networking tools, blogs, press releases, articles and interviews. All APC staff and APC members on-site and off-site are invited to participate in Spanish, English, and French.

•APC brief, before the event: To be posted online on October 11th. The brief includes APC schedule (workshops, pre-event, etc.)

•Resources and schedule, before the event: All resources and links will be compiled in a single page, where all future content (during and after) will be aggregated.

•Coverage announcement before the event: GenderIT.org will publish an announcement with information on the coverage and ways to collaborate and participate in our events.

•Gender related expectations' article: GenderIT.org will produce an article addressing “why women are at the IGF” and publish it in the website, as well as in APC.org.

•APC.org: Hotboxes on the APC homepage and the IR Monitor webpage.

•APCNews, post-event: This newsletter will include a collection of team outputs as well as photos, documents and articles about the pre-events and APC's agenda at the LAC IGF to be published a week after the event.

•Post-IGF reflections: Every year we publish our assessment of the IGF. The coordination will start on-site and we should aim to publish it 2-4 weeks after the IGF is finalised.

•GenderIT.org edition: A few weeks after the IGF we will send out the “Gender peripheries at the IGF” edition, addressing main gender analysis issues occurred in the meeting, highlights, chronicles, reflections, etc. This edition will go in hand with the introduction to the GISWatch 2013 edition on women´s rights.

•Collaborative note-taking: There’s a link to an etherpad in each of every activity in our schedule page:

Please share your notes there (they don’t have to be comprehensive). If the event you’re attending is not listed there, please generate your own etherpad and share it on the doc.

•Blogging:

◦APC.org blog: An open platform for any interested person to post content in Spanish, English, or French guaranteed to receive hundreds of views. You should be logged in and then go to for English and to for Spanish. Anyone can also send to quick impressions (one or two paragraphs) and photos and they will be posted.

◦What to blog about? After attending a workshop or main session, share your impressions, reflections, etc.

Genderit.org/feminist-talk: You can submit your inputs or engage in discussions around women's rights and IG issues in GenderIT.org's Feminist Talk. To submit your blog you should create an account and then navigate to You can also send your reflections and photos directly to and we will upload them for you. You do not need to be registered to send a comment on other posts.

◦Note to off-site team: Staff, members and people following the event off-site can help us blogging by using the tweets sent by on-site team as input for their articles, as well as the webcast. This is a good practice that allows us to produce more content and to help on-site team.

•Twitter: We invite staff, members and partners to use their personal accounts. We will be using the hashtags: #igf2013 #apc #internetrights and #genderit (#genderitES for Spanish). APC Twitter accounts are @APC_News @APCNoticias @APCNouvelles @GenderITorg @GenderITorgES.

APC staff accounts:

@anriette (Anriette Esterhuysen)
@emilarvushe (Emilar Vuse)
@esmex (Erika Smith)
@FlaFlak (Flavia Fascendini)
@internetrights (Joy Liddicoat)
@jen_ct (Jennifer Radloff)
@jhybe (Jac SM Kee)
@malloryknodel (Mallory Knodel)
@nmoawad (Nadine Moawad)
@shawnafinnegan (Shawna Finnegan)
@valeriabet (Valeria Betancourt)

@avri (Avri Doria)

◦On-site team: Tweet (in English and in Spanish and if possibly French) about conversations you have or overhear, your observations, soundbytes, links to interesting resources or news, photos, reminders about events (see Schedule below).

◦Remote team: Keep an eye out on tweets, re-tweet conversations, reply and join conversations, and conduct deeper research on tweeted links.

•Internal Twitter hashtag, to know where we are: #apcigf

•Facebook: APCNews, APCNoticias and APCNouvelles pages will have updates, links and photos and we invite staff and members to “like” the page, invite others and to post relevant links as well.

•Flickr: Staff and members will be able to easily contribute to our streaming by sending an email to the address (Analía to coordinate with Sarah how to add the feed into the website).

•Storify: Storify was successfully used during the LAC IGF to compile relevant Tweets, Facebook posts, YouTube videos and other social media posts. It's a fast and easy way to compose blog posts-like content.[1]

•Press release: Do we want to issue a press release by the end of the IGF? Or should we wait until our assessment document is produced?

•Articles/interviews: Whenever possible, APC staff and members attending the event will write sessions chronicles, articles on hot topics, or interview key advocacy referents.

Suggestions for people to interview: Moderators and regional input people from the IR main session [*after* the session]

WRP to suggest interviewees among GISW contributions).

The day in images: Each of the days of the IGF we will produce a collection of the “day in images”, publishing pictures with comments in APC.org.

•GISW Launch: There’s a separate GISWatch launch comms strategy.

Outreach activities

•Promoting APC individual membership

•Distributing sign-up forms for GenderIT.org and APCNews (at the booth)

•Gathering business cards afterwards into crm.apc.org

Booth and other on-site logistics

•Alexandra will be our main booth person; Analía will be back up.

•We have a plasma to promote our activities, publications, etc. WRP is coordinating.

•We'll have two APC banners.

•We'll have generic APC cards.

•Alex is coordinating publications and promotional materials

•We'll have a box for people to leave their business cards to be subscribed to APCNews; as well a signup sheets.

•Analía to bring glue paste, markers, colour papers, etc. for the decoration of the booth (maybe an old fashioned blackboard with chalks for announcements?).

•We'll have signs with people's Twitter accounts and hashtags we're using.

•We'll have printed copies of the brief and the communications strategy available for staff and members.

Distribution of responsibilities

•Analía and Alex will be coordinating the communications coverage on-site, carrying out the strategy but also responding to the team needs.

•WRP need to identify a communications person.

•Staff and members will tweet, blog, give interviews.

•Staff to provide input for main documents (brief, assessment).

On-site team commitments:

  • Shawna – one blog post
  • Emilar – one blog post

Resources distribution (paper and online)

Links

List of publications we are brining

Check out the full list of publications at the IGF tab here:

GenderIT.org postcards (1,000 copies will be printed in Bali)

EROTICS publications (please check with Caroline on this: 300 infographics little flyer/posters)

Appendix: Tips for staff members using social media at events

APC staff that attend events are usually very busy and experience has proved that Twitter is the easiest, least-time-consuming and most effective way to make APC's presence visible. Although the CND team would love to have your blog posts and video interviews (do contact us if you think you'll be able to engage in such activities) here are some simple steps that staff can follow in order to enhance your presence at the various public events that you'll attend.

  • Alert the assigned communications associate as soon as you confirm your participation in the event.
  • Make sure that you have a Twitter account. Make it open (otherwise people who are not following you – the ones we want to reach- won't be able to see your tweets). If you want to keep your Twitter account private you can create a new one for work (for example, name_apc).
  • Once at the event, find out what hashtag people are using. Sometimes there are various hashtags circulating; identify the most popular one. We'll use that hashtag for the box on APC.org
  • Include @APC_News (or @APCNoticias, @APCNouvelles) in your updates so that these can show up on APC.org's live twitter feed in the appropriate language.
  • Find out and send us the twitter accounts of partners and members attending, so that we can follow them.
  • Tweet! You can quote panelists and participants (short, summarised, catchy phrases) and/or your reactions to what is being said. You can also reply to other participants; you can even start real-time discussions. Asking questions is a good way to generate interest. You can add short links in your tweets and even pictures by using
  • Be careful: some events are more private that others. If it's a small event make sure that people are okay with you tweeting.
  • Re-tweet interesting stuff from other people; this will help us build our Twitter audience.
  • Blog. Many times you can cut and paste some tweets and replies and make an interesting post with little effort (you can also use Storify.com for this). You can also use tweets for reporting or as a way of taking notes. Failing that – send us the basic information and we can whip up a short blog piece.

Meanwhile, at our desks the assigned communications associates will:

  • Set up an event-specific Twitter box on APC.org (using both Twitter accounts and hashtags).
  • Re-tweet staff, members and partner's tweets using the APC Twitter account.
  • Follow people that are tweeting stuff relevant to our areas; as well as members and partners.

When getting new followers, we will send a direct message thanking them and inviting them to check out our work.

Global IGF 2013 Communications StrategyPage 1

Last update: 10/10/13

[1]See, for example: