The SRS Board of Directors meet earlier this month. One of our main agenda items was to review progress on our Strategic Plan over the last 3 years and think about what else we can accomplish in this 4th and last year of the current Plan. We are very pleased at progress to date. Please see an updated Strategic Map that color-codes our progress to date. Over the next few blogs, I am going to highlight our accomplishments in each area of the Map and outline some of our goals for 2017-2018.
Communications and Membership
Today, I want to start with the Membership and Communications column. Efforts in these areas have been lead largely by our Communications (Chair: Megan Petrov, PhD; past Chair: Michael Grandner, PhD) and Membership Committees (Chair: Ketema Paul, PhD). Each of these Committees have worked diligently and creatively to advance the specific objectives you can see in the Strategic map. Examples of accomplishments include:
Expanded or initiated use of a variety of social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram, as well as updated SRS website regularly. We have added content we hope will be useful for members, including: 1) a list of publically available datasets with sleep data; and 2) a list of online courses and training opportunity; among others.
Continued biweekly update emails. We cram a lot of information into these emails, in an effort to keep members informed about the activities of the SRS, funding opportunities, conferences, etc. We have received feedback that some of the updates may be a bit too long, and we are working on ways to make reading them more efficient.
We have begun to engage non-members in an effort to increase awareness of the importance of the sleep and circadian field to the public. These efforts include our social media efforts, as well as things such as posting the great Conversations with our Founders series to YouTube and partnering the humanOS radio on a series of podcasts that will start soon.
New initiates for 2017-2018 include:
Determine how to utilize the journal SLEEP website to better communicate to members and non-members.
We really want to be able to highlight the accomplishments of our members on a regular basis. We are working on ways we can announce awards, grants, major publications, and other accomplishments, and/or help distribute press releases highlighting our members’ research. This will likely involve social media, and we are looking for other avenues, as well.
Thanks to an effort initiated by Dr. Paul, both Membership and the Communications Committees will be working with other Committees, SRS staff and leadership to coordinate efforts. This should result in more collaborative projects that benefit members and greater opportunities to promote our members to the larger community.
