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TF-PR Meeting 7th September 2009 - Vienna I recently attended the TF-PR meeting on 7th September 2009 at the University of Vienna, hosted by ACOnet, the Viennese NREN.

By definition, the objective of the TF-PR group is to ‘promote the quality and quantity of public relations and information dissemination about research and education networking in Europe,’ and it was certainly a great place to find out what is going on in Europe and the wider education and research community.

The meeting presented a perfect platform to discuss how we could all learn from each other’s experiences and share resources, and it was interesting to see how different NRENS were approaching the different challenges and solutions they faced.

It was encouraging to discover a number of existing resources available to NRENS, including the PeaR news portal where we can all post and read news items from around Europe. Plans are also in place to improve collaboration across Europe and work towards a more coordinated effort– a central repository is in the pipeline to share information and material relating to comms activities across NRENs.

The ‘compendium’ when completed will act as a reference guide for other NRENS, to benchmark their activities against others and plan their communications – it will include an overview of promotional campaigns, the materials and channels that were used, along with an overview of which activities had the most success. This will be extremely useful when planning communications campaigns.

A move towards social networking as an effective communications tool was also reflected in the agenda, with an engaging presentation from Gyongyi Horvath at Terena It was interesting to gauge the ways in which other NRENS have been using this tool, and to what effect. JANET is currently trialling Twitter to engage with its community and it was encouraging to see the success of organisations like SURFnet and TERENA who are active users of this technology.

All in all I came away encouraged by where the UK ranked in the overall picture within Europe. We are on the whole proactive in our communications activities, but as with most things, we can always do better.

I was however intrigued by some of the activities other NRENs were undertaking and came away inspired by the discussions we had. The opportunity to network with my peers and get a fresh perspective on our activities made the meeting a definite must – I came back with a fresh mindset and inspired to do great things!

Rachel Freeman - TF-PR meeting, Vienna, 7th September 2009