Honing the Visibility of TDWG: Communications expertise required

Abstract

All organizations need clear and succinct mission and vision statements to communicate the purpose and overall goals of the group. These products provide the foundation for development of long(er) term strategic planning including communication plans. Logos offer us another way to highlight and brand what we do and why we do it. Periodically, for all organizations, these all need to be reviewed. The Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) Outreach and Communication Subcommittee took on this challenge and started a process to re-assess our current identity as presented in the existing original vision, mission, and logo. From the beginning, the subcommittee decided to follow a bottom-up method and invite all members to contribute to this process and refine its results. Community members had observed that the current logo, a simple lettering of the abbreviated old name and the organization's current name, needed to be revised to be more memorable and fit for use not only on the website, but for everything from slide decks to hex stickers for laptops. Similarly, some noted the mission and vision statements were combined and included other information like “how” TDWG works on its community-driven mission to make biodiversity data accessible. It was time to refresh TDWG’s brand with the additional challenge to keep reflecting the current values and long-standing traditions that characterize the community through a new more modern glass. Notable keys to our success in moving these goals forward started with leadership of the Outreach & Communications Committee Chair, from the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, and the facilitation and expertise of a Communication (Comms) and Outreach specialist from DiSSCo (Distributed System of Scientific Collections). Having the skills and knowledge of the Comms person meant we benefited from a clear step-by-step process. All involved learned a lot about what to do, to expect, and whom to engage in the future for any similar reviews in other groups. In this talk, we'll take you on this journey and present the new products of the community-led process: TDWG’s Mission, Vision and the new logo. This is, however, just the starting point and there is more work to be done. The next step would be the development of a strategic plan based on this foundation as TDWG continues to work on inclusion, increased global participation, recognition of our expertise, and strategic leadership in the creation, maintenance, implementation, and adoption of our standards.