Press Service International young writer ministry operating in conjunction with Christian Today is working through what amounts to be an internal functional re-direction.
There are 85 young writers in a working model of a 5 week Cycle to ensure everyone is published and these young writers each write 10 articles a year, ie 5 Cycles of 5 Weeks each.
These young people are from Australia, New Zealand and around the world from England to South Africa, to China to Canada, the West Indies to the USA.
This has developed into a mammoth undertaking, and all volunteers. A recent article of mine spoke of the numbers of volunteers engaged to make it all function as smooth as clock work.
Heavy Email Load
Some eighteen months ago former young writer, now senior writer in the program Jeremy Dover suggested it was time to restructure the Email distribution and reduce the work load from my office.
Finally this has taken place with some redirection to ensure it runs effortlessly.
In all the years in the program, everyone involved received the daily PSI young writer "article links". This is a daily major undertaking also involves hyper-linking articles from Christian Today to the PSI web site which acts as a data base for everyone's articles.
The change to 'Week Editors' with Sophia Sinclair moving to 'Chief Editor' has also bought redirection to the way in which young writers 'late' articles are handled. The deadline has been bought back from the Monday after the weekend to the Friday prior to the weekend, giving late comers a weekend of grace.
It remains a work in progress as we look at what is working and what processes are struggling to meet the needs of both the young writers, the program and Christian Today. In requires a win-win for all concerned.
Another development in progress are the New Zealand young writers going it alone in pre-publishing and this will entail a number of Kiwi young writers getting involved in roles such as a "new young writer" coordinator, a fellowship coordinator and the like. Irenie How of Christchurch is already engaged in the article reminders and the editing.
Young writer Sam Gillespie engaged in post graduate studies involving classical music and IT is currently undertaking a review of all these Email issues.
Directions
The initial fresh directions are the Week Editors - ranging from 15-18 young writers in each of the 5 Weeks, and now each week now has its own editor. There is a transition involved here as it is new territory.
The daily PSI has been redirected by notification by one young writer in each week o Emailing to their young writer 'week' on the Monday morning - their publishing days for that week. These young writers published that week will now know their article is coming up for publishing.
The New Zealanders young writers 'going it alone' to the pre-publishing stage removes from my office further Emailing. Although 85 young writers, PSI is still too small for a professional email service provider and with 25 separate contact sub-groups with constant changes, while localised mail server operations are more effort than necessary.
These are the separate email contact sub-folders
Australian young writers
Australian young writers - limited
New Zealand young writers
New Zealand young writers - limited
International young writers
International young writers – limited
Australian Panellists
New Zealand Panellists
International Panellists
Sport Panellists
Senior Writers
Senior Writers – limited
PSI media Australian data base
PSI media Australian data base – limited
PSI media New Zealand data base
PSI media New Zealand data base - limited
International media data base
International media data base - limited
Other Christian Media data base
Former young writers data base
Administration data base
Missions data base
One Day in Melbourne data base
One Afternoon in Sydney data base
Ministry data base
Others too
Then there are a wide range of other data bases in relation to Well-Being Australia, the faith finance support network, the prayer network, the Laguna Quays Respite data base, the E-Blast data base and a whole host more.
The idea behind this functional redirection is to see numbers of those data bases being engaged for specific roles by the young writers, such as the Monday alert to the young writers.
The young writers engaged in the Monday alert to their fellow Week young writers
Week 1 - Kandima Awendila
Week 2 - Cartia Moore
Week 3 - Emily Black
Week 4 - Michele Ong
Week 5 - Caitlyn Furler
The Proverbs says two heads are better than one and Jesus said there there are two or three gathered in my name ..... and when the workload became too much for Moses, Jethro his father in law came up with a workable solution.
Dr Mark Tronson is a Baptist minister (retired) who served as the Australian cricket team chaplain for 17 years (2000 ret) and established Life After Cricket in 2001. He was recognised by the Olympic Ministry Medal in 2009 presented by Carl Lewis Olympian of the Century. He mentors young writers and has written 24 books, and enjoys writing. He is married to Delma, with four adult children and grand-children.
Mark Tronson's archive of articles can be viewed at http://www.pressserviceinternational.org/mark-tronson.html