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Should we make some changes to the online community for the IET Women's Network?

Hello Women’s Network!


We’ve noticed that this online community isn’t as active and engaged as it once was so we’d appreciate your thoughts on how we can turn that around. Why do you think that it’s not very active? Is it something about the group itself or the technology that stops you from participating? 


The team and I, along with Jo Foster our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Manager, have had a few ideas and suggestions that we’d like feedback on so please have a read through and let us know which of these ideas you think we should implement. Or of course if you have any suggestions of your own please get in touch and let us know.


We could:


1.    Close the online community group for the IET Women’s Network and move the discussions to a new overarching category on the theme of diversity and inclusion hosted in our site-wide public forum space. The new category would also include discussions from the LGBTQ+ group and other existing groups that also come under the banner of diversity and inclusion. Conversations in the new forum category will be visible to the general public and therefore have the opportunity to attract a wider audience and increased engagement. 


2.    Keep the group exactly as it is but be more active within it. Currently the group is a public group within the online community so all discussions etc can be read by the public but as they are within a group, you only find out about the discussions if you visit the group itself.  


3.    Keep the group but change it to a private group (so you need approval by an admin to join it and content within is only visible to members of the group) So you can discuss topics etc that you’d prefer not to be visible to the public but then have a site-wide forum area as well for topics that you don’t mind discussing in public. We could also restrict access to the private group for ‘Women Only’ if preferred. 


We’ve also created a poll on the group homepage for you to indicate which of our suggestions you’d prefer. 


Happy to take private feedback either by PM,  via my email address of Lmiles@theiet.org  or by reply to this forum post! 


If you have any questions at all then please don’t hesitate to get in touch.


Lisa

Parents
  • It would be nice to keep it, although I haven't been very active myself on here. I tend to use social media (twitter/ linkedin) to read articles, give my own opinions, or see whats happening when it comes to women in engineering things so maybe some way of having more of a link between those platforms and this network would increase activity?

    Or if it had a function thats not currently available on other platforms, such as networking events, webinars etc ? I used to check on here a lot when there were regular big women's network events such as Goldiblox founder talk at Savoy place, and some networking events. It seems now the focus is on the annual IET YWE event, which I imagine requires a lot of prep.

    I'd like to get involved in something within the womens group that encourages women to go forward more as technical speakers in their field. I'm always open to talking/presenting about encouraging women into STEM but am nervous of conducting technical presentations - so that might be a good angle too as something the network could support (ie the training to become a great technical speaker). That might work best within a private group.
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  • It would be nice to keep it, although I haven't been very active myself on here. I tend to use social media (twitter/ linkedin) to read articles, give my own opinions, or see whats happening when it comes to women in engineering things so maybe some way of having more of a link between those platforms and this network would increase activity?

    Or if it had a function thats not currently available on other platforms, such as networking events, webinars etc ? I used to check on here a lot when there were regular big women's network events such as Goldiblox founder talk at Savoy place, and some networking events. It seems now the focus is on the annual IET YWE event, which I imagine requires a lot of prep.

    I'd like to get involved in something within the womens group that encourages women to go forward more as technical speakers in their field. I'm always open to talking/presenting about encouraging women into STEM but am nervous of conducting technical presentations - so that might be a good angle too as something the network could support (ie the training to become a great technical speaker). That might work best within a private group.
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