Communication Transitions in EUU

by Gevene Hertz

Imagine a time without PCs, smartphones, iPads… No Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, BlueSky… With hardly anyone having an email account! Telephone calls were expensive. Communication was slow, everything was on paper – retreat publicity and invitations, registration, pledge letters…and our EUU newsletter!

The Unifier has evolved in format, content and delivery method since the first one was published in 1990 (scroll down to read about newsletter and website history), and now we are at the beginning of another new era for EUU communications. This is “my” final Unifier. I am also stepping down as webmaster. I have really (that’s true) enjoyed both jobs, but it’s time to renew ourselves with new energy and new ideas.

I want to thank the countless writers, editors, photographers and others who have helped make the recent Unifiers what they are. Shulamit, in particular, played a big role organizing our workflow and editing and proofreading.

What’s Next?
Now a number of enthusiastic people have come forward to help modernize EUU communications while continuing to strengthen our sense of community. Our vice-president Cappy is coordinating the New EUUnifier-Communications group, but although we have quite a few volunteers, I think we are still lacking a person (or small group) to be what in Danish we call the “rope holder” for the Unifier. We also need a webmaster or two to be responsible for the website after Karen and Karin and Matt modernize it. You don’t have to be a great writer or editor for either of these jobs – we need people who are good at organizing and assigning tasks and making sure things come together. We have people who can help with technical tasks, but if you are familiar with MailChimp or WordPress or something similar, your experience would be very welcome. Please contact Cappy at vicepresident@europeanuu.org if you are the slightest bit interested.

Communications is not just about our newsletter and website. We have long had an EUU presence on Facebook (a discussion group as well as a news “page”) and on Twitter (X) – the motivation for this was to promote events like retreats and increase young people’s awareness of EUU. (Twitter didn’t end up where we thought it would.) More recently we set up Bluesky and Instagram accounts. We have the platforms, but we need people who can use them for EUU. We even have a YouTube channel with some old videos, just waiting for someone who with skills and interest to manage it. New communications platforms pop up so fast that it’s easy to get overwhelmed, wondering what to do next. This is just to let you know that if newsletters or websites don’t excite you, you have opportunities to serve EUU by posting for us in a social media platform that you yourself know and love!

Note: Although I have managed EUU communications for quite a while, I actually think that no one should commit to any EUU job for more than a few years at a time. I believe that involving more people on a regular basis renews the organization and makes it much stronger and resilient. 

Here’s the promised history part:

I can think of only a handful of current EUU members who might remember that John Hertz and I were the first editors of the Unifier. I had almost forgotten it myself! From before 1986, when our family attended our first EUU retreat, EUU had an executive director, the Rev. Steve Dick, who produced our newsletter, Die Gedanken Sind Frei, and organized retreats, including arranging for teachers to come from England to provide RE (religious education) for the children.

EUU and Steve parted ways in 1989, and EUU became a strictly volunteer organization. Suddenly we members had to produce our own newsletter as well as organize the semi-annual EUU retreats. In retrospect, I think that the primary reason the Hertzes were awarded the newsletter job was that John and I had access to his work computer, which had a typesetting program (LaTeX). We mailed out two issues of the quarterly EUU News, while we held a contest to find a more original name. The winning entry was suggested by one of the teens, Joey Lalor. Starting with vol 1, issue 3, the newsletter became The UNIfier.

An aside note – around the same time, EUU had an informal logo, designed by Josh Hertz and used onT-shirts and sweatshirts.

I ran across the very first EUU News from November 1989  recently while looking for some information about EUU history for Eva Kortekaas. It contained interviews – our two sons were charged with interviewing newly-elected and outgoing officers for this first issue. It also contained reports from the fellowships, news about retreats, and a membership directory. (Different times…) AND – it contained proposed new by-laws for EUU.

In the 35+ years since then, the Unifier, which became a monthly publication, has had several editors, of whom Martha Hicks was the most dedicated, professional, and long-serving. (By the way, she has generously compiled a collection of her excellent Unifier editorial columns that will soon be for sale to benefit EUU’s Social Action activities.) When Martha retired as editor in 2015, paper Unifiers were still being printed, although many people received their copies as pdf files via email. Her departure after many years of dedicated service left a huge gap to be filled.

Various people produced Unifiers in different formats until Carolyn Burlingame-Goff, the EUU president at the time, twisted my arm one evening in the bar at a retreat in 2017, telling me I needed to produce a newsletter as well as redesign our website and have a prototype ready to show publicly in a few months.

I knew that the UUA (Unitarian Universalist Association) had recently created a WordPress congregational website template and were offering it free to UU congregations. Though I knew very little about WordPress, I (mistakenly) thought that using it would make it easy for lots of other people to help with the Unifier. Fortunately, Ray Burlingame-Goff was also roped into the project that night in the bar. His cheerful help with all of the technical aspects of moving to WordPress was invaluable. Many other people helped with the vision of an improved website as well as ideas for the newsletter.

To integrate both platforms for publishing EUU information, I cobbled together a new (totally unautomated) content management “system.” Articles appeared on the website and the same content appeared in the email Unifier, often as excerpts with links to the full content on the website.

I’m now eager to see our future. We have the opportunity to reevaluate and rethink better ways to communicate. Transitions are exciting. By the way, I do plan to hang around and help where I can…I’m not leaving EUU communications; I’m just not going to be in charge.