The Conference Chair for the 2002 GENTECH conference wanted to use an e-Newsletter to distribute information about the conference plans, the conference program, the Boston area, and other related information. The information would go to potential registrants and any other interested parties. As of November 2002, the archive can still be found at http://www.gentech.org/gt02news/.
Biggest business challenge: anytime you edit something that requires input from volunteers, things can lag behind the schedule. To address that concern, we posted the publication schedule in advance. Any copy received after the closing date for a given publication would automatically roll to a future issue. It was also difficult to find a service provider - ListBot had gone away. We settled on Microsoft bCentral. The service performed very well - surveys and statistics were very helpful, and the mail seemed to run on time.
Biggest technical challenge: the most difficult thing was the actual production of each issue. It was our desire to make the newsletters look as good as we could for those who received the HTML subscription. The method of production was to create a web page, put it on the GENTECH site, then create a text version for those subscribers who had opted not to receive it in HTML format. It seems that about half of the time was spent on the collection and preparation of graphics for each issue. A picture IS worth 1000 words.
Buzzwords: electronic newsletter, Photoshop, web page design.