Editor’s Note: This column was originally published in a March 2017 UF/IFAS Communicators Newsletter)
No, wait… Another holiday?
Black History Month. Women’s History Month. St. Patrick’s Day! Valentine’s Day! Bosses Day. Administrative Assistant Week.
All of this celebrating got me thinking…. What about a National Communicators Day?
All of us hardworking, dedicated story tellers, twitterers, Instagramers, media managers, web writers and general communicators deserve a day to be celebrated. A day when those around us can pause and think about how we support all that they do, how we promote their programs an how we raise awareness for UF/IFAS.
And maybe even throw in a thank you or two. Oh, yes, and have a cake. I love cake.
So I started searching to see if there was an “official” National Communicators Day.
And there is one!
August 18 is considered National Communications Day per this website https://whatnationaldayisit.com/day/Communications/.
The first time it was celebrated (according to this site) was in 2015.
How was this date chosen? Well, to cite the source:
The day shown for ‘National Communications Day’ is based off how much chitter-chatter and buzz there was on Aug. 18, 2015 across social media making references to ‘Communications Day’. Our algorithms examine all of the references to National Days across social media and updates whatnationaldayisit.com hourly, with our homepage displaying the current national day, including others such as: Liberation, Ice Cream Pie or Black Cat Day. This crowdsourcing of data method to assess the National Communications Day date is used as opposed to being connected with any Government sanctioned lists: Hurrah for democracy by consensus!
But, hold on.
The site suggests that if we want to declare a different day to celebrate this awesome holiday, all we need to do is organize ourselves to select a “better” day and then tweet, post, and share all about that.
So, I am open to ideas on when we should declare it National Communicators’ Day at UF/IFAS.
Seriously, we need a day to celebrate all that we do every day to support the UF/IFAS mission. It won’t hurt that we can also raise awareness among our colleagues about the important role that communicators play in advancing the work of our researchers, teachers, advisors, Extension agents, staff, students, alumni and stakeholders.
Let me know when you think our Communicators Day should be and we will announce it in next month’s newsletter!
But I don’t need a special day to know how important each of you is to our daily work. Thanks for all that you do every day.
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