Greetings TAMIO!

Welcome to the first edition of the TAMIO Newsletter. What a wild ride we have had for the last 12 months, and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon.

To help everyone survive the ride, TAMIO created a series of new offerings to help all of our members stay connected, share ideas, generate conversation, and continue the learning year-round. You’ve seen that manifested in monthly webinars, new Facebook content, and conversations shared by our TAMIO Teammates, additional resources on the TAMIO website, a monthly blog called TAMIO Thoughts, and a database of coronavirus messaging ideas from cities and towns across.

While these new offerings are meant to be helpful, we also know that it is a lot to keep up with. Enter the TAMIO newsletter. You can look at this as your catch-up memo of everything that has happened that you might have missed over the last quarter with an eye to the future. We’ll have links to our prior webinars and TAMIO Thoughts, introduce new members and link to our job board, provide updates on the annual conference and TAMI Awards, and preview what’s coming up next.

Hopefully you’ll find this newsletter to be a useful tool and another way to stay connected to TAMIO and its members. And I hope to see you all in Round Rock in August for our annual TAMIO Conference. Hopefully the ride has calmed a bit by then, and we can share our war stories of the last year.

Jay Warren

President, TAMIO

It’s that time of year to submit your city’s entries in the 2021 TAMI Awards Program.

Our new awards management software program makes the process easier, faster, and more intuitive than ever. All entries must be received by 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, April 25, and payments by check must be received no later than April 27.

Webinars Available Online 

In the absence of in-person retreats, TAMIO has been using webinars since last year to help us connect, learn and grow as professional government communicators. Past topics have included community input, crisis communications, lessons learned from COVID-19, social media news, legislative session updates, and TAMI Award applications tips. All of our webinars have been free to members and are recorded and posted on TAMIO’s website.

The TAMIO membership approved changes to executive board titles and responsibilities in January. The changes provide a clearer division of duties. Only one position is new – president elect – and that position will stay empty until executive board elections in 2022. Three other executive board positions (vice president, secretary, and treasurer) were renamed to better represent the work assigned to those positions and the needs of the organization.

The latest version of the constitution can be viewed on TAMIO’s website.

Have you been promising yourself you’d get organized…eventually? Our latest TAMIO Thoughts has helpful real world tips to help you get your life in order. TAMIO Thoughts is a recently created blog series that has one simple goal: continuing the conversation about communication beyond our annual conference. We all face similar issues, no matter the size of our community or where we are located in this huge state. The blogs cover timely issues and more routine aspects of our jobs. If you’re interested in contributing to TAMIO Thoughts, email lgrossman@tml.org.

Texas has a new point of contact at Facebook. The company is expanding its Politics and Government Outreach team with the addition of Carlin Daharsh. Jannelle Watson will still manage Texas state affairs, and Carlin will manage all city and county outreach for the state. If you have an issue or question about Facebook, Instagram, or any of the other family of applications they provide, please reach out to Carlin at cdaharsh@FB.com. You can meet Carlin at our webinar on March 19. Read about the webinar and register here.

TAMIO now has its own job board. The listings from the TML Career Center that are communications-specific go directly to the TAMIO Career Center.