Chair: Denise Colley
Board members present:
Denise Colley Chair, Ron Brooks, Doug Powell, Judy Wilkinson, Tom Mitchell.
Editor: Sharon Lovering.
Ex Officio members present: Carla Ruschival, Katie Frederick, and Bob Hachey.
Contractors present: Annette Carter and Larry Turnbull.
Guests: Terri Lynn Pomeroy, Renee Zeliekson.
Meeting called to order at 9:03 PM EST. Denise outlined the evening's agenda. Motion to adopt agenda made by Ron with Judy seconding was passed. Tom lost the call during the discussion, but was able to return.
Discussion of the March 2nd minutes began with some errors listed by Annette. Doug added two other correction. Ron moved that the corrected minutes be passed, Doug seconded and the motion carried. The February minutes were tabled for another month for some correcting.
In guest comments, Renee Zeliekson indicated she was listening to observe with the thought of maybe becoming a part of the Board in the future. Terri Lynn was interested in the planning of the editorial workshop with the hope of furthering the progress of her state's newsletter.
Questions on Sharon's report concerned the late transmission of audio files from Perkins to Potomac were answered.
* [Link to Sharon's Nutshell Report for March 2016 is at the end of these Minutes.]
Bob reported that the email lists were relatively quiet. Ron wondered if it would be possible to get numbers of how many people are subscribed to the various lists and also how many posts are received, in order to get a sense of how much traffic the web generates. Bob says the number of subscriptions is no problem, but maybe the number of posts might be harder, but both he and Larry thinks it's probably doable on a monthly basis.
Katie reported that the Public Relations Committee met in March with Janet Dickelman, who gave us some ideas of ways to reach out to local media. We are also looking at ways of reaching out through local restaurants with table cards saying that the restaurants have Braille menus. We also talked about visiting other conventions taking place that same week to let them know we're there and what we are.
Larry says a new monthly program called the GDUI Juno Report would start tonight at 11:00 p.m. and will be repeated every 4 hours. He also mentioned his new show Handy Around the House. And this Thursday Laura Legendary will be starting a new show. Audio Now had not sent him the monthly statistics, so he had no counts as of yet. Tom asked if we were having difficulties with the automation on the weekends as some shows were being chopped off early with just music filling in the time. Larry said that some shows might fall short, because they end early, and if a show is too long it will be cut. Also sometimes, shows arrive late and he may not be able to receive all the files. Larry indicated that problems with the GDUI auction the night before were because of difficulties at the originating station.
Annette reported on March 23 they had a site review of the responsive theme that brings acb.org in line with acb radio. A couple of tweaks were suggested and were done. The next review will take place during the 3rd or 4th week in April.
Carla indicates that Twitter will carry Janet's convention announcements but they may need some re-formatting with assistance from John McCann. Unfortunately when she posts them in e-mail there is no link to Twitter. Facebook will accept a simple copy from e-mail. On facebook 1,975 people like the page, considerably over her estimates. Not exactly sure what the numbers are on Twitter but believes around 1,300.
Doug reported on the findings for Here and There, saying that he and Tom had found no problems with the column straying into advertising. He also indicated that we might contact the two Sharons to see if there were guidelines on who could post to High Tech Swapshop and how often anyone could post.
Denise then reported on the past progress of the Editor's Workshop for our guests. Ron indicated that Janet had a couple of leads for speakers from the Minneapolis area. He believes we need to decide on the speaker now and go from there. Ron will write up the article on the speaker for the convention bulletin. After some discussion, a price of $5 and $7 for pre-registration and at-the-door registration respectively was selected as a motion from Ron. Tom seconded and motion passed.
For the Candidates' Forum, we discussed the format of the program. Nothing definite was settled, but Ron will be writing up some ideas.
Denise said that she had been working with Kim on the transition to cartridge, but didn't feel she had enough information on prices and implementation of the system. And we also need to look at other options for the Braille edition because of rising prices for NBP.
Motion to adjourn was made seconded and passed. Meeting adjourned at 10:36 EST.