Board of Publications Meeting Minutes: August 6, 2024

The Board of Publications Chairperson, Katie Frederick, called the August 6, 2024, meeting to order at 9:00 PM, ET.

A motion was made by Jeff to approve the agenda with a second by Zelda. Agenda approved.

Board members present: Katie Frederick, Jeff Bishop, Cheryl Cumings, Bel Collins, and Zelda Gebhard. Ex-Officio members present: Sharon Lovering, ACB Braille Forum Editor; Rick Morin, ACB Media and IT Manager; Deb Cook Lewis, ACB President and Scott Thornhill, ACB Executive Director.

Zelda moved to approve the June minutes, seconded by           Bel. Minutes approved.

Penny Reeder congratulated those who were elected and those returning. She expressed her confidence that all would work hard and do a great job. She offered to help as needed.

Katie reported several blog posts in July. She thanked the ACB members and friends for their posts with reflections on convention, thoughts on gay pride month and other subjects. There was also a Member on the Mic post.

August Reviewers – Jeff and Zelda
September Reviewers – Cheryl and Bel

Editor’s Report - August 2024 

Statistics

July-August 2024

Braille distributed: 477
Braille returned: 8
Return rate: 1.7%
Braille received: 469
Cartridge distributed: 343
Large print distributed: 1,216
Large print returned: 15
Return rate: 1.2%
Large print received: 1,201
Email distributed: 5,551
Email bounces: 28
Spam: 1
Unsubscribes: 1
Return rate: 3.6%
Email received: 5,523

September 2024

Braille to be distributed: 464
Cartridge to be distributed: TBA
Large print to be distributed: 1,203
Email to be distributed: TBA

Deadlines for the Next Issues

October 2024: white cane safety/employment; deadline: August 23, 2024
November-December 2024 – theme TBA; deadline: September 23, 2024

July-August’s Table of Contents

President’s Message: Convention: More Than Just a Business Meeting, by Deb Cook Lewis

Advocacy in Action: Reflections for Disability Pride Month, by Swatha Nandhakumar

Last-Minute Convention Information, by Janet Dickelman

Affiliate News

Ocean Breezes to Walk Us into a Brighter Future, by Donna Browning

MMS at the ACB 2024 Conference and Convention, by Jean Mann

Inspiration Begins with ACB, by Kenneth Semien Sr.

Summary of the April 30, 2024 Meeting of the ACB Board of Directors, by Penny Reeder

Focus Call Tips and Information, compiled by Ardis Bazyn

From Guide Dog Users, Inc.’s Advocacy Committee: Report those ads that encourage doting pet owners to break the law and identify untrained pets as service and guide dogs!, by Penny Reeder

The Queen’s Consort, by Larry Johnson

It’s Just a Prick of a Finger, Please Sign Here, by Ann Chiappetta

Here and There, edited by Cynthia G. Hawkins

High Tech Swap Shop

September’s Table of Contents

President’s Message: Services for Seniors with Vision Loss: Now Is the Time, by Deb Cook Lewis

Older Americans Act Update and a Request, by Doug Powell

A Message from the Executive Director, by Scott Thornhill

Advocacy in Action, by Claire Stanley

2024 Conference and Convention Wrap-Up, by Janet Dickelman

Introducing the Scholarship Recipients for 2024-25!, by Denise Colley

Jamaica’s Convention Adventure, by Jamaica Miller

Thank You from the ACB Auction Committee

2024 ACB Membership Committee Convention Seminar, compiled by Ardis Bazyn

Turning the Page!, by Cachet Wells

ACBDA Launches Patricia LaFrance-Wolf Memorial Fund

BEP Hosts American Council of the Blind for Special Tactile Production Tour, by Tracy Garrett

Speak-Up Skills: Have Yours Got Rusty?, by Hannah Fairbairn

Responding to the Letter to the Membership in the June ‘Forum,’ by Michael Byington

Leadership: Some Personal Reflections, by Mitch Pomerantz

Affiliate News

Here and There, edited by Cynthia G. Hawkins

***

As I write this, I’ve just sent September out the door to press. I had to hold out High Tech Swap Shop and an article on artificial intelligence.

I continue to put together the Dots and Dashes newsletter. The next issue is August 12^th; the one after that, August 26^th.

I’m still working with the archives/history committee on preserving and digitizing old recordings and documents from ACB events and identifying people in photos. Some of the work involves digitizing board minutes. Another part of the work includes cleaning up and modernizing old issues of the Forum to current large print standards and organizing them on our SharePoint drive. I have finished 1974 through 1979.

I continue to record the Washington Connection, and some of the other boxes on our phone system, such as the national convention box, the scholarship information, and the state convention box. I updated the Washington Connection on July 26th.

I am also responsible for the ACB Job Connection. Jobs came pouring in during and after convention from a variety of sources, including NIB, South Texas Lighthouse for the Blind, and other places. This month, Leader Dogs sent in two job announcements. I updated the Job Connection August 1^st.

Sharon Lovering, Editor

Future Forum themes

October 2024: white cane safety and employment;
deadline: August 23, 2024

November-December 2024 – All about gifts – the good, the bad, the ugly
deadline: September 23, 2024

January 2025 Audio Description Gala Recap, Increasing Diversity of Describers and Preview of Leadership Meetings  
deadline November 20^th

Katie encouraged everyone to share new ideas with Sharon. 

Zelda reported the date for the next Communicators Gathering has been moved from August to September on Friday the13th at 8:30 PM. She has invited Greg Lindberg, Chair of the ACB Next Generation Publications Committee and his committee members to present. They are the recipients of the 2024 ACB Hollis Liggett Braille Free Press award. She thought they could share with their peers how they produce their newsletter.

We have been invited to attend the Next Gen board meeting on Monday August 12 at 8 PM to recognize the publications committee and their award-winning publication. Zelda will plan to present the award during the meeting as they were not present to receive the award at the banquet. She invited other BOP members to join her.

Discussion was held. It was concluded that perhaps informing the winners about their selection is a good practice so they can be prepared to accept their award. If we want the awards to be a surprise, Deb informed the group that it would be possible to look at the banquet list to determine their planned attendance.

Rick Morin shared both written and verbal reports.

Written: 

We are frequently asked for ACB Media listener counts of specific convention sessions that were streamed.

To do this, the session database must be mapped to listener data in Live365 by day and time and stream.

The lowest level of data in Live365 is by hour using Greenwich Mean Time.

GMT is currently 4 hours ahead of EDT and all times were converted to EDT.

Now things get tricky and imprecise. The data we receive is hourly at the top of each hour. Our sessions start and end at 15-minute intervals.

In any given hour, multiple sessions could have ended and started in the same hour.

The metric that is being reported on is Total Listener Hours (TLH). In cases where a session ended and another began in the same hour, I did not attempt to split the reported TLH for that hour. I assigned the TLH to whichever session occupied most of the hour. 

Attached is an Excel workbook containing several spreadsheets. Reporting on this type of data is best done via a spreadsheet. The reports were generated with Pivot Tables and then Pasted Special as Values.

The data reported on is strictly from the 10 ACB Media streams. Attendee reports are available from ZOOM and these numbers are not reflected here although I’d be happy to consolidate the ZOOM data and TLH (Total Listener Hours) if requested.

The spreadsheets are as follows:

• 01 Convention Sessions: shows the TLH for all virtual only and hybrid sessions streamed on ACB Media sorted largest to smallest. The numbers are totals for each session. Spreadsheet 01 Session Hourly Detail shows the hourly mapping of each session. Total TLH for all sessions is 11,859.5.
• Spreadsheet 02 Virtual Exhibit Hall shows the daily totals of the TLH of the Virtual Exhibit Hall that ran on Media 6 sorted largest to smallest. Total TLH for the Virtual Exhibit Hall is 4,169.33.
• Spreadsheet 03 AD Tours shows the daily TLH of the Virtual Audio described Tours that ran on Media 7. There were 4 new tours this year. The total AD Tours TLH is 2,696.53.
• Spreadsheet 04 Spanish Interpretation shows the daily TLH for the days when simultaneous translation into Spanish was offered. Total TLH 243.92.  Slight increase over last year.
• Spreadsheet 05 Voting Info shows the daily TLH for the recordings of the Standing Rules, voting process, and Resolutions and Constitution and By Law amendments that were aired on Media 9. Total TLH 662.87.
• Spreadsheet 06 Newspaper shows the daily TLH for the recordings of the Sunshine Gazette. Total TLH 278.29

94 hours of programming were streamed.

Respectfully submitted,

Rick

Verbal: 

The spreadsheets are an accounting for the period of time during convention for programming that went out on the 10 streams and is measured in total listener hours. There were 94 sessions between the virtual only and the hybrid sessions. The Zoom hours are not factored in this information, however, are available and can be received on a case-by-case basis. 11,000 total listener hours with 4169 virtual exhibit hall, 2700 AD tours. Spanish are averaging about 4 listener hours per week which isa little bit more than last year. 

Comments: 

Zelda was surprised to see the low total listening hours for the convention paper. It was felt that this is likely because there are multiple ways to consume it such as hard copies and emails in addition to streaming.

Cheryl wanted to know what received the highest listening hours. They were the opening general sessions, general sessions on the 9^th and 11^th, summer auction, board meeting, banquet, exhibitor open house, constitution and bylaws/resolutions, and BOP Candidate’s Forum. He stated there may be some value for the programming folks to look at the data. We will receive more data from the convention survey which closes on August 14^th.

The podcasts are going well and will all be done and up in September.

Working on the processes to start operating under the newly adopted guidelines addressing licensed material.

Fall conventions are coming up. Making some progress in terms of coming up with an alternative to the current infrastructure we currently have. Some budget issues are leading to a change from Asure, the Microsoft platform we are operating the old ACB Radio stuff is operating off of. There is lots of data on Azure that needs to be inventoried and evaluated for value and disposition.

Rick will be passing along the convention data collected to the Development Staff to use in grant applications.

Scott recognized and thanked Sharon and Media staff and volunteers for their efforts during the convention despite the challenges they had to deal with.

We had previously postponed updating the BOP Policy Manual at the request of President Lewis. Deb reported some big changes planned for ACB. She has started the process of meeting and sharing those changes with different committees and will do so with the BOP too at another time. She will share some documents with the BOP before us meeting. It includes the processes to be established around work plans, committee structure, and materials available for committees to work with. Every committee will develop a work plan.

The BOP will update the Policy Manual which will involve a negotiation process with staff, the president, others and ultimately the board. The outcome of this organizational process will result in centralized storage of information with a web-based living document that will show our mission, purpose, work, digital content, and written documents. This all will be housed in a Google account. The result will be a more professional process and presence. There also will require all ACB committees use ACB Zoom accounts for meetings. The overall plan will be shared with all committee chairs soon. The role of the BOP will be determined during this process. A meeting was scheduled for September 27^th.

Zelda asked if ACB currently does PSA’s or press releases available to be used locally. She noted that this may be a lost opportunity to create public awareness about ACB. ACB is working on rebuilding a communications plan. 

Cheryl asked about the ACB Communications Steering Committee. Deb explained that this is not functioning at this time and is dependent on the overall communications plan and hiring staff in this area. There can also be an appointed Public Relations Chair which is unfilled at this time. This individual would serve on the BOP ex officially.

Jamaca Miller asked who is serving as the BOP representative on the ACB Board. Katie will serve in that role. Cheryl and Bel have expressed interest in filling in as needed.

Next BOP Meeting: September 3, 2024, beginning at 9:00 PM, ET.

The meeting was adjourned.

Respectfully submitted,
Zelda Gebhard, Director
ACB Board of Publications