Board of Publications Meeting Minutes: October 1, 2024

The Board of Publications Chairperson, Katie Frederick, welcomed those present and called the October 1, 2024, meeting to order at 9:00 PM, ET.

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, and Deb Cook Lewis, ACB President.

Zelda moved to approve the agenda. 2^nd by Bel. Agenda approved. 

Cheryl moved to approve the August minutes. Bel seconded. August minutes approved.

Jeff moved to approve the September minutes. Cheryl seconded. September minutes approved.

Deb suggested that as we consider the Conversation email list guidelines, she would like us to include the Leadership list as well so there is uniformity with all public ACB email lists. Those will be ultimately taken to the ACB Board of Directors.

We discussed the following:

General Procedures and Processes

Moderators:

The ACB Board of Publication Chair will appoint a lead list moderator and two additional moderator assistants. The Moderators are responsible for managing list traffic.

Moderation Process:

On the 1^st day of the month an automatic posting of the guidelines shall be made to the list.   

When a post is in violation, a warning will be sent to the list.

Those who don’t heed the warning will be suspended from the list. 

The subject will automatically be muted after five days. We could also mute a subject by notifying the list that the subject has been muted.

We will discuss the moderation process further to include the formation of a moderator group and also an appeal process.

We will look at guidelines that other groups are using for their email lists and consider them for implementation. 

Sharon shared an ACB Braille Forum article from the past to post.

Blog Editors

October - Jeff and Zelda

November – Cheryl and Bel

November/December issue will go out Friday or next Monday.

Statistics

September 2024

Braille distributed: 464
Braille returned: 3
Braille return rate: 0.65%
Braille received: 461
Cartridge distributed: 332
Large print distributed: 1,203
Large print returned: 19
Large print return rate: 1.58%
Large print received: 1,184
Email to be distributed: 5,509
Email bounces: 35
Email unsubscribes: 4
Email spams: 0
Email return rate: 0.64%
Email received: 5,474

October 2024

Braille distributed: 462
Cartridge distributed: TBA
Large print distributed: 1,193
Email distributed: 5,500

November-December 2024

Braille to be distributed: 458
Cartridge to be distributed: TBA
Large print to be distributed: 1,185
Email to be distributed: TBA

Deadlines for the Next Issues

January 2025: theme: goal setting/AD Gala wrap-up; deadline: November 22, 2024

February 2025: theme: love; deadline: December 20, 2024

March 2025: theme: spring into action; deadline: January 24, 2025

October’s Table of Contents

Convention 2025: Traveling to Dallas, by Janet Dickelman

Advocacy in Action: Legislative Updates from the Advocacy Team

Advocacy, A Team Sport, by Regina Marie Brink

High on the Olympics!, by Peggy Carpenter

Trophies, by Ann Chiappetta

East Bay Braille Initiative, by Prof. Vileen Shah

Legally Blind Cape Coral Resident Conducts a Floating Fundraiser

The Game-Changing Prospect of Artificial Intelligence: Limitless Technological Possibilities?, by Melody Holloway

Summary of the July 5, 2024 ACB Board Meeting, by Penny Reeder

Affiliate News

In Memoriam: Joyce Mary Kleiber

Here and There, edited by Cynthia G. Hawkins

High Tech Swap Shop

November’s Table of Contents (subject to change)

President’s Message …, by Deb Cook Lewis

Convention 2025: More about the Dallas Hotel, by Janet Dickelman

Holiday Auction Just Around the Corner, by Leslie Spoone

Advocacy in Action, by Claire Stanley

Gifts, by DeAnna Quietwater Noriega

A Birthday Gift, by Jean Mann

The Gift That Keeps on Giving, by Tom Tobin

Christmas Bowl, by Abbie Johnson Taylor

Short Stories from Our Readers

Holiday Recipes from Our Readers

Be A Leader Anyway, interpretation by Amanda Selm

Affiliate News

Pine Tree Guide Dog Users Publishes Brochure for Health Care Providers

Here and There, edited by Cynthia G. Hawkins

High Tech Swap Shop

Summary of the 2024 Resolutions

***

As I write this, I’m working on the November-December issue. I aim to have it out the door by Friday – Monday at the very latest. I’m waiting for a couple of articles to come in.

I continue to put together the Dots and Dashes newsletter. The next issue is October 7^th; after that, the 21st. If you have items for Dots and Dashes, I’d like to have them in hand by this Friday, October 4^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 finished 1970 and 1972 through 1979. I’m halfway through 1971 now. I should be in the 1960s shortly.

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 am working with Claire and Swatha to update the Washington Connection.

I am also responsible for the ACB Job Connection. The jobs came in floods in September! I am nearly finished updating it for October. 

Sharon Lovering, Editor

November-December – Gifts - the Good, the Bad, the Ugly received or given, accessible or not, most memorable, best, or worst. deadline: September 23, 2024

January - Audio Description Gala Wrap Up, Diversity among describers and AD in your community or Goal Setting deadline November 20^th

February – Stories about love and proposals

March – Spring into Action, Get up and Get moving

April – MCAC will decide on a focus

May – Older Americans, AAVL

June – All things Convention

Met with Deb on Friday, September 27 and talked about the role of the BOP and how it may have changed since 1961. Constitutional language will be reviewed and possibly be changed.   

Submitted report from Rick Morin.

Attached are spreadsheets that show the monthly metrics for ACB Media in the following areas. Metrics are as of September 30, 2024, And the metrics listed below are for the month of September.

Total listener hours (TLH) of Media streams.

TLH across all media streams: 10,735.1

Top 3 streams are Media 5 (Community), Media 3 (Old Time Radio and Media 1.

The percentages for these streams are respectively 43.50%, 31.73%, 16.49%

Podcast Listens

Total podcast listens across our 41 feeds: 25373

Top feeds:

• ACB Community: 34.27%
• Main Menu: 8.10%
• ACB Events: 6.92%
• ACB Conference and Convention: 5.07%
• ACB Focus: Technology: 4.05%
• ACB Advocacy Update: 3.62%
• ACB Tuesday Topics: 3.48%

Podcasts Published Across all podcast feeds: 76

Note that the publish date placed in the podcasts are usually the date the event occurred and not the date that the podcast was actually posted.

Respectfully submitted,
Rick

Rick verbally reported a request to add chapter markers to the ACB Braille Forum podcasts.

Jamaica Miller asked if the chapter markers would work on Amazon devices. She was told they won’t.

Contracts - Katie asked about the contracts for the Forum. Sharon will check on this for budgetary reasons.

Board of Publications Editorial Policy Manual – Deb reported that the last approved and posted policy manual was in 2015. It was updated in 2019, but it was never posted to the ACB website. It was decided that the BOP will review the 2019 version with more recent edits made by Zelda. If there are no further necessary edits noted, it will be used in the interim until in-depth revisions are made. 

Next BOP Meeting: November 5, 2024 at 9:00 PM, ET.

Respectfully submitted,
Zelda Gebhard, Director
ACB Board of Publications