Board of Publications Meeting Minutes October 12, 2021

BOP Chair Katie Frederick welcomed BOP members and guests, and ACB members listening to the meeting on ACB Media, at 9 p.m. Eastern. She read the agenda, and the board accepted it without additions or corrections.

Penny called the roll. All appointed and elected members, except for Zelda, who was excused but arrived later on during the meeting, were present. David was absent from this meeting but is expected to continue attending future meetings when possible.

Penny moved and Cheryl seconded the motion to approve minutes from the September meeting, and the board approved unanimously.

No one wished to offer comments at this point in the meeting.

Katie had shared two articles for which the Transportation Subcommittee of the Environmental Access Committee had requested BOP approval. Several visual formatting errors were identified, Katie returned the articles with our suggestions to Gene Lozano, who made the corrections. It appears that there are still visual formatting improvements which need to be made, as well as an error in the spelling of a proper name. Penny moved and Cachet seconded the motion to approve the content of both articles and to urge the Transportation Committee to consult with Sharon to correct remaining formatting and spelling errors. The motion was adopted unanimously. Katie will notify Gene and the BOP anticipates that Sharon will correct the few remaining errors.

The Public Affairs Steering Committee has requested the Board of Publications to become more involved in the process of acquiring and approving content for the blog. The BOP spent quite a bit of time discussing the blog, considering what purpose the ACB Blog serves, how to solicit and determine the appropriateness of content, how often the blog should appear, and how to assure that the blog is timely and that readership grows.

Consensus that emerged from our discussion includes the following:

ACB Voices is a vehicle for sharing our members’ stories, as well as the business of ACB, i.e., announcements, legislative alerts, etc. The different kinds of content can be managed by using tags. ACB staff, not blog writers, will manage tagging. Entries focused on organizational content and announcements can be amplified by additional (separate) postings that personalize organizational news, announcements, coming events, or legislative alerts.

We can rely on the Public Affairs Steering Committee calendar and on Dots and Dashes, as well, to identify and share themes for coming months. At the same time, we won’t discourage spontaneity associated with unexpected issues that arise. 

Kelly Gasque/ACB staff will forward posts to the [email protected].

Deadline for blog entries, Monday for every other Friday posting 

Post length 300-500 words; BOP reserves the right to edit for space/clarity. 

We will work with the steering committee calendar to identify themes/content; BOP also solicits content for the blog. 

Blog entries can connect local chapters to the national organization, highlighting events/posts of interest. 

We will post the process info to ACB Community channels. 

We will also include the submission process and submission form on the blog home page.

We will promote the BLOG during editor’s workshops. 

We need to create an auto response for received submission forms. We will include language indicating posts may be held for future use, based on activities and content.

We will notify people when their submissions are posted.

Sharon submitted the following Editor’s Report on the BOP e-mail list in advance of the meeting:

Editor’s Report, September 2021

Statistics

August 2021

Issue type: electronic
Page count: 96
Email distributed: 5,046
Email bounces: 51
Email unsubscribes: 1
Spam notices: 0
Email return rate: 1%
Email received: 4,995
* Data as of August 27^th.  Most bounces were “mailbox full,” “undeliverable/bad email address,” “vacation/auto-reply,” or “suspended.”

September 2021

Issue type: hard-copy
Page count: 80
Large print distributed: 2,204
Braille distributed: 657
Cartridge distributed: TBA
Email distributed:

Deadlines for the Next Issues

November 2021 (hard-copy): Fall free-for-all, September 24^th
December 2021 (electronic): ACB and holiday traditions, October 25^th
January 2022 (hard-copy): Affiliate Roundup - special-interest affiliates (and maybe some state ones too), November 22^nd
February 2022 (electronic): “Touching Blindness,” focusing on the importance of the sense of touch, especially to people who are blind, December 20^th

… … …

I am currently working on the October issue, and aim to have it out the door Friday.

I continue to record the information about ACB’s community calls into our phone system.

I am also continuing work on cleaning up and modernizing old issues of the Forum to current large print standards and organizing them on our SharePoint drive (at the moment, from the 1990s through today). I’m including Word, text and BRF file formats in the Forum folders on SharePoint. I have finished the year 2002 and am going back and double checking the braille files. Some I’ve had to redo entirely; others I’ve had to create a table of contents and add the page numbers.

I have updated the Job Connection for late August/early September.

I also updated the Washington Connection before I headed out for vacation.

Sharon added that the November ACB Braille Forum had already been shared with the printers.

The BOP discussed the three estimates that Sharon had received for annually binding the Braille Forum, and, following a motion from Penny and seconded by Sharon, selected the company to recommend to Nancy Becker and the ACB Board. The BOP selected Grimm Book Bindery, whose bid was $55 per book. The motion to recommend Grimm Book Bindery to produce this year’s bound volume(s) of the ACB Braille Forum and the ACB E-Forum, as well as volumes for the last nine years, and succeeding years going forward, was adopted unanimously.

Forum Themes

After discussion, the BOP agreed to invite the ACB Women’s Committee to submit content for the March Braille Forum. Cheryl, who is a member of that committee, will ask and let us know. The deadline for the March issue is January 15.

Rick told the BOP that ACB Media would be streaming four state conventions in the next week. The team is also putting together processes to organize how they do things to make streaming state conventions as efficient and fail-proof as possible.

Rick said that putting ACB resolutions on Media Channel 10 in preparation for their consideration at forthcoming board meetings was well received. This had led the team to think about other kinds of content that they might make available on Media 10. To fill the space that became available after resolutions were removed, he had put the October Braille Forum there on a loop that runs every two hours on even hours, and he suggested that Media 10 might be a good place to post the Forum, and the Spanish Braille Forum when that’s ready to go – and perhaps other recorded documents which are not time sensitive, going forward.

Deb suggested that Channel 10 could well be identified as a place for routinely posting longer-life documents (such as the Forum) and then that content could be pre-empted by other items, such as the resolutions, when members need to consider them briefly. A lot of people, she continued, are more willing to listen to something that is being broadcast on ACB Media at what would seem to most of us like an inconvenient time than they are to download it from the web site.

Dan said that making items that are not time sensitive available on Media 10 – and thus accessible by Alexa – might meet the needs of at least some of our members whose only means of accessing ACB Media content right now is via telephone through Zeno Media.

The BOP will announce the availability of the ACB Braille Forum on ACB Media Channel 10.

Rick said that ACB Media is currently investigating how to vet material to determine which channel it should go out on, and/or if it should go out at all – and developing that criteria is their current focus. How ACB Media puts that process together is something they need BOP to help with. 

ACB Media also needs the BOP to help them stay connected with members – so that ACB Media’s content is responsive to what ACB members want.

ACB Media needs more streamers, and they are in the process of training more volunteers. Zelda pointed out that, in addition to giving us more streamers, the training will also improve skills for the trainees and may well enable people to find jobs or advance in their careers.

Rick said that ACB Media hopes to expand content and they are looking for additional resources for content. He said that the ACB state affiliates are doing interesting things that have the potential of migrating to Mainstream. In addition, our sources of content don’t have to remain exclusively in the ACB domain.

Zelda and Cheryl and Cachet will be joining the Public Awareness Steering Committee. The next meeting is scheduled for November 19.

The meeting adjourned at 11:19 p.m. The next scheduled BOP meeting will occur on November 2.