via conference call
The meeting was called to order by Chair, Denise Colley at 9:02pm EDT.
Members present: Denise Colley, Ron Brooks, Tom Mitchell, Judy Wilkinson, and Doug Powell
Ex Officio members present: Bob Hachey (IOC)
Absent: Nolan Crabb (PR), Kim Charlson (President)
Editor: Sharon Lovering
Contractors: Annette Carter (Website),
Absent: Larry Turnbull (Internet and ACB Radio)
Guests: Carla Ruschival, Ken Stewart
The agenda was approved as distributed.
I distributed the draft minutes with a fuller report from Annette. She had submitted them the day after the meeting, but I forgot to include them in my first distribution. They were in the version sent out the day of the April meeting. The March 2 meeting minutes were approved as distributed with Judy abstaining since she had not seen the revised version.
Guest Comments: There were none.
The usual reports were submitted via email in the week before the meeting. Ron asked that we acknowledge our appreciation that they were done in advance since the early submissions will cut about a half hour off our meeting time.
Editor's Report - Sharon Lovering
Nutshell Report for April 2015
March 2015
Issue Type: hard copy
Print Page Count: 48
Large Print Issues Mailed: 3,305
Date Large Print Issues Mailed: 2/23/2015
Braille Issues Mailed: 735
Date Braille Issues Mailed: 3/5/2015
Cassette Issues Mailed: 1,385
Date Cassette Issues Mailed: 3/23/2015
CD Rom Issues Mailed: 163
Date CD-ROM Issues Mailed: 2/27/2015
Date Posted to Website: 3/2/2015
Date E-mail version sent: 3/2/2015
E-mail issues mailed: 3,676
As of today, returns are:
# Of Large Print Copies Returned Undeliverable: 18
# Of Braille Copies Returned Undeliverable: 7
# Of Cassette Copies Returned Undeliverable: 11
# of CD Rom Copies Returned Undeliverable: none yet
# Of Miscellaneous Copies Returned Undeliverable: 22
April 2015
Issue Type: email only
Print Page Count: 52 (if it had been printed)
Date Posted to Website: 4/2/2015
Date E-mail version sent: 4/2/2015
E-mail issues mailed: 3,097
As of today, returns are:
# Of Miscellaneous Copies Returned Undeliverable: 3
I am working on the May issue, as well as finishing up affiliate membership updates and putting together the Freeman-Henley-Liggett award nominees list. Does anyone remember whether we gave the Liggett in 2012? And how should I handle our current Liggett nominee, who is ineligible this year? Or is that something Denise should tackle?
I asked Sharon why the email count dropped from almost 3700 to 3097 in April. There was a purge of bad addresses during March.
Committee Reports
PR Committee, Nolan Crabb/Tom Mitchell
The PR Committee will hold a three-part panel on July 7 at 2:45 p.m. Central
Time; the fee for attendance is $8 in advance, $10 at the door.
Section one: Writing the Kind of Press Release That Gets Attention--Mike
Duke
Section Two: Becoming An Expert the Media Will Turn To, Brian Charlson
Section Three: Mending Fences when bad news within your affiliate gets media
attention, Nolan Crabb with technical help from Katie Frederick.
The session main title is PR Basics 101.
The committee's pre-registration data has been turned in on time.
Oral History/Leadership, Berl Colley - no report
ACB Radio, Larry Turnbull
I just sent out the listener counts for the month of March.
The only thing to report is that a new show was added to ACBRadio Mainstream.
It is called the Alumni Show and it is presented by the students and volunteers of Radio Perkins.
This show airs every Wednesday evening at 9:00 PM eastern and repeats every 2 hours over night and during the day on Thursday.
Here are the listener counts for the month of March:
Please note at the most recent ACBRadio Management meeting we decided that going forward the listener count reports will give the monthly totals only.
Server:
ACBRadio Mainstream 806
ACBRadio Café 248
ACBRadio Treasure Trove 2170
ACBRadio Interactive 620
ACBRadio World News and Information 248
ACBRadio Live Event 25 listeners for the Bay State Council of the Blind convention
Phone:
We had 4072 calls for the month of March.
40% listened to mainstream
40% listened to Treasure Trove
10% listened to interactive
3% listened to café
3% listened to World News & Information
4% listened to Live Event
Web hits:
We had 3200 web hits for the month of March.
Downloads:
MainMenu Archives 2100
Speaking Out for the Blind 105
We did not pick up any new subscribers for the Braille Forum or ACB Reports podcasts in the month of March.
We had 4360 tuning hours reported by Stream Licensing.
We had 163 calls to the ACB Braille/E Forum hotline for the month of March.
Website - Annette Carter
- April 2015 ACB E-Forum
- Affiliate and committee updates as needed
- Goal 2 meeting, BOP meeting and posted minutes
- Job postings
- Washington Connections
- Took down the last of the 2014 convention sponsors
- Made PayPal button for ACB Radio for streaming fee
- Posted Cab Complaint and Press Release
- Posted ACB and Tupperware announcement
- Uploaded MMS forms for download
- Performed module updates and security updates on sites as needed
- Webform module update has new options that can increase our functionality in our web forms
Lists, Bob Hachey - no report
Social Media, Carla Ruschival
Twitter is at 998
FaceBook is at 1212
Old Business
BOP Readership Survey Findings
There was a long discussion of what the survey taught us. Areas we need to work on, or action items were:
- We talked a lot about what the E-Forum should look like, and if it was a separate publication, or is it the same publication with a different look and different possibilities. A motion was adopted that stated, “The Board of Publications affirms that there is one official publication of the ACB, and we will work to create an expanded format for the electronic issues that retains the popular features of the hard copy issues, and expands it with features specific to the electronic format.”
Logistics of the name(s) will have to be worked out with the Board of Directors, and how we develop the template and help Sharon collect material for the electronic issues need further work. We will start by putting ideas up on the BOP listserv.
- Funding the ACB Braille Forum:
We decided to get a firmer idea of what the issues are going to look like, and what additional expenses might be incurred before going to the Board, the Director of Development, or the RDC for major funding ideas.We will continue to have the ACB Braille Forum raffle.
We will develop a “Donate” button on ACB Braille Forum pages of the website that will allow easy access to contributing to the Forum. We need a short blurb to go with the button.
- It is still difficult to find and use subscriptions to the various formats of the Forum on the website. Tom and Judy will look through the website and make notes on how easy or difficult it is to subscribe to the different formats and get that info to Denise.
Candidates Forum
We had requested that this event be moved to a portion of the General Session. The Convention Program Committee denied this request. There was strong suggestion that we ask the Committee to revisit the idea in the future, but in the meantime, we will work on format and questions to try to make the Forum more exciting. Take aways:
- It will be Thursday night 7:00 - 8:30 pm
- Emphasis will be on questions from the audience
- Cut down on the number of “round robin” questions
- We’ll develop some questions for fall back
Editors Workshop
We are trying to get either national/state/local newsletter editors, or large state/small state/local.
New Business - none
The meeting was adjourned at 12:12am EDT.
Respectfully submitted,
Doug Powell, Secretary