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: Kim Charlson (President)
Absent: Nolan Crabb (PR), Bob Hachey (IOC)
Editor: Sharon Lovering was present.
Contractors: Annette Carter (Website), Larry Turnbull (Internet and ACB Radio) were present.
Guests: Carla Ruschival, Berl Colley, Ken Stewart, Sue Ammeter
The agenda was approved as distributed.
The September 8 meeting minutes were approved as distributed with one correction. Annette asked for a clarification whether the podcast link was supposed to appear at the head of the Forum issue page. It was agreed that the podcast was an available format in which members could receive the ACB Braille and E-Forums and should appear with the other format options.
Guest Comments
Denise received two questions/comments that were handled before the meeting. There were no comments during the meeting.
Editor's Report - Sharon Lovering
I am including the numbers for September, October, and what I have of November below. The number of returned issues may change by day’s end, but hopefully not too drastically!
September 2014 Braille Forum
Print Page Count: 48
Large Print Issues Mailed: 3,380 (-10.82% from 2013)
Date Large Print Issues Mailed: 8/28/2014
Braille Issues Mailed: 750 (-21.875% from 2013)
Date Braille Issues Mailed: 9/4/2014
Cassette Issues Mailed: 1,430 (-21.6% from 2013)
Date Cassette Issues Mailed: 8/28/2014
CD Rom Issues Mailed: 173 (+1.17% from 2013)
Date CD Rom issues Mailed: 8/29/2014
Date Posted to Website: 8/28/2014
Date E-mail version sent: 8/29/2014
E-mail issues mailed: 3,615 (+3.88% from 2013)
Total number of copies sent out: 9,348 (-8.58% from 2013)
# Of Large Print Copies Returned Undeliverable: 43 +
# Of Braille Copies Returned Undeliverable: 4 +
# Of Cassette Copies Returned Undeliverable: 24 +
# of CD Rom Copies Returned Undeliverable: 1 +
# Of Miscellaneous Copies Returned Undeliverable: 38 +
October ACB E-Forum
Print Page Count: 56
Large Print Issues Mailed: 0
Date Large Print Issues Mailed:
Braille Issues Mailed: 0
Date Braille Issues Mailed:
Cassette Issues Mailed: 0
Date Cassette Issues Mailed:
CD Rom Issues Mailed: 0
Date CD Rom issues Mailed:
Date Posted to Website:
Date E-mail version sent: 10/1/2014
E-mail issues mailed: 3,628
# Of Large Print Copies Returned Undeliverable: na
# Of Braille Copies Returned Undeliverable: na
# Of Cassette Copies Returned Undeliverable: na
# of CD Rom Copies Returned Undeliverable: na
# Of Miscellaneous Copies Returned Undeliverable: none yet
November Braille Forum
Print Page Count: 48
Large Print Issues To Be Mailed: 3,355 (-10.77% from 2013)
Braille Issues To Be Mailed: 750 (-21.05% from 2013)
Cassette Issues To Be Mailed: 1,395 (-22.93% from 2013)
CD Rom Issues To Be Mailed: 168 (-1.75% from 2013)
Total number of hard copies to be sent out: 5,668 (-15.29% from 2013)
I will determine the e-mail counts as November gets closer.
I had so many articles, I had to cut quite a few, and trim down to time-sensitive stuff a lot of what was included. But that gives me a head start for December and January. I was able to include 12 photographs from the convention in the issue.
November’s Table of Contents:
President’s Report to the National Convention, Part III, by Kim Charlson
Snowflakes and Birthday Cake: It’s Holiday Auction Time, by Carla Ruschival
Convention Attendees Find ‘The Real Deal’ in Las Vegas, by Sharon Lovering
Honor Achievement as You Celebrate the Holidays
Summary of 2014 ACB Resolutions
Here and There, edited by Sharon Strzalkowski
High Tech Swap Shop
Committee Reports
PR Committee, Nolan Crabb/Tom Mitchell
I'm dealing with an intestinal bug that will send me to bed early. I apologize for missing your meeting tonight.
The PR committee continues to press forward with a summarized digest of its convention session this past summer. It is also looking at a variety of other ways to enhance the organization's ability to tell its story including the creation of a list of would-be writers from throughout the country who are capable of submitting op-ed information to newspapers and other online outlets for inclusion in their publications. These stringers would have to be carefully coached and guided to ensure that everyone is working from the same sources and references and talking points, But the NFB uses its local members in the creation of op-ed kinds of things effectively enough and carefully enough that its national leaders don't have to do damage control, and we could do similar things here.
Under the excellence guidance of Mike Duke, a podcast subcommittee is working to present recommendations to the committee on the nature of a podcast available through iTunes targeted to the general public--boomer children of aging parents dealing with vision loss, etc. that would tell ACB's story by featuring its members in their lives among other scenarios. We expect to have more information in our October meeting.
My continuing gratitude goes to this board for sharing one of its truly capable and able members with the PR committee. We benefit from his experience and abilities.
Our next meeting will be October 19 at 9 p.m. East.
Oral History/Leadership, Berl Colley
The copyright issue he has been dealing with recently has moved to the next step, and he hopes it will be resolved soon.
The Leadership Training Task Force is still exploring different formats in which to present the Institute in 2016. They probably won't firm up an approach until the Spring.
ACB Radio, Larry Turnbull
Several state affiliates will be streaming soon. Illinois and Michigan were in September.Pennsylvania and Ohio are streaming in Oct. Washington and New York may be lined up for Nov.
Planning is under way for the Holiday Auction, streamed on all streams Dec. 7 from 7-11pm EST.
Listener counts obtained from the server:
Mainstream average 16 per day total listeners for September 480
Café average 4 per day total listeners for September 120
Trove average 62 per day total listeners for September 1860
Interactive average 18 per day total listeners for September 540
World News and Information average 7 per day total listeners for September 210
We had 13 listeners for the Michigan Council of the Blind convention in September on live event.
Listeners by phone:
Average call per day 141.
Average listen time 1 hour and 30 minutes per call.
We had a total of 4237 calls for the month of September.
40% of the callers listened to mainstream
50% listened to treasure trove
5% listened to interactive
0% listened to café
3% listened to World News and Information
2% listened to Live Event
Web hits:
We had 3892 hits for the month of September
Downloads:
MainMenu archives 2053
Speaking Out for the Blind Archives 192
We picked up 5 new subscribers for the Braille Forum and 2 subscribers for ACB Reports for September.
We have a total of 4124 aggregate tuning hours reported by Stream Licensing for interactive and café combined.
2635 of the ATH belongs to café and 1489 belongs to ACB Radio Interactive.
ACB Braille Forum, E Forum and ACB Reports
We had 265 calls for the month of September.
This averages to 8 calls per day for that month.
Lists, Bob Hachey
Reported to Denise that nothing was new on the lists.
Website, Annette Carter
She's been updating information from the Convention, Resolutions, and various Board and Committee changes.
Social Media, Carla Ruschival
Facebook has 641 likes
Twitter has 834 followers
Old Business
Doug, Ron, and Judy reiterated our request that reports to the BOP be submitted at least three (3) days prior to the meeting so that members have time to read it and prepare.
Braille Forum Survey
Ron confirmed that the data has been sent to Tiffany Jolliff. She had not had time to react in any but cursory way yet.Ron will contact her had set up the kind of report we're looking for, and a timeline. Kim suggested Tiffany be invited to present her report at the November BOP meeting, which met with general agreement. Ron also opined that from the data we have seen, there were no changes necessary that would effect the BOP budget.
Leadership List Guidelines
We discussed the addition of a reference to the Candidate Posting Guidelines in the Leadership List Rules. There was one other editorial change, and the Leadership List Rules were approved to be published. Tom congratulated Ron for a job well done. Denise will announce them on the list, and Annette will grab them and post them on the website with the other list guidelines.
Candidate Posting Guidelines
After Ron incorporated Kim's suggested changes, we agreed that this document was ready to run by the BOD for any feedback before they were posted.
Forum Cover copy
No progress. Doug and Sharon will work on this this month.
2015 Budget
Denise had sent us various information about current year budget and expenses, vendor contract data about unit pricing, and what Melanie needs to construct the new budget.Ron is working on a spreadsheet that incorporates all this information into one sheet, but it is not ready yet, and so he didn't feel like we could discuss specific numbers yet. Doug suggested that since Melanie wants changes from current year to next year, we should focus the discussion on what activities, if any, we want to do differently next year. There was discussion of contract structures, where various numbers came from, so Ron could construct the spreadsheet for our review. It was suggested that we might meet in late October to finalize our thoughts to submit to Melanie.
Definite decisions were made that:
No money was needed for readership survey activities.
At the C&C, only one session will be necessary -- no town hall meetings since that didn't work as a way of getting feedback from the membership.
The Editorial Workshop was valuable, and we should work to make it attractive. If we can do that, we could charge a nominal fee and recoup expenses.
We should see if we can get all 12 issues of the Forums narrated by Perkins to provide uniform quality. Larry would prefer that also since synthecized voices are OK, but never as good as human.
BOPEEP - September (hard copy)
Braille was fine.
No one got the CD.
Large print was fine. Annette suggested to Sharon and me that the list of officers, and boards was list copy and could be done in one column.
Tom was supposed to get the cassette version, but had not received it yet. Sharon will take care of that.
Unfinished Business
Denise asked us to think about what we could do to define the E-Forum as a different product.
Tom asked if he should continue producing teasers in print and audio for ACB Radio. Denise asked him to continue for a couple of months more and we'll use them on ACB Radio and make them available on the listservs.
Kim mentioned that she's getting the Forums via podcast on her 2nd generation Victor Reader Stream and it is working very well,. She commented that if we narrate all 12 issues next year, and people take advantage of the Stream podcasts, it will help our distribution saturation. Judy offered to write up an article for the Forum that outlines how to subscribe to the ACB Forum podcasts with a Stream, an IPhone, and a PC.
New Business
We discussed the usefulness of having a face-to-face BOP meeting at the Mid-Year meeting vs. BOP members' ability to attend. It was decided that we would discontinue holding our meeting in conjunction with Mid-Year and continue to invite members to attend our monthly conference call meetings. We will also continue to have a face-to-face meeting at the national Conference and Convention.
The meeting was adjourned at 10:53 pm.
Respectfully submitted,
Doug Powell, Secretary