Board of Publications Meeting Minutes: April 2, 2024

The Board of Publications Chairperson, Penny Reeder, called the April 2, 2024, meeting to order at 9:00 PM, ET.

Jeff suggested we move the ACB Media Report up on the agenda. Penny moved it to right after the Public Point of View. Penny presented the need for an executive session. Consensus was to hold it immediately following the adjournment of this meeting.

Board members present: Penny Reeder, Cachet Wells, Jeff Bishop, Cheryl Cummings, and Zelda Gebhard.

Ex-Officio members present: Sharon Lovering, ACB Braille Forum Editor; Rick Morin, ACB Media and IT Manager; Katie Frederick, Member Lead on ACB Public Awareness Steering Committee; Deb Cook Lewis, ACB President; plus, Scott Thornhill, ACB Executive Director.

No corrections were made to the March minutes. Jeff moved to approve followed by a second from Cheryl. The March minutes were approved as presented.

Mary Haupt is pleased that all issues of the ACB Braille Forum are in hard-copy Braille and have been received in a timely manner.

Mary Haroyan Is a regular reader of the ACB Braille Forum and wanted to pass along a compliment. It is her opinion that this month’s issue was an especially good one.

Peter Heide – Wisconsin is in the process of updating their Groups.io email lists and he would appreciate receiving the ACB Email List Guidelines. These are shared each month on the ACB Lists. A copy will be sent to Peter.

Rick thanked Jeff for coordinating the Groups.io training on Main Menu. The podcast of the training is available.

Rick didn’t send the monthly stats prior to the meeting but shared that he had done a review of the past six months podcasts stats. Main Menu had 2000 listens per month for a couple of months in a row. People are listening to past episodes as well as the current one. ACB Community podcasts continue to have terrific traffic as well.

Treasure Trove has a loyal listenership with many deriving a lot of enjoyment from it. Yesterday USA was asked to be relayed on ACB Media and they have agreed. Larry Gassman has done a lot of work behind the scenes and there was a soft launch without any advertising. Rick did a search of the daily listeners for the past year. Disregarding convention, the two days of relaying Yesterday USA had the largest daily numbers on Media 3 in the last year.

Rick and Larry are still trying to figure out how ACB can maintain value in all this.

Total eclipse of the sun on Monday. ACB Media did an audio-described broadcast of the 2017 eclipse which was widely popular. Harvard University has a sound/light device that will enable the blind to experience the eclipse. We will host a Zoom meeting with Harvard and one with Cindy on ACB Community on Monday.

Guest Input:

Jamaica Miller wanted to know if you must pre-register for the eclipse broadcast. She was assured that preregistration is not required.

Member on the Mic (MOM)

A message was included in the Dots and Dashes asking people to nominate someone for the MOM or help with the production. Sharon forwarded the one submission she received to Anthony. A shorter plea will be sent to Cindy for inclusion on the ACB Community Schedule.

Jeff phoned Anthony. Anthony is having technical difficulties and reported that one MOM post will be sent to Katie by the weekend and a couple more are in the queue.

ACB Voices Blog Reviewers

April – Cachet and Cheryl
May – Penny and Zelda

AAVL made some great contributions to the May Braille Forum and Sharon is very appreciative.

April 2024 Statistics

March 2024

Braille distributed: 457
Braille returned: 9
Braille return rate: 1.97%
Braille received: 448
Cartridge distributed: 352
Large print distributed: 2,045
Large print returned: 20
Large print return rate: 0.98%
Large print received: 2,025
Email distributed: 5,550
Email bounces: 44
Unsubscribes: 5
Electronic return rate: 0.79%
Electronic received: 5,506

April 2024

Braille distributed: 471
Cartridge distributed: TBA
Large print distributed: 1,233
Email distributed: 5,584

May 2024

Braille to be distributed: 487
Cartridge to be distributed: TBA
Large print to be distributed: 1,255
Email to be distributed: TBA

Deadlines for the Next Issues

June 2024: Helen Keller/sight and sound impaired/Juneteenth, deadline: April 26, 2024                                                 
July-August 2024: pre-convention issue; deadline: May 24, 2024
September 2024: theme TBA; deadline: July 26, 2024
October 2024: theme TBA; deadline: August 23, 2024

May’s Table of Contents

President’s Message, by Deb Cook Lewis

Jacksonville Convention Snippets, by Janet Dickelman

Seeking Volunteers for the 2024 Information Desk, by Cecily Laney Nipper

Summary of the January 30, 2024 Board Meeting, by Penny Reeder

Alliance on Aging and Vision Loss (AAVL) Working for the Futures of Us All, by Doug Powell, President

How to Start an AAVL Affiliate in Your State, by Frank Welte

You’re Not Old Unless You Think You’re Old, by Larry Johnson

Thoughts on Losing Sight Later in Life, by Sandy Troiano

When Your Adaptive Skills Take a Hit as You Age, by DeAnna Quietwater Noriega

Adapting Games in Braille: A Do-It-Yourself Guide, by Andrew Smith

Recent Books about Blindness and Vision Loss, by Doug Powell

A Sacramento Success Story, by Jeff and Leslie Thom

Expertise, by Nancy Scott

What Her Bones Know, by DeAnna Quietwater Noriega

Here and There, edited by Cynthia G. Hawkins

---

As I write this, I’m putting the finishing touches on the May issue. Huge thanks to the Alliance on Aging and Vision Loss for their terrific articles. Deb’s President’s Message even goes with the theme.

I continue to put together the Dots and Dashes newsletter. The next issue will go out on April 8th; the one after that, the 22nd.

Webmaster Sande Rawlings has the text for the candidates’ introductory/landing page in hand, and it will go up this week. The information was also included in the March 25 Dots and Dashes, and will be in the next two issues as well. In the meantime, I’m making some room for incoming candidates’ pages in my email inbox!

One other thing I do that most folks don’t know about is that I keep the statistics for the Washington Connection and Community Events. I download each week’s report for both the Connection and Community from Ring Central, enter their data on the appropriate spreadsheets, and share it with Dan, Jo Lynn, Scott, Cindy (community only), and Claire and Swatha (Washington Connection only). It’s interesting to see how the numbers go up after an update, and which day of Community gets the most calls (it alternates between Monday and Tuesday, with occasional other days).

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 1979 and am working my way through 1978. Of those, I have text and Word files for May through December. I will do the braille files once I have all 12 months in Word and text.

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 will be updating those in the near future.

I am updating the ACB Job Connection for April, aiming to have it up online by Friday.

Sharon Lovering, Editor
ACB Braille Forum

May – Aging and Vision Loss
June – Sight and Sound Impairment. Haven’t heard from SASI yet. MCAC may want to contribute articles about Ju

The 5-day time limit will be implemented for individual threads as we discussed in March. Penny will send notification to the list about the 5-day limit a week before May 1^st. She will also make changes to the guidelines and send them to Rick to be posted on the Conversation list on May 1^st. Rick will change the setting to occur May 1^st.  The Conversation list is reply to sender.

The Announce list currently allows only staff posting privileges. It can be set to require those subscribed to post on an “needs approval” basis. Deb will look into this. She proposed allowing only affiliate level events and only one post per event. If this is implemented, event announcements would not be allowed on the other lists.

A meeting was scheduled for Tuesday, April 9 at 10 AM ET.

Guest Input:

Jamaca Miller would like to talk offline about the reply or reply all. Jeff will work with her on this. 

Janeen Lea – Wanted to clarify the proposed Announce list guidelines. Only post once an Affiliate level event.

Penny thanked Jeff, Rick, the ACB Media Team, many BITS members, and everyone who made this happen! The handout is being polished. It will be released a couple of weeks before the Part II Groups.io Training in May, which will be a hands-on session.   

Penny reported that Janet told her we could have an hour 4:00 to 5:15 PM on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, with Monday probably being our best opportunity for avoiding conflicts with popular convention events, for an in-person-only Board of Publications presentation or training.

Jeff suggested that we not do a training during convention but instead do one via Zoom after convention. His suggested topic is Smart Brevity – a concise way of communicating. Zelda would like to introduce this topic at the next Editor’s Gathering.

If anyone has a suggested training, they are to notify Penny by the end of the week. If none is found by then, she will contact Janet and return the promised time slot to her.

Zelda reported the next Editor’s Gathering will be on Friday, May 10. At that time, we will consider moving the date and time of future events.

Zelda and Jeff will introduce the Smart Brevity concept to the group with a TED talk about the subject and discussion following. The book, Smart Brevity – Saying more with less words, is available on BARD. It is an exciting way to create communications that people will take time to read.

Penny asked Sharon to review the BOP Awards process. The deadline for all awards nominations is Friday, April 5^th.

Ned E. Freeman - we are to select the top 3 articles ranking them 3 points for 1^st, 2 points for 2^nd, and 1 point for 3^rd. Articles to be considered were printed from April 2023 through March 2024.

Henley – Select one.
Liggett – Select one.

National Braille Press needs to have the wording by May 20^th to make the plaques in time for convention.

All scoring needs to be reported to Sharon by May 7^th.

There are five ACB Board director positions and three ACB Board of Publications director positions up for the 2024 election. Anyone seeking any of these positions is invited to submit their information for a Candidate’s Page by May 20^th. There will be four questions and each answer is limited to 300 words. The BOP Candidate’s Forum is scheduled for Wednesday, June 19.

Guest Topic:

Janeen Lea would like an opportunity to meet the members of the Board of Publication. Penny suggested that the Communication Center at Convention would be a good place to meet Sharon and the members of the BOP.

The next scheduled open meeting of the BOP will occur on May 7, 2024, beginning at 9:00 PM, ET.

Meeting adjourned with executive session immediately following.

Respectfully submitted,
Zelda Gebhard, Director
ACB Board of Publications