Board of Publications Meeting Minutes: November 5, 2024

The Board of Publications Chairperson, Katie Frederick, welcomed those present and called the November 5, 2024, meeting to order at 9:07 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; and Deb Cook Lewis, ACB President.

Cheryl moved to approve the October minutes. Bel 2^nd. No corrections were offered. Minutes were approved.

Mary Haupt expressed her appreciation for the monthly delivery of the ACB Braille Forum in hard copy braille. She reported that it arrives in a larger than necessary box and is concerned about the possible expense. Sharon reported the change to a box from an envelope because of reported issues with crushing of the braille. Sharon was unaware of any additional charges for the box deliveries.

Discussion will continue during the month of November via the BOP email list. Katie reported that during the ACB Board meeting on November 2^nd the issue of forwarding of outside email list information to ACB lists was brought up. It was noted that sometimes forwarding is appropriate. However, one list owner specifically asked that his list posts not be forwarded to other lists. We will consider positive ways forwarding could be accomplished in some instances, while the practice of routine forwarding could be discouraged. We will consider training for email list subscribers to include the when and how forwarding should happen on the list. The practice of posting events already posted on ACB Community and also the double posting of an event on Conversation will also be reviewed as we update the guidelines.  

Blog Editors

October - Jeff and Zelda

November – Cheryl and Bel

Editor’s Report - November 2024

Statistics

October 2024

Braille distributed: 462
Braille returned: 4
Braille return rate: 0.9%
Braille received: 458
Cartridge distributed: TBA
Large print distributed: 1,193
Large print returned: 12
Large print return rate: 1%
Large print received: 1,181
Email distributed: 5,500
Email bounces: 49
Email unsubscribes: 1
Email spams: 0
Email return rate: 2.5%
Email received: 5,460

November-December 2024

Braille distributed: 458
Cartridge distributed: TBA
Large print distributed: 1,185
Email distributed: 5,489

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

November-December’s Table of Contents

President’s Message: The Gift That Will Soon Stop Giving, by Deb Cook Lewis

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

Advocacy in Action, by Claire Stanley

Summaries of the August and September 2024 Board Meetings, by Katie Frederick

Holiday Auction Just Around the Corner, by Leslie Spoone

Short Stories from Our Readers

Holiday Recipes from Our Readers

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 looking ahead to the January issue.

I continue to put together the Dots and Dashes newsletter. The next issue is November 5^th (I will be out the 4^th); then the 18^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. In the old minutes, I have worked my way through the ‘80s and am working on the ‘90s. I’m thankful for Pat Price’s “major motions” documentation of each board meeting’s minutes. It’s a big help.

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 the 1970s and started on the 1960s. So far I’ve finished 1969 and am working on 1968.

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 updated the Washington Connection on October 29^th.

I am also responsible for the ACB Job Connection. I will update it this week or next.

Sharon Lovering, Editor

January – Goal Setting and Audio Description Gala Wrap Up, deadline November 22th

February – Stories about love and proposals

March – Spring into Action, Get up and Get moving

April – MCAC How your cultural background, race, ethnicity and/or vision loss affected your education?

May – Older Americans, AAVL

June – All things Convention

We will be working on the policy manual and other items via the BOP email list during the month of November.

The next Communicator’s Gathering is scheduled for Friday, January 10 at 8:30 p.m. Eastern time.

Jeff and Michael Babcock will present on how to help affiliates produce an audio newsletter with things such as chapter markers. We will invite WCB to share their experiences working with NLS in April.  

Deb suggested we make a formal announcement of our addition of chapter markers into the ACB Braille Forum podcasts. Jeff will write up something for the next ACB Braille Forum.

Deb reported that ACB Media is in the continued process of moving off the Azure Cloud. Also getting closer to the ability of replaying content in a scheduled way. This has been made possible with help from Chase Force for Good.  

Rick was unable to attend but submitted the following written report:

Madam BOP Chair and BOP Members,

The attached spreadsheets contain the metrics/statistics for the ACB Media Streams and Podcasts through October 30, 2024. While the data was compiled using Pivot Tables, the data is presented as simple tables.

Total Listener Hours (TLH) by Stream.

The first sheet displays the Year-To-Date monthly totals for TLH by stream.

The October 2024 TLH across all streams is 10767.6. This  is essentially the same as September.

The stream-by-stream breakdown is as follows:

ACB Media Five           4,250.6      39.5%

ACB Media Three        3,321.7      30.8%

ACB Media One           1,333.4      12.4%

ACB Media Eight          692.  5       6.4%

ACB Media Nine          482.8          4.5%

ACB Media Four          332.0          3.1%

ACB Media Six             253.9          2.4%

ACB Media Seven                37.1           0.3%

ACB Media Ten            36.9           0.3%

ACB Media Two           26.8           0.2%

Grand Total          10,767.6             100.0%

Media 3 (Old Time Radio from Yesterday USA) is the second most listened to stream behind Community.

Podcasts

The second sheet shows the 99 new podcasts that were published broken down by Podcast feed and individual podcast title.

Podcast Listens

The third sheet shows the podcast listens by podcast feed.

Following are the Podcast feeds with the greatest number of listens.                        

Feed                            Listens       %               Cumm %

ACB Community         7997          32.3%        

ACB Events                2460          9.9%          42.2%

Main Menu                  2371          9.6%          51.8%

ACB Braille Forum      1906          7.7%          59.4%

ACB Convention         1335          5.4%          64.8%

ACB Advocacy Update   960            3.9%          68.7%

The Community feed has 3 times the number of listens as the next highest feed, ACB Events.

The total number of podcast listens across all feeds: 24784. Total YTD Podcast Listens through October 30: 188206   

Major Activities:

• Update to Media policy regarding live programming approved by Board
• Affiliate Conventions supported including providing in person AV support for North Carolina (NCCB)
• Reboot of Icecast to restart all streams after outage
• JPMorgan Force for Good delivery of tech scheduling solution
• Move of Hawaii website off Azure
• Prep to decommission Azure servers

Rick Morin

ACB Media and IT Manager

Next BOP Meeting: December 3, 2024 at 9:00 PM, ET.

Respectfully submitted,
Zelda Gebhard, Director
ACB Board of Publications