Chair Zelda Gebhard called the meeting to order.
Present: Deborah Armstrong, Jeff Bishop, Belinda Collins, Ralynn McGuire, Katie Frederick, Sharon Lovering, Rick Morin, Scott Thornhill, Deb Cook Lewis.
Zelda suggested shifting order of agenda items so ACB staff would not need to stay late. Agenda with this item order was approved. Having no previous public meeting since June, the June minutes were also approved.
Public Comment
Appreciation was expressed for giving the April Braille forum theme to the Multi-Cultural Affairs Committee. The question was asked if the ACB voices blog had a theme for potential submitters to need to track. It does not. Also there were some questions about "Member on the Mike."
Public comment: it was suggested public comment be held until the end of the meeting, but Zelda said she would take public comment at any time.
Editor’s Report
Sharon gave her Braille Forum report with her statistics posted to the BOP list. She answered questions about "Dots and Dashes." She had inadvertently left the affiliate report out of the November issue but resent it when this was discovered.
Themes for upcoming issues with deadlines:
January: Resolutions (new year and ACB); deadline 11/26
February: ACB Heart is membership; deadline 12/19
March: Adapting to change: deadline 1/23
April: Multi-Cultural Affairs-inclusion to belonging, deadline 2/20
Sharon also discussed some health concerns she's experiencing.
There was lively discussion around a new column proposed by Deborah: "Affiliates In Action." The title originally came from Debbie Hazleton's ACB Media show, but Debbie allowed BOP to reuse it for this forum column. The discussion concerned that name, plus public commenting that podcast listeners and forum readers could be different audiences, and there were general comments from the public approving the column.
President Lewis would like to also see a podcast highlighting affiliate activities Some discussion about creating this podcast followed.
ACB Media Report
Rick's ACB Media report addressed Deborah's concern regarding its calendar being out of date. He also said they were incorporating new processes using AI, which makes the labor much less.
Zelda noted his published statistics on virtual convention attendees will be helpful for future planning.
President Lewis requested a more logical sort of podcast categories be implemented; some discussion followed.
Discussion of the Candidates’ Page
The discussion turned to firming up a policy to better promote candidates. President Lewis will continue discussion with voting task force. In particular, more candidates need to be encouraged to submit statements for the candidates’ page. A checklist and deadlines were suggested. Also suggested were several Zoom events, including a "Get to Know the Candidates" event.
A public commenter asked if members without access to email could run, and President Lewis said no.
Deborah suggested candidates’ pages be easier to locate.
There was discussion about how often someone could announce their candidacy on ACB lists. This is part of the list guidelines for ACB conversation and leadership lists which Zelda will send to the BOP to compare/review/comment on in preparation for revising.
It was agreed that in the revised guidelines for the ACB Conversation list, an event could only be posted once. Jeff suggested further discussion of list guidelines be tabled until the next meeting.
Zelda said she would post the amended ACB large print guidelines to the ACB presidents list. The guidelines had been previously reviewed by the BOP.
Action Items:
- Deborah to begin work on "Affiliates In Action."
- Rick to clean up the ACB Media Calendar.
- Rick to do a trend analysis for past 2 years.
- BOP to consider what statistics to request from Rick.
- Deb Cook Lewis and Zelda to send BOP conversation and leadership list guidelines for review.
The meeting adjourned at 11:12 p.m. Eastern.