After some freeconferencecall.com technical difficulties, the meeting was called to order by Chair Denise Colley at 9:20 pm EDT.
Members present: Denise Colley, Ron Brooks, Tom Mitchell, Judy Wilkinson, and Doug Powell
Ex officio members present: Berl Colley, Bob Hachey and Kim Charlson
Ex officio absent: Nolan Crabb tried to get on, but was not successful.
Contractors present: Annette Carter and Larry Turnbull
Staff present: Sharon Lovering, Editor
Guests present: Ken Stewart and Carla Ruschival
The distributed agenda was adopted.
The distributed August 4 meeting minutes were amended and adopted.
Oral History Committee is still trying to deal with a copyright. Melanie will help on this.
Leadership Training is looking at different presentation formats for the 2016 national leadership training.
PR Committee:
Nolan Crabb has been appointed as the new PR Committee Chair. They are looking at producing one or more podcasts directed at the general public focusing on what ACB is advocating for and why. The sub-committee formed to work on this is Nolan, Tom Mitchell, Brian Charlson, and Mike Duke.
IOC:
Lists are quiet. Good discussion about Rehab. GDUI may have to create a new website. There has not been much feedback about the List Guidelines for affiliates.
Facebook followers: 611
Twitter followers: 815 as of September 8
Both have increased interest the last couple of weeks because of the unveiling of the Next Generation affiliate.
ACB Radio:
Chase Crispin has stepped down as Program Coordinator and Executive Producer of Main Menu. A transition plan is in place. Jeff Bishop and Larry are covering Main Menu, and Larry is covering Production Coordinator. Larry has a form for volunteer hours. Holiday Auction planning is under way. It will air Sunday, December 7, 7pm to 11pm EST on all 6 streams. Audio Now figures are in but not parsed. Those figures will be out in a few days. Forum and ACB Reports RSS feeds are and have been live for a couple of months now.
Larry has sent listener figures to Jo, the grant writer, and she was impressed by the increase due to the addition of Audio Now. She thinks she'll have a better chance of getting funding with the increased numbers of listeners.
Braille Forum:
August E-Forum went out on August 1 to 3608 subscribers.
September, a 48-page issue, 3380 large print released 8/28, 750 Braille copies on 9/4, 1430 cassettes on 8/28, 173 CDs on 8/29, posted to the website 8/28, and 3615 emails on 8/29.
Working on October and Convention Wrap-up for November.
Website:
Annette sent out the results of the BOP Readership survey. She's working on the Angel Memorial Tributes, volunteer processes, and a little on the website revision.
BOP Survey:
186 total responses. Preliminary comments:
Respondents like email or hard copy. Respondents are relatively old. Willingness to pay a little more for hard copy.
Are respondents representative of membership? This may be part of what Tiffany at NIB will tell us after her analysis.
Leadership List Guidelines:
After discussion, and addition of a rule referring back to the Candidate Posting Guidelines, the Leadership List guidelines were adopted. Denise will announce to the list that new guidelines have been created, pasted below, and posted on the website.
Candidates' Posting Guidelines
At this point, several people got cut off the call, including Ron and Tom.
It was decided to send this final draft to the Board of Directors for their input before final ratification by the BOP. Denise will ask the BOD specifically for input on the appropriate word count limit on announcements; 100, 150, 200, 300.
Discussion of any possible changes to the deadline for the Candidates Pages on the website will be deferred to next month.
Forum Cover Information
There was discussion via email about exactly what, where, and how much information will fit on Cover 2 and 4 of the hard copy formats of the ACB Braille Forum. There was discussion on the call concerning how the available formats are presented on the website. The link to downloadable formats, including podcasts, will now be at the head of the website edition. We also decided that it was not feasible to have content related teasers in the hard copy issues. However teasers are still moving forward on ACB Radio. We also re-emphasized the desirability of advertising non computer formats to non computer using members. We will write up a series of fillers to have ready for open spots inside the Forum to keep informing members about alternative formats of the E-Forum. Doug and Sharon will continue to work on this project.
There was no Old Business.
Denise asked us to think about how to distinguish the E-Forum from the Braille Forum -- are there columns or other enticing content that will make the E-Forum different and worth the effort of looking for it.
The question of starting the BOP calls earlier was brought up. Since Ron and Tom didn't make it back on the call, we don't have a consensus on this yet. The trouble with conference call lines was discussed and it was determined that we will test one before the next meeting.
The next meeting will be October 6, 2014 at a time to be determined.
The meeting was adjourned at 11:15 pm EDT
Respectfully submitted,
Doug Powell, Secretary