BOARD OF PUBLICATIONS
Meeting Minutes
November 2, 2009

The ACB Board of Publications met via teleconference at approximately 9:10pm (EST) on Monday, November 2, 2009. Members present were: Paul Edwards, Jenine Stanley, Marcia Dresser, Judy Jackson and Ken Stewart; Ex Oficio Members present: Larry Turnbull and Michael Malver; Absent: Ron Milliman; ACB Staff present: Sharon Lovering and Earlene Hughes. Donna Pomerantz was also in attendance representing the Social Networking Committee.

Agenda:

Judy moved to adopt the agenda as presented. The motion was seconded and adopted.

Minutes:

Minutes for the October meeting are not yet available but will be ready for approval at the December meeting.

Disaster Recovery Plan:

Earlene reported that the Information Technology Resource Management Committee met on October 15 and appointed a Disaster Recovery Committee. The committee consists of Earlene as chair, Jeff Bishop, Larry Turnbul and Eric Hinson, ACB’s new system administrator. This committee is working to have a full disaster recovery plan finished by the December ACB board meeting. They are working on steps both before any data loss and afterward.

The first item of business is to find a new location for the servers that is staffed 24/7. They are interviewing two companies currently. One key factor any company must demonstrate is at least two methods of backing up data, either remotely through software or with physical backups at the facility or other location.

There is currently no space on the existing server to do backups and this needs to be done as soon as possible.

Earlene reported that she continues to restore email lists and broken links on the web site. The ACB Store, donation and membership forms are not yet operating and they are her priority in terms of the web site. She expressed her great appreciation for the Disaster Recovery Committee and how well they are working together.

Earlene noted that as per the BOP discussion at the October meeting, she nor any of the Disaster Recovery Committee had been given access to the logs from the old server. Marcia moved that the BOP request that Earlene and the Disaster Recovery Committee be given access to the server logs from the old ACB server, prior to its malfunction to study for future prevention and security issues. The motion was seconded and approved. Paul will carry this request to ACB President Mitch Pomerantz and Information Technology Resource Management Committee chair Chris Gray.

The BOP again thanked Earlene and her team for their work on restoring the ACB server and associated functions.

Marcia moved to accept the Disaster Recovery Committee’s report. The motion was seconded and approved.

ACB Radio:

Larry reported that his team continues to work on restoring the scheduling page and ftp server for ACB Radio. He has planned a staff meeting for ACB Mainstream and Interactive staff in November. Larry noted that the server will need to be moved and during that time there will be a brief outage of ACB Radio.

Judy moved to accept the ACB Radio report. The motion was seconded and approved.

Internet Oversight Committee:

Michael Malver thanked earlene and committee for restoring the various ACB lists. This committee will meet to formalize list rules with a full report at the December BOP meeting.

Judy moved to accept the Internet Oversight Committee report. The motion was seconded and approved.

PR Committee:

Ron sent out the committee report via email prior to the meeting. The BOP congratulates the PR Committee on such an ambitious agenda for the coming year.

Jenine moved to accept the PR committee Report as submitted. The motion was seconded and approved.

Social Networking:

Jenine reported that the Social Networking Committee met recently and discussed the issues of staffing any social networking sites. It was decided that a staff member should be responsible for putting content onto both sites. Melanie Brunson assured the committee that there is a staff member in the national office who would be willing to do this task. She has not yet finalized arrangements with this staff member so the name will not be announced until December. This staff person would then become part of the Social Networking Committee. The committee proposed the following motion.

Jenine moved that the Social Networking Committee recommends to the BOP and ACB Board of Directors that ACB establish social networking sites on Facebook and Twitter for the near future but keep options open for other developing entities. The motion was seconded and approved with one abstention.

The committee recommended that the BOP explore several policy areas regarding the social networking sites. The first policy involved any existing sites using the ACB name in any of its variations. Paul stated that since the BOP had approved the creation of the Facebook and Twitter pages, he would draft an announcement stating that ACB will create such pages and anyone having pages entitled ACB should remove them. If not removed within the specified time period, ACB will ask Facebook and Twitter to have the pages removed.

The next issue involved prioritizing content and delivery of content to the social networking sites. Paul will chair a subcommittee to draft a policy addressing both delivery procedures and major areas of content for each site. The subcommittee will have a report no later than the January meeting.

Web Site Task Force:

Paul noted that he had talked with Melanie Brunson, Earlene and Larry, and will talk with Eric Hinson in the near future. They all assure him that Drupel, the content management software for the new web site design, is a priority for installation on the new server. The Task Force does not expect any design to begin until January, giving people time to learn the software and finish any disaster recovery tasks on the current site.

Judy moved to accept both the Social Networking and Web site Task force reports. The motion was seconded and approved.

Editor’s Report:

Sharon reported that the December issue of the Braille forum will be finished by the end of the week. Jenine moved to accept the Editor’s report. The motion was seconded and approved.

BOPEEP:

Jenine asked about the absence of braille labels on the October CD edition of the Braille Forum. Sharon noted that the office supplies to print them had not arrived and she felt it better to get the issues out than to wait. Ken asked about how photo captions appear in the issues other than print. Sharon said that all photo captions do appear in all formats.

It was suggested that the BOP explore how to promote ways to listen to ACB Reports in each issue.

Unfinished business:

Marcia noted that her first ACB Board summary will appear in the Braille forum December issue.

New Business:

Ken asked that Marcia, in her role as ex oficio member to the ACB Board of Directors, take forward the BOP’s concerns about the current conference calling service being used for most ACB functions. Many people have had difficulty accessing and remaining on conference calls with Free Conference Service. The BOP supports exploring other options, including donations of conference service time or expenses.

Next Meeting:

The next meeting of the ACB Board of Publications will take place on Monday, December 7, 2009 at 9:00pm (EST).

Paul moved that the meeting be adjourned at approximately 11:25pm (EST). The motion was seconded and approved.

Respectfully Submitted:
Jenine Stanley,
Recording Secretary