2-21-10 Communications/Media WG Conf Call

Web & Social Media Planning Conference Call

1 hour

Sunday, February 21, 9pm EST

Facilitator

David

Note taker

Veronica

Attendees:

David M Adele Nieves Veronica Hill Scott Byrd Charles Lechner

Intros/check-ins:

Adele on handling inundation of emails: focusing on streamlining her work, getting point people on things. hoping to send less emails. Instead more focused ones. Scott: combatting email through filters/folders. suggesting we tag our email subject lines with [COMM WG] for example, so we can all help sift through what we need Charles : sends all USSF emails to a a "USSF" folder.

AGENDA:

1. Intros, current roles, & affinity areas

2. Revisit ICT (info, communications & technology) principles list: http://ict.ussf2010.org/wiki/technology_principles

3. Transitioning of email marketing

4. target audiences, social web, website & email committee breakdown needs & point people, what is it we are trying to achieve

5. look at Communications Flow Organizational Diagram (linked below agenda)

6. how are we aggregating/culling information - protocol, master communications timeline, wiki use

COMM-Media USSF Informational Flow/Organizational Diagram

MEETING NOTES

1. Intros, current roles, & affinity areas

2. Revisit ICT (info, communications & technology) principles list: http://ict.ussf2010.org/wiki/technology_principles

ICT meant for there to be a loophole in the use of software. Open source encouraged but not mandated. The people have voted and we have to meet them there. Our plan will hold up the general needs of USSF outreach, logistics, fundraising & information sharing and therefore be a balanced approach. USSF Comm-media working will have disclaimers for software we use for transparency sake.

Aggressive planning around all the major platforms and encourage open source ones that make sense such as identi.ca.

3. Transitioning of email marketing

This sunday we'll be having a call about Email marketing, COMM-Media reigning in those responsibilities and working with Working Group timeframes & needs to support overall, unified messaging.

4. target audiences, social web, website & email committee breakdown needs & point people, what is it we are trying to achieve

It's all about audiences. Facebook is a certain community, identi.ca is another, etc. and each platform offers a different purpose & type of information sharing. The statement about why to go to facebook is different statement for why we are sending people to identi.ca. Each of our social media platforms should serve a purpose and cater to those communities there in that platform.

Website: Audience is folks coming to USSF. Purpose mainly is logistical & outreach info sharing

Email marketing Currently about 7,000 on list: Audience is folks coming, outreach to organizers & folks who should be coming. Purpose is comprehensive information sharing (logistical info, fundraising appeals, national news, organizing news)

Facebook Fan Page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/US-Social-Forum-Another-World-is-Possible/213254731471?ref=ts

Facebook "Group" : http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=261818873062&ref=ts

Facebook Person Profile: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?ref=profile&id=100000706607663

Flickr Page #tag as creative commons #ussf2010

Twitter page

The Hashtag we'll encourage: #USSF.

Tweetdeck.com team tweeting platform?

Cotweet team tweeting platform

Twitter Search Search what's being said about USSF

MySpace Page Fausto from Leftist Lounge managing

YouTube Channel. Not yet created.

Reference for how media was culled & shared last year: media.ussf2007.org

USSF Audiences: People who are coming to the forum, folks who aren't coming but need to and want to be up on the news and happenings, PR and mainstream audience (hearing about USSF for the first time)

Website: see people who are coming to the forum and get information - clearing house for information (logistical focus).

Email Marketing: the bread and butter for the people that are coming. Charles is point person. Make sure we are on major listservs and they are forwarding our information to their lists. Good for fundraising and outreach purposes.

Facebook Fan page: 9000 - 10,000 people affiliated with our official groups. Other regional & sector-focused groups are popping up. We can message them at once, per our e-blasts schedule & content. We're in touch with each regional startup page/groups' point person. Once they pop up David invites & documents these startup groups on main Fan Page. About 200-300 people join per day. Expecting personal profile to grow to the 5,000 limit within a month.

Prospective Online Publication Project/Multiblog: Need for a news hub for the writers network and shared multimedia, connected strategically to social networking platforms & blogosphere. Purpose is to distribute & share articles, create buzz & raise consciousness. Have a presence in the blogosphere and progressive media connection.

Charles: might want to have someone go on the page regularly to initiate conversation that steers the conversation towards Social Forum topics, debates, events. Facebook team member will moderate discussions to ensure we have a presence.

David is thinking of making the facebook page an html page to add buttons and images from the website. See also Interesting Apps. Live streaming video? Live pre-forum events? Flash?

How to get people to migrate from places like facebook to the website? Have areas and buttons that direct people to the website to register, etc.

Do we want links to fb and twitter on the home page of ussf2010? Similar to bikeit.org? Yes. Will put in request to ICT. Also, a sign up for the email list is crucial (possibly a popup?) Flash page on the first visit to maximize folks joining our email list.

Flickr Page

Flickr has albums that are also on the fb. David has someone to manage. Want to build group Creative Commons pool and have photos to pull from for emails, etc. *Every photo we upload should be tagged for Creative Commons. Tag will be #USSF2010

Twitter: Main organizers (adrienne, adele, karlos) are mentioning USSF from their individual accounts and can continue to do so. We can have a twitter team of individuals to tweet from our official USSF account, do searches to keep up on what folks are saying, continue growing followers, having conversations, etc. for the @USSF account. Tweets should not only be about our message but also organization updates, internal successes, countrywide organizing, and also issues we care about. Let's experiment with how much to use, how frequent we tweet to see what's effective. Next phase is growing the Cotweet titter team.

MySpace page: just as important as fb.

YouTube: there are some videos up now, but no official channel. Attracts another unique audience. We don't need to be dependent on youtube. Can we get an official YouTube non-profit channel? Advantage is the permission to upload videos longer than 10 minutes, not have certain ads. We can also find videos from other pages and link to ours. We can have videos embedded on the website as well. Can we do both? Don't want youtube videos on official site- do our own hosting for official videos.

5. Look at Communications Flow Organizational Diagram (linked below agenda)

Discussion ensued about flushing out this diagram and bringing Email Comprehensive Newsletter more as Central piece of info and social media platforms under that, alongside PR pitchengine newsroom and writers network.

6. How are we aggregating/culling information - protocol, master communications timeline, wiki use

Charles - will lead a conversation on this? Invite NPC assigned point people and alternates so we can address plans for Comm, culling of info, protocall. Comm can take leadership in this area. Let's make a master timeline from all major WGs and make it public on the wiki. Call time? Who is involved? Agenda?

Unified team messages every 2/3 weeks. Message focused, starts with email trickles down to PR Pitchengine newsroom if relevant, writers network, through social media sites. Comprehensive Newsletter vs. other more specific message format. Charles planning.

Other questions:

how is the website working for us? what tickets need to go into ICT for us? (scott & david)

multimedia aspect (official promos & timeline for shared community media, mini-testimonials?): planning this in next phase

marketing materials: what is needed now (digital press kit? pdfs to website? new web banners for design of the social web platforms?): - David working on with WGs & Design team

Archiving?

Create an Ad we can easily send out (Dianne Feeley example)? -Nadia from Design Action is laying these out for our resource/ads/promote page.

(Within Multimedia Question) Give ICT a plan for developing storage of media - progressive video media platform/format ? need guidelines (how you tell a story, three minute clips) - drive for 30 second story (We care about your story. We as the social forum consider their issue to be our issue. How great you can make the forum, your movement is and what do you want to bring. Self-identify as the face of the forum.) Community Multimedia question- coming in later phase of planning & outreach.

Reference: Communications Flow Organization a Diagram Draft: http://wiki.ussf2010.org/images/3/3c/USSFtechmedia.pdf

For the next two weeks, Social Network platforms are growing bases of 'friends'. Flushing out designs for each and building teams & point people for each platform. David and Charles to chat this week to plan agenda for Email Marketing planning call.

NEXT CALL: Possible in two weeks if needed. Email Marketing call is this week. Reporting with final Email Marketing/Social Media plans to next NPC call in 2.5 weeks.