VG Staff

VG Staff Meeting February 13, 2008

Aleta Ideas:

-Made a VG video projects spot on Media Mill
-put a video up that Aleta created for Paula in order to demonstrate
-use Media Mill to house back-up of interviews
-Aleta very aware of how to get answers to tech tools
-Idea of setting up a course website for VG communication or storing files

Communication Tool:

-Decided to stick with the blog for general communication between staff members
-Dhana-Marie will set up the Moodle course site to store files for VG

Maria on Grants:

-Continuity for VG staff
-Three $250,000 grants available for the Futures project
-GRPP for the summer to fund one graduate student
-Aleta will look around for funding opportunities
-Starbucks, Minneapolis Foundation, etc.
-Marcia will look at her list of grants and pass on to Maria
-TEL grant due Monday Feb 18th
-Maria will work on TEL grant

Student Organization

-What would the criteria be for student/writer of color?
-“Affiliations” rather than “Axis of Affiliation” in order to create room for other identifications, e.g. “I am a worker.”
-Using the language of “affiliation” will allow people to have an identification with VG
-Create a Facebook group for VG

Adam’s Meeting with Lauren

-For usability reasons, the site should remain as is for the bios
-Lauren want the conversation about identity to happen on the blog
-Push content from other pages (example link to blog)

Site Redesign

-See if we can get a CLA-OIT person to consult on Dreamweaver
-Adam is working on this conversation
-Small amount in budget to potentially hire someone to help VG make the switch from Ecto to Dreamweaver
“Edited to be coded”

-Warning some are actually on the site
-Do not start coding until you check the site
-Long process that involves hand editing
-Roughly an hour per entry to code from scratch
-About nine entries pending

Staff Priorities

-Get the backlog cleared out, meaning “editing-to-be-coded”
-Dhana-Marie will look into creating “news update” on the site

Donation Page

-There is an account with the foundation set up
-Colleen Ware is Editor of CLA External Relations—Adam will pursue this contact
-Emily Paulsen is in charge of English Dept. Giving

Undergraduate Volunteer

-Brianna went through all hard copy files
-Teach her to do editing-to-be-coded
-Have her write a bio page, ask her what her interests are

Next meeting February 27th 2:00pm