VG Staff

UROP STUDENTS

*Potential UROP students were introduced, Lauren and Valerie. Lauren discussed what she might be interested in, was “pretty open.”

DHANA-MARIE

*13 Minutes left in transcription
*Aleta talked about VideoAnt (can it do audio?) and would look into transcription software
*Moodle set up: File drawers or for “cleaning up the mess”—Marcia and Dhana-Marie to talk about
*Up through P in cleaning up bios
*Went to meeting with undergrads, working on presentation for classrooms (test presentation in Dhana-Marie’s class

D-M NEXT:
*Interested in interviewing local writers
*Continuing above

MARCIA

*Down through M in cleaning up bios
*Style sheet
*Take off “new” label from non-new bios
*Children’s books—compile info about children’s authors on site
*Did the “edited to be coded” bios; will help D-M with some coding issues
*Also going through critiques for dead links
*Emails from instructors interested in using site in their class; other emails

MLQ NEXT:
*Will work on information-architecture issues w/Adam
*Will work on ways to involve students w/D-M and Kim
*Continuing above

MARIA

*Submitted grant app for $20K
*Feasibility of $250K grant?
*Should VG stay in English?
*We want to interview

MARIA NEXT
*Will work on guest speaker for spring event
*Will look into VG class for fall—what happened? Can we still have it?
*Continuing above

KIM

*Class presentations—D-M reminds that we need to focus on the “what’s in it for me” angle
*Student organization
*Spring event (Lind 150, budget, small open mic and featured readers—Maria will look into this if Kim emails her reminder)
*General “marketing stuff”

KIM NEXT
*Will start student organization
*Will send out boilerplate email and start classroom presentations

ADAM

*Dreamweaver (server situation)
*Mockups/redesign
*Google Analytics report

ADAM NEXT
*Will port to Dreamweaver
*Will look into updating Dreamweaver
*Will begin on redesign
*Will add “donate” button

REDESIGN ISSUES

*What should we push?
*Maria: Interviews
*Marcia: More interactive content—blogs in book reviews, guest blogs, other forms of networking/interaction?
*Donate button (Adam)
*Multiple “axes” of affiliation (or, as Aleta says, tags)

GRANT ISSUES, ORPHANS

*Soros Foundation—who was going to look into this?

Posted by Marcia Lynx Qualey at 09:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

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VG Meeting January 30th, 2008

-Dreamweaver: Adam will know by the middle to end of February.
-Donation link: Adam has on his agenda.

Correspondence:
-One woman asking to volunteer. She is a U of M student. Marcia inquired what tasks are priorities for volunteers. (filing)
-One woman asking to submit a bio to VG site. Maria approved—but noted that parameters need to be established in terms of literary substance of work, but broadly.
-Many inquiring about author contact information—refer to publisher.

Links on website
-Many are dead links, need to be updated or eliminated.
-Marcia has culled through a portion of the website. She is halfway through “B.”
-Move to CSS to standardize the appearance of the links throughout the site. Contingent on switch to Dreamweaver.
-Eliminate redundancies under author’s names.
-Marcia will work through A-M author pages; Dhana-Marie will move Z-N.
-Kim will look into old blog as a communication tool.

Masha Questions:
-Filing (Adam)
-Copy code for VG (Kim will e-mail and ask).
-Old blog.
-“To Discuss at Board Meeting” file: looked through papers. Adam unsure what the nature of the documents are.
=“Rejection” pile: protocol for rejection letters discussed. Can be sent out signed in Maria’s name.
-Official Rejection letter: Kim and Dhana-Marie will send those out. (On computer desktop under “rejection_one”)

Names to Add to the Bio list:
ß Sawako Nakayasu
ß Request to add Bio of Hisaye Yamamoto by Jeffrey Esser at Palm Beach Community College in April 2006
ß Allison Hedge Coke
ß Amanda J. Cobb
ß Kaia niambi shivers
ß Kathy Coudle King
ß Mayra L. Dole
ß Teresa Dovalpage
ß Sharon Flake
ß Ruth Knafo Setton, Carmit Delman, Gina Nahai, Rachel Wahba, Gloria DeVidas Kirchheimer
ß Erna Brodber
ß Sharron M. Proulx
ß Sally Benforado
ß Nathalie Handal
ß Troy Buckner
ß Martha Southgate
ß Barbara Hill Hudson
ß TJ Baker
ß J.A. Marzán
ß Sonia Rivera-Valdés

Lauren:
=School Craft Pile (Adam will ask)
-Dhana-Marie and Kim will organize classroom presentations
-Send out e-mail to faculty and TAs
-Will meet to plan presentation on February 6th 12:15pm
-Still need to go through and organize the “evil” pile.
-Divided up “edited to be coded” between A, M, D-M, K
-Store e-mail in electronic filing system. Back up old, relevant e-mails to a CD-ROM.

Adam:
ß Dreamweaver switch
ß Donate button
ß Locating Interviews
ß Edited-to-be-coded assignment
ß Video for site
ß Lauren and Masha files
ß Schedule: Fridays full day

Marcia:
ß E-mail
ß Voicemail
ß Cleaning up author bios A-M
ß Coded-to-be-posted
ß Edited-to-be-coded
ß Schedule: T, W, Th 3-1/2 hours per day

Dhana-Marie:
ß Transcription
ß Flier
ß Rejection Letters
ß VG class visits
ß Edited-to-be-coded
ß Clean up author bios Z-N
ß Schedule: Thursday 5 hours, Saturday 5 hours

Kim:
ß Blog/WIKI
ß Edited-to-be-coded
ß VG class visits
ß E-mail Masha regarding VG copy code, blog
ß Rejection letters
ß Dreamweaver
ß MN Futures symposium attend on Feb 11th
ß Web 2.0 initiatives
ß Schedule: Wed 3 hours, Fridays 5 hours

Posted by voices at 04:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)