CHAPTER PRESIDENTS INFORMATION BOARD
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Winter 2013
Below are ideas presented at the 2014 convention Chapter Presidents meeting.
President's Meeting
Having convention of second week-end of July (this is by-laws) move to
another week-end (original idea was to keep dates consistent every
year). Second week-end may interfere with people taking 4th of July off and
not being able to make convention. Consider tying the Convention to the 4th
of July
Move convention start from Thursday to Friday with Show & Sale on Sunday
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Consider inviting Blue and White, COIPS, IA. Stoneware collectors to our Mid
Winter Gathering (Similar to 120)
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The Chapters have been "donating" to both the Society and Foundation for
years. The needs of the Foundation are clear, but the needs of the Society are
not as clear. Could some of the money donated to the Society be used to
somehow help the Chapters grow?
Develop more on-line information and videos. Need someone to establish
goals,outline, script it. Post videos & Pictures on website and other internet
areas. Tech already adding picture posting to website
Develop a You Tube “teaser(s)” on convention and activities-Need someone
to establish goals,outline, script it, make video.
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Find a way to shrink all the events at Red Wing during Convention week.
Many members can't/don't want to spend a week in RW to do everything. (3
Auctions for instance) Because the events during Convention week have gone
beyond the 3 days of convention, it makes it hard for working folks to be able
to get to the events they want without taking a full week of vacation.
Consider shuffling the events around every couple of years to add the
appearance of newness to the event and allow working folks to be able to
better schedule their time to hit the events they want.
Open-up the convention. Expand Show and Sale to include some nonstoneware items. Quality antiques was discussed. Could be handled by
requiring sellers to have a tax number and that would help eliminate the
possibility of flea market items. Would require policing and not allow sellers
back if they bring junk.
Look into providing a "covered" sales area for outside vendors at Pottery
Place parking lot, or a building somewhere, or at the high school parking lot.
This would encourage stoneware sales from dealers that don't want to fight
the elements of rain and sun to sell their goods. Maybe only have facility
under cover for one day to discourage sales all week long at the Pottery Place.
Consider it same day as Show and Sale and nearby so everyone has an equal
opportunity to shop and to sell.
Change the terms of membership from Dues to Donation. Sounds friendlier.
Re-do and update Presidents Guide-Stacy and committee
President's
Meeting
Kids View-Ask the Kids what they want from their programs to help improve
and give new ideas to Chair person for following year.
President's
Meeting
Plan a special event at the Museum every Convention to bring membership
through it. Something besides the Wine-ing event which is a fund raiser. Of
1150 attendees this year, only about 250 attended the Wine-ing event. The
Museum is "special" and every member needs to go there every year....give
them a reason.
City of Red Wing-It's a beautiful City, 6 museums, lots to see and do. Use our
Convention to direct the membership to one key spot each year so they get a
feel for the pottery history of the City.
Use our Web site to direct our members to "Events" in Red Wing at other
times besides Convention. It helps the City, but it also helps the Foundation
and the stoneware sellers in the City, many of whom support the Society and
Foundation. Chamber of Commerce has Annual calendar of events.
Consider closing the Society and put the Society and Foundation back
together as one entity as it once was. The idea being to somehow cost share
and find ways to help grow the Chapters/membership again.
President's
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Technology Committee Projects from Chapter Presidents Meeting
1. Smartphone app for Convention schedule?
The committee looked into this a couple years ago and decided it was too expensive to implement. The
cost was approximately $6000.00 to build for Apple and Android, and Blackberry wouldn’t have been
included. Also it may have taken Apple up to 6 months to approve our app for their ‘store’. We
thought a better idea was to write an interface to our existing website and format it for these smaller
devices. Less cost, hundreds instead of thousands, and no significant maintenance going forward. Many
companies, including mine (see Tankstar.com from your smartphone and then your PC), are going this
route and for the same reasons.
Want to see Thursday’s menu at the Courtyard Café at the high school. Click on – menu
It will take you here:
Note that you can increase the size of the menu (or any screen), but I kept it at normal size for this write
up.
2. Finalize and approve Nomination and Election Procedures Draft 2014 into a final policy
document.
13. Give members a "unique identifier" so they can vote on line. For instance, primary member uses
their membership member and Associate uses the same number with an "a, b, c,," etc. to signify that
they are a member in good standing to vote. Eliminates the need to request and mail in associate
ballots. All balloting could be done on line that way and eliminate the mail in process. Need to find a
better way to do Associate Balloting. Consider Electronic balloting of Primary and Associate members
via internet using membership numbers as passwords, or some other method as approved by the Tech
Committee.
This (2) is a BOD item and is outside the scope of this committee, however, I think the policy will need to
be rewritten.
The Technology committee can determine the method to verify that the member is up to date on dues
and to make sure they didn’t vote twice, etc. One rule is that once they vote, they vote, there would be
no changes once they submit their ballot.
Changes to the voting process will require a bylaw change.
3. Discussion of Ready Talk-Stacy, John Sagat, Paul Wichert.
12. Develop on-line inter-active meetings and information sharing sessions.
Ready Talk is just one of many Web based meeting sites but they offer extremely good pricing for nonprofits (about 2 cents per user minute). They also have the ability to do ‘webex’ type meetings.
4.
Develop a You Tube “teaser(s)” on convention and activities
We can create a ‘teaser’ (please define what that means) video and post it on youtube but someone has
to write a script for it, create videos, etc. There needs to be a lot of discussion here.
6.
Web-site – have some seminar content and picture information. Summary is ok.
That’s been in place for years on the website and for the last 2 years formatted for smart phones.
There are no pictures. What do we want to see pictures of? Remember this is before the seminar.
7.
8.
Develop more on-line information and videos.
Post videos and pictures on Web-site and other internet areas
Content development is not within the scope of the technology committee. We have added a blank
photo page to the website to post pictures. Initially to post additional Convention/midwinter photos.
9.
Develop a system where members not at the convention can bid on auction items. Develop portal
like Proxibid so "members only" can bid if they can't attend the auction in person.
There’s no cost effective way that I see to do this but I’m open to suggestions. Does the Auction Chair
want to offer this service?
An alternative is to have a phone bank for preregistered voters and a video feed to display the item on
the internet. The question is who’s going to preregister people, take credit card information, provide
the online feed, take online bids, wrap it, box it, weigh it, insure it, ship it, etc. Is there a ‘Pack & Ship’
type of store in Red Wing? What’s the plan if the network at the school goes down during the auction?
Perhaps the Auction chair could contact Proxibid and see if they’d host our auction for a fee?
10.
Develop access opportunity for members not at convention (Assume this to be access to RWCS
Auction?)
We can look at this and determine cost. We will need to bring in a company that can film and stream it
to the internet. I’d guess the school has enough bandwidth to do that.
14. Improve education to both Members and Non-members.
16. Education-Look at putting Seminars "on line."
We are working on a process to put our educational seminars online and we’re presently moving some
(a sample) of our old videos to DVD. If you’re talking about streaming them over the internet real time,
that would have to be looked at (see #10).
11. Auction list on-line, in Newsletter, and on web-site so members know what the good stuff is at our
auction.
If we need the auction list online, that’s an auction chair revenue decision as presently the catalogs are
sold. We can put the sold list on the website, perhaps as part of the convention photo gallery page.
15. Consider Virtual displays since it's hard to bring everything required for a good display at high
school. 18. Can we set up virtual displays or leverage technology for those members that would love to
participate in some way remotely, but can't or won't attend Convention?
We’d be happy to work with the display committee once they identify the framework for this type of
display.
17. Barrel Cookie Jars-Program put on by Southwest Red Wingers-Get copy and put on disc for other
Chapters use.
I have no idea what this is. Waiting for Kent Williamson to send Larry a copy so we can review it.
19. The Presidents indicated they would be for having the Rep(s) at large attend their Chapter meeting
via Skype or in person.
Okay, what would the technology committee need to do? Rather than skype, consider using ReadyTalk
at 2 cents a minute.
20. Set up a "Vision" committee and include members from outside the RWCS BOD.
Not a Technology issue. Note Paul Wichert was on the 2000 and 2010 vision committees.
21. "Market" Mid Winter Get Together using Craigslist to try to gain more new collectors from that
area.
This would use the existing technology that Craigslist provides. Like the RWCS Ebay ads, the technology
committee would not need to be involved. In the past, the membership committee ran ads in 6 to 8
different Craiglist areas, without any tangible results.
21a. Find a way to do away with $5.00 catalog fee for Houghton Auctions. Have the catalog on line or
at least a list on line at no charge to "members only."
If you mean to eliminate the fee for the RWCS Thursday auction catalog, that’s up to the auction chair
and I think that fee was $4.
If you’re talking about the Tuesday and Wednesday auctions, those are auctions run by a private auction
company not part of the RWCS. It’s a business decision for Houghton Auctions. I can’t imagine they’d
discriminate by charging others and make it free to members of our group.
Larry – please change agenda as follows:
Low Priority
Create standard 'link' icon
MEMBERSHIP/BOD
ADD Electronic Trial & Primary Memberships. Part of discussion by membership committee.
BOD DECISION )please remove from technology agenda)
Feasibility of electronically recording/selling/revenue sharing - Red Wing collector books (e-books).
Attempt to get permission to post online - David Newkirks newsletters
ONGOING (I would drop these from agenda)
Website Database/data collection enhancements & reporting
WordPress (web) - training
Process to limit website updates to protect against viruses.
REDUNDANT with other agenda items(I would drop these from agenda)
Create download library of education videos
DONE – Please leave on and lets touch on them very quickly
Register 'short' website URL - erwcs.org
Add donation button (for foundation) when members renew, register for convention, etc.
Foundation to have their own page on our website w/donate button (no donate button as the
foundation does not have a donate button on their website).
FUTURE CONSIDERATION
GPS crock hunt
Create 'What to expect' videos for new members & at convention
Virtual convention
RWCS games (app?) & children’s version
Live & Test website
Facebook 'check in' app for convention
System for members to provide website/social media content