Staff Meeting Notes 2/7/16
Ethan – Welcome to February staff meeting – hope students enjoyed a great break.
Thanks to everyone who stuck around for holding down the fort.
Thanks to Hannah for getting the Program together.
Welcome back Ben M!
Few word from Ben M – Good to be back, thanks for the personal notes of concern and support. And for taking such good care of the station in my absence. Lost lots of time planned for upgrades and pledge drive due to injury but have been making up for lost time. Will report more later.
Ethan – Introduce Professor Kauanui and Radio activism and Media: Ask her to introduce and speak about Class and what they need from WESU staff for assistance.
Program – Hannah: Program guide ETA…
Music Directors – Starting to purchase music – Sub MDs and staff should make suggestions and requests for music the station is lacking.
Events- Ariana – Record Fair will be on Sunday April 10th. We’ll be recruiting volunteers to help leading up to and during the event. Anyone want to design a flyer for service hours?
— Public Affairs: Zazie will be creating an online form for public file stuff, shared on google docs.
— Personnel: Reminder of only three staff meetings this spring. Training this semester will be Thursdays and Sundays again — tell folks interested to get in touch with Ethan O. for further details.
Winter Pledge update – Ben M
Success! While it was a challenge – we made our goal – We hit $20K in one drive without any special incentives (matching gifts etc). It was hard on listeners and staff but we did it!
— To sweeten the deal, we unexpectedly received 2 large donations from alumni – Steve Gross who donated $8,810 during our 75th came through with another $6k donation and another Alumni donated $2,000 on New Year’s Eve. This put us $8K ahead of the game granted we our new delay cost $3K and we have a couple thousand dollars in legal fees this year, too. If we can do as well in our spring drive, we will have some additional money to put into upgrades and equipment replacement.
— Processing: hoped to report all premiums have been sent out by last Friday. Storm on got in the way. Everything is poised to go out with the exception of a couple items that are out of stock. (Hoods and LG long sleeve).
— Observations / moving forward Bottom line, it takes us 2 months to hit the $20 K mark. But 2 months is too long for constant heavy pitching on air. We will continue to refine or approach. Starting with program guide mailing, followed by direct mail pitch, social media and email campaigns, and some light ton air reminders. Will try to use the full on-air portion to complete the drive in late April.
Open to discussion as we continue to hone our pledge drive model.
Studio upgrades – Ben M
Studio A
New delay – Still figuring out the new features. Dump doesn’t automatically get rid of all 8 seconds. Hold it down to completely drain. Also has sneeze, and panic functions.
New Monitor – is touch screen that will function once we get a newer version of windows setup.
New Headphones – do not coil them up, just hand from the rack. Be nice to them, they are MUCH better and more expensive than the ones we used for the last 10 years.
Studio B
new production PC – At long last the studio B PC died – replaced the tower with a mini pc and put a nice new big monitor in there.
Other upgrade updates:
Studio reservation system is near ready to go. We should be unrolling this in the next week or so.
We are also getting ready to install the new mixing board in studio A (work scheduled to start Feb 22). This will require us to shut down studio A and broadcast out of studio B until the work is complete. Max time 2 weeks hopefully much less. Once the board is in studio, it is likely there will be some downtime for studio B as we work to upgrade that studio.
When upgrades are complete, studio A will have a new mixing board and Studio B will be better suited for performances and group conversations.
Other goals include:
– new phone coupler system
– more interconnectivity between studios
– more counter space
-improved ergonomics
– better sound insulation
– moving ricks desk to Board Room, Putting all automation gear in one vertical rack.
– new countertops
-Windows in studio doors
-New networking hardware
-new computers and cd players.
-microsoft products and a newer version of adobe audition (will keep old, too)
WHAT Else do folks want/need to improve functionality and ergonomics?
— remote broadcasting rig?
— video?
— listening station with a cd player?
— sound effects board?
New Carpet: To further complicate all of this, we are getting new carpet in the near future. We are still mapping out the plan but it will require many hands on deck as we shift the contents of rooms around one at a time. To further complicate…. There’s some asbestos under the carpet in a couple of the rooms. There is no threat or health concern at the moment and great caution will be taken during abatement to ensure everyone’s health and safety. Rooms in need of abatement will be sealed and off limits during the process.
We will likely use this as an opportunity to start storing some of our CD collections in filing cabinets. We will also make a move to start storing 7” records in filing cabinets as well. Filing cabinets will help us make better use of our limited space and better protect media. Hopefully It will also be easier to browse/organize.
More details on when we need hands on deck as and how exactly this comes together as plans develop. Meeting with Carpet crew, Tuesday.
Studio shuffle. How can we help people work around this challenge?
Next Meeting is April 3rd – No March meeting due to WES spring break
