present: everyone but Arie
NEXT MEETING: 11 AM FRIDAY
Announcements:
- Kamila not here Wednesday
- Steven still in contact with Rob Zverina, who is very interested in the editorial position. It's just 4 months for now, from mid-June.
- We now have a new Central European introduction to CARtoons, to be translated into the four Visegrad language versions.
- Daniel gave us the contact for a company in Brno that will make two banners for 1500 CZK or so. Kamila will contact them, to make WCN banners in time for Tabor.
- We'll be sending out a member organisation survey at the end of the week.
- There's a concert on Monday where we can share an info table with Automat.
- Our fax number is now the same as our telephone number. So please change it in e-mail signatures, business cards, etc.
- Radka will be 3/4 time rather than full time, because job doesn't take full time.
- Freesources (articles) are now offered in HTML as well as RTF.
- Stickers have gone to printer.
Agenda items:
We spend (in printing, postage, staffing, plus 330 EUR/year office expenses) 12,200 EUR per year on the magazine. Income is 8,600 EUR, but this includes a portion of our EC core grant although no money was counted from our individual membership fees. So the hypothetical loss is about 3,500 EUR per year. It would about break even if 100% of individual membership fees were counted towards the magazine.
Subscriber numbers have ranged from 300-400 consistently, without the necessary energy being available for subscription boosting. Around 2,000 copies are distributed by professional distributors, with an average sell rate of about 40%. Our print run should be less, to lower amounts going to distributors and so we have fewer copies left in office.
- Should we publish it?
- If so, what should it look like? (printed, electronic, smaller, bigger, more professional, etc.)
- How much energy would go into it? (staff time, etc.)
Annie (Jowett) has made canvas shopping bags for WCN Resource Centre. We discussed various graphics that could be silkscreened on them. No decision made yet.
Kevser, the host of the 2007 conference, suggests that Randy go to Istanbul after Tabor to work out conference details. Randy thinks it would be better for coming few months at least to work out as much via e-mail and Skype and maybe make a trip later to Istanbul instead of after Tabor. Agreement.
A couple months ago we decided about some necessary changes to the Carbusters.org website, plus there are some things needing updating on Worldcarfree.net. Steve is going to delegate certain things to Anna and maybe Vincent after the magazine is done. For next week Steve will bring a timeline and it will be divided into sections that people can do on their own, etc.
The final report for a start-up grant for the AA project is due May 1st. We don't have so much to show for our work so far. Steve is the project coordinator but has been busy with other things and says he hasn't been as organised as he should be. We'll discuss this broader subject of the office structure next week (Friday, 11 am). The general feeling is that with 10 people the current structure does not always well and may not be sustainable.
Deadline is 1 June for volunteer starting 1 October, or we could do deadline 1 September for starting 1 December. Kamila feels the second deadline is the only realistic one. Graphic design is one skill that we probably need. So we table this until next week or after, because we'll have more info on what positions need filling.