October 31st Meeting Minutes

ECPN MEETING MINUTES

Monday, October 31, 2011

Conference Call Attendees:

Ryan Winfield (Staff Liaison)

Stephanie Lussier (Board Liaison)

Molly Gleeson (Chair)

Eliza Spaulding (Vice Chair)

Anisha Gupta (co-Outreach Coordinator)

Megan Salazar-Walsh (co-Outreach Coordinator)

Amber Kerr-Allison (co-Professional Education and Training)

Caroline Roberts (co-Professional Education and Training)

Rachael Perkins Arenstein (AIC e-Editor)

Rebecca Rushfield (ETC Liaison)

1. Basecamp orientation and training (Rachael) – Rachael conducted training on Basecamp and did an overview of the basic features.

a. General notes – Everyone controls their own username and password, not Ryan or Rachael. In order to change this information or your email address, go to account information settings. If you use Basecamp for projects outside of ECPN, you should have only one login username and password but have access to all your different groups through one account.

b. Uploading Files — You can upload different versions of the same file to Basecamp. These versions will appear as different files and be nested on top of each other. You can email people to alert them that you have uploaded a file. Other people can edit files and their versions will appear as separate versions of the file. If more than one person is editing a file, both of their versions will appear as two separate documents.

c. Writeboards —This is a useful tool when a project is in its early stages and formatting is not crucial. The Writeboard can be used to compare different versions of an idea and keep it all in one place. More than one person can edit the Writeboard simultaneously. Rachael suggested that this was a good place to put the meeting minutes so anyone can go in and add to the minutes.

d. Messages —A good place to brainstorm ideas and also archive ideas so people within ECPN in later years can come back and see our ideas. Files can also be attached to the message. These files can be found in the file list under that particular project. Important note: the author of the message can include anyone on the message, but if other people want to be added onto the thread later, only the author can add more people to the recipient list.

e. Calendars —Basecamp calendar can be synced with iCalendar (Apple calendars). Two different types of things can be created on the calendar: events and milestones. An event is of short-duration and had a set beginning and end time. Our monthly conference calls would be examples of events. A milestone is a bigger project that requires different tasks leading up to the milestone that need to be accomplished. A milestone can be assigned to the whole group or just one person; multiple people cannot be assigned with a milestone.

f. To-Dos—To-Do lists can be created to organize projects. A full description can be given for what the to-list pertains to. To-Dos can be added to milestones. One can comment on a To-Do list and have multiple To-Do lists going at once.

2. Minutes – 13 October 2011 meeting minutes were approved (Molly)—Molly suggested that we start putting the agenda on the Writeboard for everyone to look over before the next meeting.

3. Student Research Database (Carrie and Amber)—Carrie and Amber have been working on creating an online platform for student work to be accessed. Right now, they are trying to gauge interest in this project from graduate schools. They are still discussing whether it will be a database or website. When talking to contacts at the graduate schools, some issues were raised, such as how it would be supported financially and who would contribute the up-front costs. In order to gauge interest, they have put together a questionnaire of what they would like to ask grad school programs. This document has been uploaded to Basecamp. They plan that the responses to this survey will inform a budget and a second proposal. Reaching out to Abby Aldrich was also discussed because she expressed interest in getting involved. She can help with the continuation of the project when Amber steps down.

4. Allied Professionals List (Eliza)—The list of Allied Professionals is being updated and expanded and is currently on Basecamp. The pre-existing list on AIC was checked and updated. Carrie and Amber are getting together more organizations we can call our allies and those have been added to the Writeboard. Eliza said some doubts had come up about some of the organizations. She will send out an email with further details.

5. Outreach Coordinators’ Questions (Anisha)—Anisha asked about how we would like to proceed with forum calls. Molly suggested putting ideas about the subject of future forum calls on Basecamp. Anisha also asked about moving to the AIC blog. Ryan said we can move whenever we want to. ECPN will get authors’ privileges and will post on the blog with the tag “Emerging Conservator.” When we want to move is something that the group needs to discuss more. When we decide when to move, Rachael Perkins Arenstein can give us all a tutorial about using the new blog. In general, Ryan does not need to be informed of blog ideas but it may be a good idea to run administrative issues by him. Stephanie would like to be cc’d on emails about blog ideas and posts.

6. Email Blasts (Molly)—Ryan said it would not be wise to do email blasts too frequently so people are not annoyed by too many emails. He can do email blasts before forum calls or if we would like to really advertise a particular initiative. For most other things, continue advertising through the blog or Facebook page.

The next meeting was confirmed to be on Monday, November 21 at 1pm EST.

Respectfully submitted,

Anisha Gupta