Present: Frank
Albinder, Bill Brett, Philip Copeland, Brigid Coult, Dean Ekberg, Jim Feiszli,
Cindy Pribble, Michael Shasberger, Thomas Tropp
Also
in attendance: Martin Knowles, Allen Simon
Meeting was
called to order at 7:17am PST
1.
Approval of Minutes from June and August meetings Moved:
Coult; Seconded: Tropp – to accept the Minutes. Minutes approved
2.
Treasurer Report (Dean Ekberg)
Current balance in all accounts: $7617.67. Other than
regular monthly payments for Martin's services, we have no outstanding
payables. Receivables include balances past-due from some Partners. (Gentle
reminders will go to those Partners when October invoices go out next week.)
Through our PayPal account we are currently earning
5.21% on the balance in the money market fund. (We have earned enough here
since April to cover the cost of our monthly service charge from First Regional
Bank for the entire year.) We can move funds to the checking account as needed.
In August we were hit with a flurry of bogus credit
card transactions which required an extensive amount of work on DeanÕs part to
correct. There was no response to his queries about how those questionable
transactions were approved in the first place. In any event, this seems now to
be in the past. There have been no recent incidents. Each one of these
transactions cost us $.36 (.18 for the original transaction, .18 for the
transaction debiting our account and crediting the "customer") for a
total of $27.36! Discussion
followed on the best venue for all our online transactions; Action: Dean to
investigate best online payment method for ChoralNet use and implement it, with
MartinÕs assistance where needed.
3. PresidentÕs Report (Jim Feiszli)
ChoralNet
is experiencing overall financial and operational stability at this time.
*
The
management team of Knowles and Simon, with assistance from Board members and
other volunteers, are not only keeping the operation running, but also making
constant upgrades and changes while simultaneously planning for the future.
* Individual
Board members are, for the most part, engaged with various aspects of the
operation as officers or managers.
*
There
was a successful fund drive in 2007 and the addition of several new Patrons.
*
Association
Partners all seem fairly satisfied with their support of ChoralNet.
There
are several new ventures approaching that need Board attention.
*
ChoralNet
Presents - Known in beta as "the Parker Project", this
activity of ChoralNet will change the way it is viewed by many in the
choral industry. It will bring both benefits and challenges
*
OpusChoral
- the new choral music download corporation being formed in Europe. I
will detail my talks there with OpusChoral, IFCM, and Musica representatives in
further detail at that time in the agenda.
*
ChoralNet
Fifteenth Anniversary - 2008 marks the fifteenth year of the founding of
Choralist, the genesis of ChoralNet. It provides ChoralNet with an
opportunity to raise awareness of ChoralNet activities as well as an
opportunity for introspection and self-analysis. Jean-Claude Wilkens is
actively pursuing some sort of recognition of ChoralNet during the Copenhagen
Symposium. We must decide whether we want to take advantage of that.
There
are some ongoing issues that also need addressing:
* The
Board decided to make the website ChoralNet's main focus. The
addition of news items, blogs, podcasts, list content have all contributed to
making the website a much more interesting place. Two issues continue to
be cause for concern.
á
Much of the content remains in English. It is time to
relinquish the idea that the website is multi-lingual. Its content is
changing too often for any thought of trying to maintain translations.
Perhaps rather than maintain separate language pages, we need to find foreign
"correspondents" that can report on issues and news in other
countries and those things can be included in the appropriate places on the
website.
á
If the website is now the main face of ChoralNet and its major contact
with the choral world, then an editorial board must be established to create
good standards of professional content. The editorial responsibility
lies in the hands of one or two people. There needs to be a group of
people who can review content and thus keep content standards high. A
case in point is the recent ChoralNet podcast with mispronunciation
errors. If there were a group of people reviewing content before it was
posted, those kinds of gaffes could be avoided. Such an editorial board
should not be the same people as the ChoralNet Board - unless someone wishes to
pull double duty - because the Board is charged with making ChoralNet
operate.
From
an organizational management standpoint, we need both a paid Executive Director
and a paid Webmaster (perhaps more analogous to an Editor-in-Chief, rather than
just a technical position). If we require more technical work then the Manager
position will need to be increased as well. Volunteerism has long been
the hallmark of ChoralNet, but the organization can only go so far with that
model. With volunteers the organization receives only what it pays
for. It is time to move into a more professional direction. The
Board voted at least two years ago to fund a part-time Executive Director and
has done very little to accomplish that task.
We
need to move more towards an advertising sales model to raise funds. The
success of restricting banner ads to Patrons and Partners resulting in
additional Patrons is proof that ChoralNet has some marketing cache. One
of the more interesting ideas to derive from the recent Paris brainstorming
sessions is the idea that ChoralNet should be a "myspace" dedicated
to choral music – with the "ChoralNet Presents" operation
immediately offering similarities between it and "myspace". The
brains behind OpusChoral and IFCM see that as a fantastic global attraction
with nearly unlimited marketing potential.
In order to acquire some focus and priorities, the
Board must embark on a strategic planning process to make decisions about
ChoralNet's future. Jim sees his role as limited in the next nine
months due to professional obligations. Someone or some bodies may
need to step up or be brought onboard to pick up some things.
4. Manager report (Martin Knowles)
Since the last official report as part of the in-person meeting in LA,
there have been a number of significant developments.
ifcm.net is now officially moved off the ChoralNet server. This means
that we now have the ability to make server changes on our side without
impacting IFCM, and theyÕre now working on a local server that can provide much
better support without a 9-hour time difference and language barrier.
Jim Feiszli is now moderating the international forums, and MK now
moderates Classifieds. David Topping continues to maintain the Choir Directory.
Given the continued growth and expansion of ChoralNet, discussions
around changing the way that the lists are hosted, and the desired move into
focusing on providing content as well as a discussion platform, Martin has
looked at the possibility of moving ChoralNet onto a content management system
from the homegrown infrastructure we have now. The current infrastructure
works, though since itÕs a patchwork of database-backed info, Phorum, blogspot,
raw text files, and custom code, itÕs becoming difficult to effectively
delegate parts of the site and provide a unified architecture for site
maintenance and management. The basic requirements are:
1.
Free/inexpensive (open source would be ideal)
2. Based on PHP or Perl, ideally
3. Be easily customizable using plugins/themes
to minimize code-level customization (having to customize at the code level is
most of the reason why our current install of Phorum is effectively
un-upgradeable without serious work)
4.
Support
single-point registration/authentication for the entire site, with the ability
to support raw content, customizable content types, Classifieds, forums, blogs,
e-commerce, etc. (one place to manage all your subscriptions, etc.)
5.
Make it easy to write/edit content, especially for
less technical users (let people like Cindy edit Cues without having to hack
raw HTML)
6.
Make it easy to rearrange content on the fly and
provide different content for different users
7.
Have support for RSS feeds and e-mail notifications
8.
Work on existing server infrastructure, or with server
infrastructure obtainable at no more than approximately twice the price of our
current monthly hosting plan.
9.
Be able to import existing resources relatively easily
10. Have wide
community support and relatively readable/understandable source code
11. Be mature
enough to handle a large and high-bandwidth site (or be clusterable, e.g. run
the lists on one server and everything else on another)
12. Allow web
statistics/usage information to be relatively easily harvested and processed
Martin investigated three content management systems, all PHP-based:
Mambo/Joomla, ezPublisher, and Drupal. After comparison and consideration, he
has used ChoralNet Presents as a test case for Drupal. Once
itÕs up and stable, we can also move the blog onto Drupal as well without a lot
of fuss (which will take care of the occasional slow loading of the front page
due to load/connection issues with Blogspot), then look at test cases for the
lists and more wide-ranging site redesign issues.
Once
ChoralNet Presents is launched, it would be a good time for the web
committee to take up the question of what we want to do as far as
redesign/reorganization of the lists and the rest of the site is concerned. The
World Choral Symposium date would be a good target date to finish doing
whatever we want to do; thatÕs not to say that we canÕt launch things before or
after, but it would be a good time window in which to make really big
announcements.
Martin has been using ChoralNet
Presents as an opportunity to put DrupalÕs e-commerce facility through its
paces. ChoralNet Presents allows you to download licenses for
MP3s and PDF sheet music by Alice Parker, with the possibility of expanding it
to other Alice Parker work and other composers as we see fit. ChoralNet
Presents lets you choose what you want to download, asks you to register, then
gives you a set of download links that let you download the MP3s and PDFs you
ordered. ChoralNet Presents generates PDFs on the fly from
source PDFs so that a user ordering 20 copies of a particular piece downloads a
single PDF with 20 copies of the sheet music as part of the PDF, each one
imprinted with a license and copy number. This should help to discourage casual
photocopying and reprinting. Users will also be able to download short
(10-second or so) sample MP3 clips of selected songs.
At the moment, the front-end interface is largely
complete (except for explanatory text), and the delivery source code is
written. HeÕs currently working on the order processing and fulfillment system,
and hopes to have it ready to test by non-techies later this week. If
everything goes smoothly, ChoralNet Presents should be ready to launch
officially by mid-October.
Web traffic continues to increase
slightly on a month-by-month basis; Martin expects that we may continue to see
at least level if not continued increases in web traffic over the next few
months.
5.
Website report (Allen Simon)
There have
been some cosmetic changes to the website: after spending the summer with
ChoralBlog in the most prominent place on the main page, the front page was
redesigned to have a more modern look, after the committee looked at other
model sites. The typeface is smaller, links are not underlined, and a less
cluttered look is (hopefully) achieved. In addition, both the blog and the
"recent posts" section (which combines CL and CT posts) have a
"pop-open" feature which shows items which are initially concealed,
although the first one is always visible. Also, thanks to Philip, we now have
an additional author for ChoralBlog, Jeffery Thyer from ACDA.
The team has been especially looking for non-US news, and
have featured items from Sri Lanka, Italy, Croatia, the UK, and Australia just
in September.
There has been intermittent input from Martin
regarding overhauling the database and replacing it with a pre-built
"content management system", but he had stalled until IFCM moved
their server. Now that they have, weÕre anticipating hearing from him on that
topic soon.
6: List Report:
(Cindy Pribble)
Tom Merrill has left
moderating, but is willing to ŌsubĶ when needed. We have a good response from a
potential trainee moderator. Cindy expressed concern that volunteers do not
always follow through with contact from Carol, but that none of the current
moderators have expressed a desire for more help, nor complained of schedules
or even hinted at reduced involvement. Moderator turnover has always been
minimal over the years.
At this time, having had no objection from moderators
regarding the unification of CT and CL into one list, plans are underway to do
so. The unification will take place simultaneously with the Beta launching of a
new website-based list and moderators will have the opportunity to play with
it, make suggestions and improvements.
Martin has shared that he wished to have the new
content management system functional before any mock-up was designed, so the
actual visual design of the new list interface is on hold until he has time
available. However, the following include several things we wished to see
incorporated.
1.
Previous subscribers will still be able to access the
List with only minor differences at first. We're after a painless change,
especially for users in situations which discourage website browsing during
working hours and whose equipment may not support the change well.
2. User registration has been
proposed as a remedy for several interactive communication problems we now
experience on the website and this would dovetail nicely into the new list
model which will almost certainly require it. This "one stop" process
for all CN activities (which would simultaneously include both site usage
registration as well as selection of subscription options) will allow users to
respond to everything - from email to resource commentary to blog. Current list
subscribers who elect to cut down on the individual emails will have the
advantage of receiving virtually the same content in one or two emails per day
and respond via subject header listing links and thus would be taken to the
website to enter responses (rather than using the current system, which does
not require use of the website to correspond). While they are there we hope
they might wander around a bit.
The key to success will be the daily content feed
which allows those links to cross the desk of every registered user from
newbies to current subscribers who may only rarely visit us now. Current
subscribers don't need the website now to participate. We're constructing a
model which will hopefully, over time, change that. Desktop receipt of
individual emails will eventually diminish to the point where the old system
can be eliminated entirely and everyone will be using the website as the
correspondence base, thus it will increase use of the website. However, almost
all the website will remain readable without registration; the latter will be
needed only for subscribing, or for posting comments. Privacy will still remain protected from spammers and
robots, however.
3. The
current list of topics for CL will form the basis for several communication
"rooms" with an expectation that this list can be expanded or
minimized to align with the specific design model selected.
4. Subscribing
to list posts will be greatly simplified by the registration process itself.
Users will have the option of 'subscribing' to full topic(s) or a single
thread. The choice will exist to
receive notification of new posts via a list of linked subject headers
delivered to personal mailboxes somewhat like a digest (but much more
streamlined and attractive visually).
This will be a great advantage for users who want to keep up with conversations
and announcements but would prefer not seeing everything one message at a time.
RSS feed will also be optional.
5. While
current topics under discussion will still appear much as they do now on the
home page, the activity area for posting and subscribing to particular topics
or threads will reflect great simplification in terms of access, mode of use
and visual design. It will be possible to eliminate the use of several form
letters for common mistakes made by users by simply not allowing them to be
made via automation because each message a moderator sees will already have a
short list of predetermined requirements met.
Technical
considerations yet to be tackled include whether users who pose a question can
receive responses automatically in their personal email (and how to do that
while still allowing per thread subscription and de-limiting personal email
receipt per user) and how to carve out a small corner, carefully moderated, for
anonymous posting in matters that require a great deal of protected privacy and
confidentiality. (Email address and name known only by ChoralNet via
registration process, but not to readers.)
Several
solutions have been proposed for aligning the reply-to function differences
between CT and CL by both Allen and Martin and David Topping. Cindy has every
confidence this will not be hard to achieve.
She
hopes to see incorporated some means of pointing posters with specific resource
requests to our own resources (i.e., copyright issues in web-linked documents,
CN materials and past conversations in our list archives) – providing
more connectivity between our list users and the website. A website
communication system is going to place list users right inside the library
where many answers to their questions may be found. We will be seeking ways to
direct them to the right aisle.
In the current list system, answers depended only on
the kindness of strangers and whether staff had the time to send a resource
link. We need to do better than that, particularly in terms of music students
and new music teacher/professionals. We also need to have a special supervised
place for 'newbies' which serves to educate them about the website and
requirements for posting. If we do this, the original sense of community which
provoked the formation of the Lists can be nurtured and maintained even though
the interface appears very different: new house but the same sense of family.
Among
moderators there appears to be a desire to minimize the re-activation of old
threads which currently still remain open to comment. Allen, Martin and Cindy
are investigating alternatives which will still meet the need for archived
resources to remain useful, linked and updated without re-activating the old
thread where they first appeared and where much of the information may no
longer be appropriate. This is particularly critical for resource references
which are quickly outdated.
7.
Alice Parker Project (Michael Shasberger)
Alice and her Board have endorsed our proposal as
follows:
ChoralNet proposes to make available
via downloadable files the Wesley Madrigals of Alice Parker. The following
financial agreement would be put in place:
ChoralNet will charge a basic $1
download transaction fee (for as many octavo titles as are downloaded per
transaction) PLUS 9 cents per page per copy licensed (i.e. 1 copy of a 2 page
octavo would cost $1.18, 40 copies would cost $8.20, 100 copies would cost
$19.00).
A royalty of 8 cents per page will
be paid to Alice Parker.
ChoralNet will be responsible for
all transaction, set up and internet service expenses.
This agreement will remain in force
for at least one year and may be renewed annually with the consent of both
ChoralNet and the composer.
Michael is currently
working with Alice to confirm the pricing on the audio (mp3) files, and has
proposed to her that we charge the tradition 99 cents per license and that we
keep 10 cents on each download (along with the $1 transaction fee).
Martin is almost ready to open the store from the technical end. The
scores are ready and Phil has the CD of the music.
Michael does not think that we are set on the PR or presentation side in
terms of the web design or announcement presence, but likes what Allen and
Martin have produced so far, and would endorse and encourage them to finish
those preparations. A Choral Cues release when the website is ready, should
wrap things up nicely.
If we continue this pattern with
Alice or other composers, it was felt desirable that for any piece of music to
be included in ChoralNet Presents, there must be a decent recording available,
and we might make it incumbent upon the composer to clear their own
mechanical rights/royalty arrangements beforehand or ensure that they are
copyright free.
After some further discussion it was moved by Shasberger
and seconded by Coult that:
ChoralNet
initiate the ChoralNet Presents project with the Wesley Madrigals of Alice
Parker. This will include the sale, as per agreed upon terms, of both score and
audio materials. Brigid will supply approved pdf files of the score, Phil will
provide audio files and PR podcasts, Martin will develop the marketplace site,
Allen will announce it and place it on the website, Choral Cues will announce
this to lists as soon as a release date is set by Allen and Martin (with a
target date of October 20), and press releases should be sent to all pertinent
entities by Brigid. This effort shall be seen as a trial effort to determine
the impact and viability of this type of activity within the ChoralNet
structure. Inquiries from other composers will be acknowledged and followed up
with as seen fit by the Board following a review of the initial endeavor. Motion
passed
8. New Business (Jim
Feiszli)
OpusChoral
–
Jim briefed the Board on a meeting he attended recently in Paris with Jean
Sturm of Musica, and the two principals of a new company called OpusChoral
– the latter are very bright young people with experience in
1) running their own companies, 2) the recording industry, and 3) technology
and the Internet. They intend to offer downloads of MP3s of choral music
for which the company has acquired rights. They believe that theirs is a
niche market for smaller choirs - those not being distributed by record
labels. Both they and Musica were concerned with our ChoralNet Presents
possibilities - as Jean Sturm sees Musica as the front-end to any score sales
and OpusChoral wants to be the front-end for any recording sales. They
understand that at the moment we are committed only to Alice Parker and would
most likely be open to further discussions regarding separate of the Internet
choral music pie.
OpusChoral has created a system that will allow
individual choirs to submit their own recorded CDs for distribution. OC
would begin with the vast backlog of recorded music that IFCM (Jean-Claude) and
the Music Sacra International and International Chamber Choir Competition (Dolf
Rabus) had copyright rights to. They had a legal form that the owners of
any submitted recordings would have to sign for copyright purposes. They
have already investigated and solved the copyright issues involving distribution
rights for North America, Europe, Australia, and seem to be content with their
progress as far as Africa and Asia go.
In terms of OC and ChoralNet cooperation, OC was
hoping to find ways to integrate our website with theirs as much as possible,
so that if a reference to a piece that OC was capable of downloading came up in
ChoralNet, a link would appear to give the user the option to do that.
Once they understood that ChoralNet was not a "database" of users
then they began to understand that what ChoralNet could do for them *right now*
was probably limited to promotional things.
Jim told them that OC would, of course, be considered news to the choral music community and also a genuine resource that ChoralNet would want its users to know about, and that he would approach the ChoralNet Board to brainstorm ideas of ways in which we might assist this company get started, perhaps in the same manner as an affiliate such as SheetMusic Plus, knowing that it might be several years before they begin to create a revenue stream for ChoralNet. It was agreed that good records would be kept and shared after a year so that all parties would know how much traffic was coming to their site from each other. Jim feels that it is entirely possible that we might receive as much traffic *from* OC as they get from us. The dream is to have a three-way partnership wherein choral musicians looking for music scores went to Musica, found the score, found a link to a recording of the music, and found a link or links to resources regarding the music and networks of musicians that they could talk to about the music. Any choral musician might enter the triumvirate from one of the three websites. All three companies would share resources and create a series of interwoven links to enable the choral musician to get his/her work done easier.
OpusChoral
is getting a small-business loan for startup, plus personal
investments; IFCM wants to promote the launch of OpusChoral in Copenhagen
(the same message said they wanted to promote the 15th anniversary of
ChoralNet).
MySpace?
–
Jim spoke at length to JC Wilkens, Dolf Rabus, and
Jean Sturm about ChoralNet's inability to convince those across the waters that
we wanted to serve them. JC agreed that trying to maintain non-English
pages of ever-changing material was a complete waste of time. The subject
even came up of perhaps ChoralNet lists and forums having served
their purpose and perhaps things had gone past them. David Boggio of
OpusChoral suggested that he sees a great possibility for a Myspace dedicated
to choral music. He believes such a place would have no national or
linguistic boundaries; indeed, this was the direction that OpusChoral was
going to head until they found out about ChoralNet and bowed to JCW's
insistence that OpusChoral stay out of community-building. The outcome of the
day was agree to continue the course while I came back and we looked at
the idea but holding out the possibility that ChoralNet did decide to take
ChoralNet Presents and make it a choral myspace, then OpusChoral could host and
market recordings that those on ChoralNet Presents want to make available, and
possibility Musica could do the same for scores.
There was
extensive discussion around the concept of a ChoralNet MySpace idea. Martin
suggested that there are a lot of cool MySpace-like things we could
provide, including:
As part of
going to a registration model, people would ultimately become responsible for
their own choir directory pages (as opposed to having to involve us in keeping
them up to date) -- we'd want to add a concert template that they could update;
if we added composer profiles, people would also have a place for conveniently
adding new repertoire, and then the 'new repertoire' and 'concert
announcements' become feeds that people can search (or syndicate).
Cindy
pointed out that CN has spent years reviewing all linked website content to be
sure it met some
standards.
It has moderators which also provide some gateway protection for
correspondence. We are seriously considering registration as a good measure to
provide some structure.
There was further discussion, and then it was moved by Pribble, seconded by Coult that:...the
website task force investigate what venue would best promote website and user
connectivity - whether that means simple linkage to approved existing MySpace
pages or developing a specialized arena of our own and then return
recommendations to this body at a future meeting for formal approval. Motion passed
Anniversary – next year marks
the fifteenth anniversary of the founding of Choralist in the spring of 1993.
Do we wish to mark this in any way?
Martin suggested
that since weÕre heading for a redesign/rethink, we ought to use next July as a
target launch date. ThatÕs not to say that we canÕt launch other parts of the
site earlier, but celebrating a relaunch is a fine way to mark an anniversary
like this. Cindy asked if it was possible for Martin, Allen and Jim to
formulate a broad, non-concrete, activity completion time table to make that possible?
Target deadlines are often so elastic it can make planning very hard, but
that's a lot less frustrating than having none at all.
Board Elections – we need to begin preparations for Board elections in 2008. We have this lineup at the moment:
Chorus America representative – Frank Albinder
ACDA representative – Philip Copeland
IFCM representative – Jim Feiszli
Commercial Partner – Bill Brett/Ian Bullen
two Patron seats - currently filled by Brigid Coult and Dean Eckberg
Donor seat - currently filled by Thomas Tropp
two
At-large seats - currently filled by Michael Shasberger and Cindy Pribble
All Board members to contact the President and confirm willingness to remain on the Board, or offer alternative nominations.
There
being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 9:22am on October 5,
2007.
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