HomeMy WebLinkAboutMeeting Minutes_5-2-12Bozeman Climate Partners
Communications & Outreach Working Group
/
Meeting Minutes
May 2nd, 2012, 9:00am
Bozeman City Hall, City Commission Room
Members Attending:
Jeff Moore, Jay Sinnott,
Nick Bentley, Kathy Powell,
Cyndy Andrus (Commission Liaison), Emily Baker (Energy Corps Member)
Staff Present:
Natalie Meyer (Staff Liaison)
Call to Order
Changes to the Agenda
None
Approval
of Minutes
Motion to approve minutes from the 18th and 25th from Moore; seconded by Bentley.
Public Comment
None
Logo Update
Bunkers is working on the logo designs now; a contact is
being worked out between Meyer, legal, and Bunkers.
Price adjustments might be possible if rounds of revisions go smoothly, and don’t take up much time. However, with the many requirements
of working with the city, this might not be the case. Meyer is working with Bunkers on this.
Action Items
Website Development
Reviewed outline revisions from 4/18
Consolidation of water,
waste, and food to one tab, based on smaller GHG impact.
Bentley reaffirmed this move; group agreement.
Website contract options
Went over the contract for the North 7th Urban Renewal
Board, and looked at their website to see the product delivered, for a price near $2k.
Website structure
Discussion of wordpress vs. html-built websites. Html is more expensive, much
more difficult to modify.
Bentley said wordpress is easily modifiable, and has a plethora of add-ons, for everything from a wiki-functionality to carbon calculators. Since it’s an open-source software, there
are many, many options for add-ons.
Moore forwarded the idea of using the wordpress site as a base, and adding interior pages (perhaps with html if needed) later on to build database,
or other more complex functionalities.
Domain Names
Meyer asked the group whether we want to use bozemanclimatepartners.net, or something else.
Group suggested we get all related names
as well (.org, .gov. ,com…), to prevent vampire-sites.
Bentley reminded the group that the domain name is very important for search engine optimization.
Andrus mentioned that bozemanclimatepartners.c
om is long ; would we think about changing the name to bozemanclimate.com?
Group discussion was mixed; good and bad to both options.
Content Structure
Meyer asked the group whether
we thought we could agree on the subheadings of content today.
Group discussed the length of the Climate Action Plan, and thought about perhaps creating an executive summary that would
be more digestible (suggested by Moore and Andrus).
Meyer pointed out summary table of recommendations, but said that a summary would be a useful thing to have for events, etc.
Baker
suggested that the website could act as our summary – making the CAP digestible, and in small enough chunks to understand easily.
Bentley agreed that this is the explicit intention in
creating the website.
Authority
Meyer asked the group to consider whether we wish to style ourselves the authorities on the various topics to be addressed, or focus more on connecting
people to local resources.
Baker suggested soliciting content for the website from these local “authority” groups, but didn’t know how we would select them.
Moore asked where we want
to collect emails to push out info later.
Sinnott mentioned that Park City points people to its facebook pages.
Going back to the outline of website structure, Andrus asked for clarification
between 1d and 7 (both ‘be a partner’ sections).
Andrus though we should separate the ‘be a partner’ into 2 clear groups: general citizens, vs. groups that can be resources for others
(e.g. SWIMBIA, MSU Extension).
Sinnott voiced that he thought it was very important to recruit and enroll partners.
Meyer clarified her vision in writing the outline: the 1d option would click to the same page as 7; just a way for more people (general citizens) to more easily see the ‘be a partner’
section.
Andrus asked the group to consider whether we should have a page devoted to available grants (for solar, weatherization, etc; not funded by city, simply linking citizens to
available resources).
Baker thought we could embed in the relevant subsections (e,g. solar grant in the solar subsection).
Updating Website
Group discussed the fact that updating and
maintaining the site could be a time-consuming project; Meyer agreed that this is true, and is what we knew we were getting into in undertaking this project.
Discussed sustainability
of project: who will maintain, how to reduce efforts needed to maintain?
If news/ events/ updates are grouped, will make easier to update.
Wordpress makes updates relatively painless.
Summary
of Discussions
Meyer asked the group whether she was correct in thinking we had decided that we wanted a site similar to the Portland CAN – with lots of news, and lots of outside links
to available resources.
Baker thought that this was true, and the “bucket” analogy we’ve been talking about didn’t need to be a problem; if people link to the right info on another
website, we’ve been successful.
Andrus suggested we have links to external sites open in a new tab, thus letting people easily get back to our page. Group agreement. Bentley agreed that
this was very easy to do in Wordpress.
Other Adjustments
Andrus suggested we put ‘waste’ last in the name of the food, waste, water tab. Agreement.
Powell asked the group to change the
‘waste’ to be ‘waste=resources’, thus sidestepping the negative connotations of waste. This is a common practice in composting, and seems to be workable for other fields of recycling
as well.
Sinnott mentioned that he thought sometimes recycling uses more energy than simply throwing things away.
Short discussion of glass recycling situation, and energy use of glass
vs aluminum.
Identify volunteers to help develop content
Timeline: no specific deadlines, but we want to have website up and running by the end of the summer.
Having content ready-to-go
will speed the process immensely.
Content Volunteers:
About Us: what is BCP? None
About Us: Climate 101: Bentley
Clean Energy: Moore, Bentley, Sinnott
Healthy Buildings: Moore
Low Carbon Transportation: Bentley, Sinnott
Waste= Resources, Water: Powell
Food: Andrus
Baker is willing to help with
any sections, as things fall through the cracks while the sections are divided up.
Missing members: Bennett, Pudner, Walser, Beswick; group thought we should ask them if/ what sections
they would like to tackle.
We will plan to present sections on June 6th meeting.
Discuss content guidelines for contributers
Group agreement that we should have a brief summary of the
specific issue, and an outline of the content we will place there, including the outside resources to which we plan to link. Focus should be on Bozeman-specifics; not a detailed discussion
of the physics behind PV panels, for example. Should also contain ideas for special features/ examples of local efforts we wish to spotlight.
FYI/ Discussion
Stories of Trust at Emerson,
May 5th 6:30 pm
Bozeman Climate Alliance event at City Hall, May 22nd.
Adjournment – 10:50am