BOARD REPORT: JUNE 2003
|
Publishing
SIG
BOARD REPORT: JUNE 2003 |
This is a report of the activities of the ACE Publishing Special Interest Group (PubSIG) for the 10 months from August, 2002, through May, 2003.
PubSIG’s goals for the year 2002-2003:
In the Publishing SIG business meeting at Savannah and in subsequent
discussions among members and leaders, we identified five specific goals
for the year:
1. To explore common interests between PubSIG and the NRMOs (National
Resource Management Officers)
2. To increase PubSIG members' sharing of experiences in their units
that might interest other members (for instance, make a commitment to respond
at least once a year to a request for information)
3. To encourage members to use the PubSIG mailing list to troubleshoot
problems, and then post all the suggested solutions
4. To maintain a useful, up-to-date PubSIG web site
5. To add C&A materials to the PubSIG web site (winning entries
in PubSIG categories along with their entry and judging forms)
Successes in reaching those goals:
1. NRMOs: Vice-Chair-Elect Natalie Johnson attended the annual
meeting of NRMOs in October. NRMO members are primarily warehouse managers
and customer service staff, but they do have some areas of common interest
with publication editors, account technicians, inventory software programmers,
department heads, etc. Judy Rude is leading a PubSIG-sponsored breakout
session on NRMOs at ACE/NETC in Kansas City.
2 & 3. Sharing and troubleshooting: We’ve had an active
exchange of queries, stories, and suggestions on the PubSIG listserv and
have posted summaries of the query responses--regarding electronic vs.
print publishing, charging for file downloads, customizing PDFs for individual
county office use, and readability-rating software--to the PubSIG web site.
4. Web site maintenance: Meg Ashman, Kim Parker, and Vice-Chair
Diane Bowen have worked together to keep our web site up to date and improve
its overall usefulness.
5. C&A award winners online: We have listed the C&A
award winners on the PubSIG web site, but have not posted the winning entries
themselves, their entry forms, or their judging forms.
Barriers that kept us from achieving goals:
The PubSIG leaders feel that our SIG did a fairly good job of achieving
its stated goals. If there is in fact any barrier that kept us from doing
a more thorough job, it probably was the time constraint resulting from
competing priorities at work. The leaders certainly enjoyed working together
and enjoyed working with the SIG membership.
What we would have done differently:
Much of the leadership’s activity dealt with this year’s C&A, meeting
ACE Board deadlines, and general PubSIG housekeeping tasks. We might have
done well to be more forward thinking or to have acted more as advocates
for new types of training or development programs for new skills (in e-publishing,
for instance) for which the membership will have a growing need in the
future. A useful workshop or distance-training class might have resulted
and that could have had a greater benefit to the SIG membership.
What the ACE Board can do to help PubSIG be more effective:
Deadlines were a little hard to track this year. We would like to see
the Board adopt a realistic set of deadlines for SIG reports and the C&A
process early on in the coming year, and then stick to those deadlines.
That will help us to mesh our ACE-related work with the rest of our work,
much of which is also deadline driven.
We would like the Board to distribute minutes and other documents in PDF form. Software compatibility issues gave some of us trouble opening the minutes and other attachments sent to us on behalf of the Board. To open a PDF document, all anyone needs is the free Acrobat Reader. This would make it just that much easier for the SIG leaders to pass Board news on to the membership.
Other thoughts to share with the ACE Board:
The PubSIG leadership met monthly via 3-way conference call. The calls
lasted anywhere from 20 to 45 minutes, and helped us to share leadership
responsibilities more easily and meet deadlines more effectively, and generally
gave us an opportunity to get to know each other and develop a good working
relationship. This kind of teamwork made the SIG leadership responsibilities
seem much less daunting. We’d recommend this approach to the leadership
of other SIGs.
One item on the agenda for each monthly conference call was what to include in the monthly PubSIG e-newsletter. The newsletter, really nothing more than an e-mail to the PubSIG listserv, usually listed two to five items that we thought would interest the PubSIG membership, welcomed new PubSIG members by name, and encouraged members to participate in various ACE activities. Based on the comments we received, the members appreciated getting regular newsletters.
We also would like ACE to post to its web site a summary or notes on each breakout session or workshop from the annual meeting. This would allow the broader membership to benefit from the ideas presented at the annual meeting. Not everyone who joins ACE is able to attend the annual meeting each year, but all should still have access to this very useful information.
This report submitted by:
Jim Coats
Publishing SIG Chair
May 14, 2003
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