Minutes of the May 23, 2007 Denton Reads Executive Committee

Present:  Sue Parks, Annie Downey, Past-Chair, Kimberly Wells, Chair, Annita Owens, Stacey Irish-Keffer, Donna Kearley, Secretary, Fred Kamman, Starr Hoffman

Absent:   Gayla Byerly, Thom Anderson

Guests:  Ruste Foster, Diane Wahl

The Executive Committee meet at 2:00 PM at the Emily Fowler Public Library in Denton, Texas to discuss the committees structure and Co-Chairs for the various committees for the next Denton Reads promotion scheduled for October 2008.

The first item on the agenda was to discuss Committee Structure. 

The Executive Committee recommended that the Publicity Committee and the Graphics Committee be combined since they needed to work hand in hand and many of their deadlines depended upon work by the other committee.   Motion passed.  Starr Hoffman agreed to chair this committee.   Ruste Foster will serve on this committee.  Other members are desired.

The Execuitve Committee recommended that the Fundraising and Community Sponsors committees be combined as they found both groups were approaching the same potential sponsors.  Motion passed.   Fred Kamman has agreed to head this committee.  Michelle Mears will serve on this committee.   Other members are desired.

The committee discussed having the Children's Committee chaired by Stacey Irish-Keffer choose both children's titles once the adult title has been chosen.  Donna Kearley, Janet Hilbun, and Erin O'Toole agreed to continue with this committee.  Other members are desired.

Sue Parks will continue to chair the Film Committee but has requested a Co-Chair because of some business conflicts at the time of the event.  She suggested that the T-Shirt sales move to the Fundraising committee.   The committee agreed.  Sue Parks turned in $272 in T-Shirt sales. 22 Staff shirts were sold @ $8 which came to $176.  8 shirts were sold to the public @ $12 which equaled $96.  The money will be given to the Friends group to be deposited in the Denton Reads account.

The Author Visit will be handled by the Author Committee which will be chaired by Gayla Byerly.   They are looking for other members.

The Programming Committee has been added.  Annie Downey will chair this committee.   Other members are being recruited.

The goal is for each committee to have at least one member from UNT, TWU, Denton Public, and Denton ISD.   Many committees will need more than one member from each group so interested parties are encouraged to check with the chair of that committee.

The Executive Committee will be looking at grants in the near future.  Two mentioned specifically were the Target grant which focuses on Children's Literacy and the Humanities Council grant.

Next the Committee discussed setting Timelines with Milestones and dates for these items to be completed.

Diane Wahl who has experience in project management discussed the importance of figuring out what key items needed to be done and which items were dependent upon another item to be completed.   Then she told us we needed to set the sequence of events and set milestone dates of when each of those items needed to be completed.

The following dates were set:

June-July 2007 - Brainstorm titles for the next book.  Executive Committee will meet July 25 to discuss titles in order to narrow them down to a short list of 3-5

August 2007, - the committee will begin meeting with publishers to see which authors might be available for the events in order to narrow the list from 5 to 2-3.  The committee will also look to see which titles are widely available, available in paperback, express a broad appeal, possibly fiction.

September 2007 - confirm author availablity and discuss who is our audience, what big draw would they have to the book, what big negatives would there be so we can...

October 2007 - Finalize title

November 2007 to January 2008 - Determine programming

February - May 2008 Prepare for Publicity Blitz to begin in May

May-September 2008 Publicity Blitz

October 2008 - Major events - book talks, book clubs, film festival, children's festival, author visit, school visits

The last item on the agenda was how to communicate with members and the executive committee.  We decided that items would be posted on the wiki but that communication would go out through email groups.  Each committee would have their own email group.  Each chair would funnel information from the Executive Committee to the sub committees and back.  A google calendar would be started to send reminders to meetings to the appropriate memebers.

The next meeting of the Executive Committee will be July 25 at 2:00 PM at Emily Fowler Public Library.  There will be a book discussion meeting for the Executive Committee on August 8, location and time to be determined at a later date.   Subcommittee members wishing to submit titles to be considered to their committee chair.

The meeting was adjourned at 3:30.

Respectfully submitted,

Donna Kearley, Secretary