Inside CoPress

Like most Sunday nights we had our team conference call tonight. Unlike the past few calls this one stretched to just under the 1 hour mark. We covered a lot though and joining me on the call were Sam, Will, Daniel, Lauren, Greg, and Albert.

First up was hosting matters. We spent a good while talking about the issues we’re running into with upgrading plugins through the Wordpress Dashboard. While we’re not positive we can fix the issue we’ve opened a ticket with Liquid Web and will be continuing to work on resolving the issue. We also talked about modifying our approach in reaching out to perspective clients. We’ll be making some adjustments toward that end in the coming weeks and into next year.

Next on the slate was a quick discussion of doing a complete overhaul of the hosting page content. Will’s going to be setting up some methods of tracking site activity through Google Analytics and we’ll base an reorganization off of what comes out of that. We’ll probably work significantly on this over Winter break.

Lauren also talked about continuing our efforts at revitalizing the wiki. For the foreseeable future we’ll be picking 3 pages every week that need content added to them and we’ll be working on those throughout the week. The goal will be to follow through with the plan that Megan and Kevin drew up over the summer for reorganizing the content. Hopefully our work will make the wiki even more of a resource for those looking for information.

Looking forward to this week we’ll be having posts on the blog about the recent WordCamp NYC, the most recent edition of College Media Lab and more so stay tuned for those updates.

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November 8, 2009: NCMC09 recap

Published

Daniel

on November 9, 2009

Another Sunday night, another team conference call. We skipped the week prior because some of the team was still traveling back from ACP/CMA. Joining me on the call were Greg, Miles, Sam, Andrew, and Lauren.

First at bat was a recap of ACP/CMA, what worked well, and what we want to do better next time. Andrew remarked that, for CoPress, the conference went as well as we could’ve hoped for. It would’ve been sweet if we had a booth, though. We learned from Logan while at the conference that the booths were only $650 and included four conference registrations. Originally, we thought that vendors were required to sponsor a part of the conference and that fee ran into the thousands of dollars (i.e. outside of our budget). The informal way we were there, though, was good for networking and being on panels was a plus. Andrew also remarked that at one of the panels he was at in the audience another audience member, unprompted, asked a question about us. Lauren thinks that, for next time, we should do more branding, have rack cards, etc. I’d personally like to be more “network-y” and talk with more people. In addition, I think it would be really cool to expand our coverage of the panels and make sure we have people covering each tech-related one. Last but not least, it would be really sweet to bring the entire team to the next conference we attend.

On the organizational side of things, I spent several hours on Sunday entering line items for invoices, receipts, etc. Our ledger should be completely up to date and, thanks to Albert’s efforts, we’ll be able to do up to date reporting on our revenues and expenses.

For the blog this week, Greg is putting together a post about how the Texas Tribune can be a model for student news organizations and Lauren will be writing one about transitioning your web staff from year to year. Lauren and I will also talk about the wiki, as we hope to start developing the content again.

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Oct. 25, 2009: Austin, here we come!

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on October 26, 2009

We’ve been consistently able to keep our weekly team calls short. Attendance was a little low at this week’s call because we pushed it back an hour (to 5 p.m. PST) to accommodate for Daniel and Andrew who were at BarCamp. On the call we had Daniel, Andrew, Greg, Will, Albert and Lauren.

High priority: Review of Thursday’s client session

Andrew hosted our first client session Thursday during which about a dozen clients joined him via livestream and chat to walk through the process of setting up a sandbox demo site for experimentation. Although there were no technical difficulties, Greg and I noted that the quality was degraded, making it hard to follow exactly what was going on.

Next time, we’re going to try to improve the streaming quality, have everyone introduce themselves, and outline the goals and format for the session from the start. We’re going to try to do the sessions every other week and switch off who leads the session. If you participated and have any feedback, let us know in the comments.

Medium priority: #NCMC09!

Photo via Adam Alas the week of the National College Media Convention is here. Daniel, Andrew, Adam and myself will be in Austin, Texas Wednesday night to dominate the convention with our snazzy new CoPress t-shirts and business cards.

Andrew, Daniel and I are going to meet up Wednesday afternoon in Austin to figure out a game plan for the rest of the conference (sessions we’ll attend, panels we want to be on, etc.). Depending on how many clients are interested in joining us, we’ll hold either a client dinner/lunch or just a general tweetup.

Low priority: Editorial content

Next week Greg and Vanessa are planning on another College Media Lab, but we’re still waiting on guest confirmations. Tuesday I’ll be posting a CoPress promo video, and the rest of the week we’ll be liveblogging from NCMC. I’m also taking a video camera and tripod so we can do a few videos at the conference.

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Oct. 18: In full attendance

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on October 18, 2009

. 2 Comments

Daniel, Adam, Greg, Will, Sam, Andrew, Albert, Vanessa, Bryan and myself were all on today’s call. It’s been a while since we’ve had such great attendance. Here’s what went down:

High priority: Hosting

Andrew will send out our new and improved e-mail newsletter Monday outlining our presence at the National College Media Convention (#NCMC09 aka ACP/CMA). Will plans to continue working on the plugin to allow for more customization features, including the ability for users to unsubscribe.

We’re planning our first client workshop at 4 p.m. PST Thursday during which time new clients will learn about how to set up a sandbox for testing. The hosting team will also answer any general questions clients might have about their sites.

Medium priority: Preparation for ACP/CMA

The rack cards are being ordered soon and polo shirts are on their way. Lauren, Daniel and Andrew get into Texas on Wednesday afternoon and Adam will be there Wednesday night. We’re getting together for a team dinner Friday night, when we’ll talk about equity and other important things.

Before heading to Texas, we still need to schedule a meetup (tweetup!) with all clients and potential clients. We’re also going to make a spreadsheet of some kind, as suggested by Greg, to split up team attendance at the NCMC. Bryan also suggested making fliers to promote the meetups for advisers. If we decide to do this, we should plan it soon so the posters can be designed and printed before heading to Texas.

Since we don’t have any prizes to give out for Twitter contests at the conference, we’re going to be the go-to place for coverage (college media is, afterall, our market). We’ll liveblog as many sessions as we can.

Editorial and community

A few site ideas include: restoring your site from a backup, Web technology sessions at ACP/CMA, the Columbia Spectator debacle and College Media Lab. If anyone on the team or in the community would like to contribute a post, let Adam know.

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Oct. 11, 2009: Unenthusiastic (but only on the outside)

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on October 11, 2009

in Low Priority

Our conference call, which was attended by Daniel, Greg, Albert, Will, Adam and myself, was one of those lazy Sunday calls. Although productive, it was a little unenthusiastic (listen to call and you’ll know what I mean).

On the agenda today was a recap of Daniel’s conference in Seattle and a preview of the ACP/CMA conference in three weeks.

In Seattle, Daniel served on a panel with representatives from College Publisher and Woodwing. Although it was a small crowd and only about 5-10 college media advisers were in attendance, they seemed impressed that CoPress already has 28 clients.

Four members of the CoPress team will be at the ACP/CMA conference in Texas next week where a few of us will be on panels. We plan on contacting our clients who will be at the conference to hold an unconference session or tweet up in the evenings. We also plan to mingle between sessions as much as possible to get to know people and spread the CoPress word. Adam is putting the final touches on rack cards and t-shirt orders. The business cards came in last week.

For editorial content this week, there’s a second episode of College Media Lab, a possible showcase of cool features on new client sites and a link roundup. Another cool idea we had for a post or just in general for clients is to make really cool, branded mockups of what a site could look like if you really delve into customization. (On a sidenote, after the call, a few of us stuck around for a lengthy design brainstorm in which we decided we like the Spokesman Review’s topics navigation, The Star’s timeline view, and some design elements from Lawrence.com. But that’s just a teaser; you’ll hear more about it later.

That’s all folks. Until next week.

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October 4, 2009: Introducing Will Davis

Published

Daniel

on October 4, 2009

Continue reading ‘October 4, 2009: Introducing Will Davis’

The biggest news of tonight’s call with Greg, Adam, Andrew, Lauren, Vanessa, and I was the addition of a new member to the team: Will Davis. Will is currently the Editor in Chief of The Maine Campus, a weekly paper in Maine that migrated to WordPress MU over the summer. He’s already an active WordPress developer and we’re stoked to have him join the project in a more formal way.

We also discussed the launch of our email newsletter. Andrew will be preparing a draft of the first one and we’ll be sending it out when Courier supports sending emails to existing WordPress users (which should be coming soon). It’s going to be a tool for pushing out emergency updates, as well as a regular summary of what’s going on with links to blog posts, a way to welcome new site launches to everyone else we host, and so on. It’s undecided as to whether anyone can sign up for this, or whether we’ll restrict it to just active clients.

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Sept. 27: Another record-setting call

Published

on September 27, 2009

In just over twenty minutes, we covered a lot of ground at this week’s conference call, which was attended by Daniel, Adam, Greg, Andrew, Vanessa and myself.

High priority: Conferences, managed hosting and Connection Engine

We’re just five days away from the ONA 2009 Conference and about a month away from the ACP/CMA Conference. After some difficulty getting his hands on the right typeface, Adam is now putting the finishing touches on business cards to be printed tomorrow so we can give them out at these conferences. After evaluating the budget, we’ll be able to determine if we can buy rack cards, stickers, t-shirts and maybe pins too (yeah, we’re getting fancy).

In other news, plugins on the managed hosting servers are updating more efficiently after LiquidWeb did minor server configuration. For updates like this, we’re considering starting a newsletter to send out to clients about changes, tips and tricks and to introduce new members to the network. We want to ditch Google groups, but are unsure about what alternate option would work best besides a mass e-mail. Continue reading ‘Sept. 27: Another record-setting call’

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September 20, 2009: 28 minutes

Published

Daniel

on September 20, 2009

Continue reading ‘September 20, 2009: 28 minutes’

… is how long this evening’s conference call. I believe it’s our shortest ever.

Andrew started the conversation with a report on the new client outreach we started at the end of last week. We’ve sent direct emails to two newspapers thus far with only one indirect response. Taking this as a good-ish sign, we’re going to email five more potentials on Monday and see what the reaction is. Andrew has shared the letter outline with the team that we’re using to craft these emails. Hopefully if we refine this process over time, the outreach will bear some fruit.

Miles is finishing up a list of current clients that we think are good candidates for switching from version 1 hosting to Managed Hosting. We’ll want to start that process as soon as possible, ideally before he leaves the country on vacation. On Tuesday, Andrew and I will want to talk about this, the process for scoping out design and contract work, regular client workshops, the best way to contact all of our clients at once, and a better spreadsheet for managing launches and contact information.

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September 13, 2009: Rockin’ it text style

Published

Andrew

on September 13, 2009