Inside CoPress

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.

Standard Podcast [29:14m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (141)

October 4, 2009: Introducing Will Davis

Published

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.

Standard Podcast [32:37m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (188)

Sept. 27: Another record-setting call

Published

Lauren

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’

Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (170)

September 20, 2009: 28 minutes

Published

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.

Standard Podcast [29:04m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (159)

September 17, 2009: First weekly hosting meeting

Published

on September 17, 2009

Continue reading ‘September 17, 2009: First weekly hosting meeting’

On Tuesday, Andrew and I had the first of what will be a weekly series of check-ins for hosting. We have a pretty distributed approach to support and managing work, so it will be good to check-in regularly and talk about what’s working and what needs improvement.

At this point in time, we’re in the process of launching the last of the sites that started over the summer. Once that’s done, the normal workload should fall back to support requests as issues come up. Andrew and I will split up the work week such that responsibility will be divided based on when the support request comes in. Andrew is going to take Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays, and I’ll take Wednesdays and Thursdays. Our goal will be to respond as soon as possible to all requests during the work hours, and then as needed after hours. There’s a balance we’re going to have to strike between responding quickly to client requests and maintaining some level of sanity.

September 13, 2009: Rockin’ it text style

Published

Andrew

on September 13, 2009

. 2 Comments

This week’s call was unexpectedly forced to become a text chat due to some difficulties with Skype. Not to be deterred though Daniel, Miles, Lauren, Greg, Adam, and myself typed out our meeting notes and ideas. While brief the “call” still hit on our main development progress and the upcoming ACP/CMA conference.

High Priority

To start things off I covered the Managed Hosting outreach goals for the coming months. Over the next few weeks Daniel and myself will be sending out emails to 10 new schools a week in order to reach out to perspective clients and bring new members into the Forum and Wiki community.

Daniel also covered preparation for the fast approaching ACP/CMA conference in Austin, TX. He’ll be putting together a budget for the event soon and then we’ll start getting business cards, t-shirts, stickers, and maybe even some DVD handouts together. Lauren also suggested the idea of doing some informal tweet-ups during the day.

Medium Priority

Thanks to a lot of hard work by Miles the first stage of the Connection Engine will be up and running soon. Once it’s up on the server we’ll create some test accounts to start putting it through its paces. Lauren and myself will then work on skinning it to fit in the spirit of Version 3 of copress.org.

We also discussed a new workflow for editorial ideas on the blog. We’ll be posting ideas to CoPress Micro with the hashtag #copressblog. Daniel also mentioned a list of ideas for things that we aim to accomplish this fall and will be sending it out to team members later this week.

Editorial/Community

Monday – no content planned
Tuesday – Vanessa, commenting policies
Tuesday – Mo, version 0.2 Edit Flow
Wednesday – Lauren, edu video #5
Thursday – Adam, site launch roundup
Friday or Saturday – Daniel, We Clicked On

September 6, 2009: Keepin’ it quick

Published

Lauren

on September 6, 2009

This week’s call was one of the shortest and to-the-point (33 minutes) we’ve had since I’ve been involved with CoPress thanks to our awesome timekeeper, Vanessa, and Daniel’s need to get to a family wedding. In addition to those two, myself, Adam, Greg and Andrew were on the call.

High priority: Reincorporation, design and evaluation

Daniel gave us the update on reincorporating CoPress as a for-profit organization. The paperwork was filed this week, so the next step will be obtaining an employer identification number from the IRS. And more good news: We don’t have to file a tax return until early next year.

Although we launched our site redesign a few weeks ago, there’s still work to be done. Notably, the hosting page needs to be tweaked to better reflect and explain what CoPress does. We’ll be shifting priority info “above the fold” of the page and including text about what you can expect during the transition, among other things.

In terms of evaluation, Daniel will put together a document about what goals we should be meeting and how we measure success, as determined by conversations he’s had one-on-one with members of the team this past week. One main goal, which we all agreed might be a bit too ambitious, is to get 75 managed hosting clients by the end of the year. Continue reading ‘September 6, 2009: Keepin’ it quick’

Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (187)

Update on reincorporation process

Published

on September 3, 2009

. 1 Comment

I checked in with Susan Linch earlier today because I was in a cold sweat about what we were supposed to be doing for reincorporation (and filing our first tax return). Lucky for us, she knows the entire process. A few days back, I sent her the signed paperwork for dissolving our non-profit status and reincorporating as a C corporation. I had actually tried to send it to her before that, but accidentally addressed it to myself. Whoops

The paperwork for reincorporating is going back in the mail in the next day, and we should hear from the State of Florida within the next week or so about the update. This is where the really cool part comes into play: we don’t have to file a tax return yet. Because we’re re-filing, and reporting our new year end as the of December, we don’t actually have to file a tax return until the beginning of next year. That fact alone removes a lot of stress about the current moment because, previously, I thought we had to file for a tax extension by September 15th.

Once we get confirmation from the State of Florida about the reincorporation, we’ll have to apply for a new Employer Identification Number (EIN) from the IRS. On that form, we include our old EIN so that they know to expect a cancelation number shortly after that. All of this work happens as we make it happen and there isn’t really a specific deadline other than being on top of our game.

Later: I remember that the last thing we talked about is that we’ll need a really good accounting system in place by the end of the year with software and all that jazz.

August 30, 2009: We can haz Skype fail?

Published

Joey

on August 30, 2009