Dane County FTD PR Meeting on March 19, 2014

Dane County FTD PR meeting on March 19, 2014

At Midwest Family’s radio complex

4:30 p.m.

Lisa Kessler of Midwest Digital presented a training session for the website and those who will be putting content on it.

Marjorie Stieve, who is doing the content for the county’s FTD brochure presented her copy. Once approved by Matt Glewen, the committee said it would like final approval on the copy for final edit on grammar, consistency, punctuation, etc.

There was discussion about what information to add from the progress pavilion and applied technology center. Committee members said we’d like input from the executive committee about what they would like to see used as the cover photo on this brochure.

Liz Henry said she had gotten family information from Wes and Troy and Jan Shepel had interviewed Richard and Veronica. Jan and Rochelle Ripp said they would work with Liz on the family bios.

Pam noted that Emma Jo Karls, who joined us at the meeting, has photography skills and wondered is she could use them to take candid photos of things going on around the farm, especially family members. Pam wondered if she could also organize and coordinate an all-family photo.

We said we should ask the executive committee for a profession photo of the entire family to be taken at the farm.

As far as help throughout the summer, we learned Ethan Giebel can’t do it, because he has other commitments. He might be able to come on board in January 2015. Jim Massey suggested we communicate with Brenda Gilbertson formerly of ABS, who is now doing special contract work and might be interested in working with us. Pam said she would see about Brenda.

Jan mentioned it would be great to have Noreen Ruckert, who managed media for Green County, come to one of our meetings to talk about how she organized her media day. Everyone who was there agreed it was one of the best.

Pam said we should all think about our plan of attack for the Portage County show Aug. 12-14, 2014.

Heidi Johnson and Bob Wipperfurth will be signing an agreement with the Madison Area Convention bureau on behalf of the county. April 2 is the annual meeting of the FTD board of directors and the luncheon to announce who will host the next show. Pam said anyone from the committee is welcome to go and should just let her know.

We talked about a timeline for future activities and met Chris Mertes, managing editor for the Sun Prairie Star. He said his brother is in business with promotional materials and could potentially help with some of the things we might need for media day, when that time comes.

We talked about what kind of headquarters we will need or want during the Dane County show. Pam is talking with Cleary Buildings about maybe doing something different than a trailer. We also discussed golf carts and walkie-talkies and cell phone service.

The committee discussed what kinds of other skill sets and resources we should be looking for in new committee members we could bring in. We talked with Chris about the inserts we were warned about at the tri-county meeting and how last year’s PR committee had to disseminate them. We agreed to ask Anna about this insert.

Sara Schoenborn, Marjorie, Jim, Jan and Chris agreed to take a final look at the edits on the brochure. Liz, Emma and Jan will do finals on the bios.

To do list included:

*Family photo near the parlor

*Brenda Gilbertson

*Invite Noreen

*Work on getting more volunteers, especially those with varied backgrounds and different areas of communication.

The committee heard that Lisa Statz has her blog up and running and we decided we could do a press release on the fact that she’s going this blog. We could potentially also draw attention to the boys and their social media activities.

We talked about where we get a comprehensive media list to use for the show. We discussed holding a committee meeting after the FTD luncheon early in April, but decided to keep in on April 16 at Midwest Family’s radio complex at 4:30 p.m.

Submitted by Jan Shepel