Walker Community UMC

Present:

Al Hildenbrand , Debra Ramage, Steve Sandberg, Willow Cordes-Eklund, Jennifer Gahnstrom

We discussed the following topics, not necessarily in this order:

• Whether to have agenda at our meetings, whether to keep minutes and publish them, whether to have a chair internally (ie, to “run” meetings)
• Whether to have a chair externally (ie, a contact person)
• The issues around the weekly email newsletter, especially whether to publish all or part or none of it on the website
• Facebook Page – who are admins and editors, who should be added as new editors, how we can better use Facebook
• The website as it is now, and the changes Jennifer had recently made and how we could get various messages out in the immediate future
• The website, what changes we may want to make in the near future, what perceived needs it was not meeting, what it’s really for
• What roles various members of the task force want to do and are able to do
• Steve wants to make the website a useful tool in bringing families to Walker who are looking for Sunday School and youth activities. He said he knows “people do check out church websites.” The TF agreed that ours may not be attractive or accessible enough to stand out.
• Steve also wants the TF to ensure events are publicized in a way to help them be successful.
• Willow wants to discuss internal communication infrastructure, ie face-to-face communications and how we relate to the wider community, ie flyering or canvassing the neighborhood or other outreach methods.
• Deb wants to do website work, and social media, and outreach. She feels she is not as good at informal face-to-face communication and is glad there are people on the TF who want to do that
• Al also wants to do social media and website work and to learn more about them
• Jennifer wants more photos, more outreach to younger people
• The current database and directory and if and if so how we may want to change it in the medium-term future

We made the following decisions and took the following actions:

• We decided to make an informal agenda at the start of each meeting and to rotate the job of facilitator.
• Deb suggested having a publicly stated “chair” of the task force so there would be a point of contact, and possibly rotating that role every 6 or even 3 months. No agreement was reached.
• Steve Sandberg and Deb Ramage were added as new Editors to the Facebook Page. (The other TF members are already either Admins or Editors.) We informally decided we needed more pictures. And video. Deb suggested everyone should share the posts on their own timelines to increase the “reach”.
• We took immediate steps to advertise the upcoming event featuring the Socaholix.
• We will discuss Willow’s interest in improving internal face-to-face communications infrastructure at a future meeting, probably the next one.
• Al agreed to discuss with Jim Feldman if he would be amenable to the TF converting the website to WordPress and if his site could continue to host it in that case.Al and Deb are taking this offline as a project and will report back to the TF.
• We agreed to meet again on Thursday, September 4 at 9:30 am.

Minutes by Debra Ramage