Publicity Report

Publicity Committee Report May 2011

From Webmaster John Lamb:

Since the roll-out of the new site in March, the team has been finding and fixing minor glitches. We had a bit more serious problem with the email system that we believe is now ironed out. We are sorry that Cathy Thomas is leaving our merry band of web developers, but are highly appreciative of the professional job that she has done and the enormous amount of time and talent that she has contributed to this project over the last eight months. I have been learning about php and MySql from her code and feel almost capable of maintaining what she has created. Of course, Alan and Lori are still working with me to fix any problems and to add new features. Both of them are IT professionals, so the site is in good hands.

Pat Brangs has forwarded some changes to the Performers page, http://www.folkproject.org/performers.shtml, and I have been making those changes as I receive them. I have added several new member artists and songs to the audio player that can be found at the bottom of the home page and would like to get even more contributions for that feature from our members who perform. Both the audio player and the performers page can help our members get hired for gigs and get their music out to the public.

In the coming months, we hope to reload the Minstrel History data from as far back as 1976, to completely rebuild the Festival section of the site as information becomes available and to get our Projections pictures captioned. As always, we are happy to entertain questions, comments, bug reports, suggestions and offers of help.

From Publicity Chairman Nancy Kelner:

Both Minstrel and Swingin’ Tern are listed in Morris County Tourism Bureau’s new tourism booklet. We have a regular listing PLUS - and this was a surprise - we are one of “101 things to do in Morris County.” (A few days after a box of booklets was delivered to our house, I learned that the booklet will be reprinted due to some errors they found.)

Pam Robinson has asked for help posting FP events to Facebook. I emailed the publicity committee to ask for volunteers and will ask Liz to put a short article in the next bulletin.

Emailed Trailside/Union County to consider FP performers when they need musicians for their events. Received no reply.

Emailed Morris County Tourism Bureau to consider FP performers for Giralda Farms Music Festival. Chairman Kadie Dempsey said she might be interested.

Za Zu Zaz concert – Sent info to our “jazz niche” contacts from the NJ Jazz Society. Received a reply from Tony Mottola, editor of their Journal, Jersey Jazz – he wants to do a story about the concert. He offered to forward the Za Zu Zaz information to his entire NJJS email list.

The Za Zu Zaz concert is listed in the May issue of NJ Monthly, thanks to the efforts of committee member Will Miles. Thanks, Will!

I also forwarded Za Zu Zaz info to Jim Jasion of Somerset Jazz Consortium.

The Minstrel concerts of April 15, 22 and 29 were listed in the April issue of Overlook View magazine, and they got them right!

Discovered there is a link to the FP website from www.njopenmic.com, a listing of open mike opportunities in NJ.