PUBLICITY

Publicity Committee members: Alicia Weimer, Jeff Saxton, Jim Gartner, Jim King, Joanne Cronin, John Lamb, Karen Justin, Michael Mitsch, Nancy Kelner, Pam Robinson, Pat Brangs

Webmaster Report – John Lamb

Lots of activity to report on the website this month:

We worked with Scooter to design a page for Uke New Jersey and to show him how to use the event editor form to create web pages for simple events such as the David Gans house concert. Allan Kugel has suggested a number of improvements for the Uke Fest page and these will be made when one of us has time to work on it, hopefully in the course of July.

We discussed some changes needed for the Festival page and menus throughout the site with Mark Schaffer. This work should be done within the next week or two.

Mike Agranoff requested the ability to rotate images at the head of the Minstrel calendar page in order to show representative past performers rather than having a fixed image in that spot. He selected a dozen photos to start with and we reused code from the Projectiles feature that appears on pages throughout the site to make this happen. He will select additional photos to add to the rotation as he has time.

Mike also requested updates on the status of some changes to the Minstrel calendar format and to the event editor form that allows him to add events to that calendar. Those changes are unlikely to be implemented in the next month or two because we have higher priority items to deal with.

Bill Henderson pointed out an error on the Minstrel tally sheet that only shows up in rare instances where shows operate at a loss. After much discussion with Bill and Mike Agranoff, we have a plan to update the tally sheet that will correct that error and also present information in a more useful format for the treasurer and Minstrel chair without requiring the head staff to do anything differently than they are now doing. These changes will be implemented in the coming month.

At Mark Schaffer's request, many recent festival performers have been added to the Projections feature.

The list of web projects is growing faster than we can address them. Accordingly, I would like to recruit another person or two with experience in HTML, CSS, MySQL and/or PHP to join our web team. If anyone on the board is interested or knows someone who might be, please let me know. I will also write up an announcement to be placed in the next newsletter.

As always, many thanks to Lori Falco and Allan Kugel for their help with the site. We welcome questions, comments and suggestions emailed to webmaster@folkproject.org.

FaceBook Report – Pam Robinson

We are up to over 750 "likes." I have started to post video of upcoming performers on the "Wall" and it is resulting in some good buzz on the page.

Publicity Chairman Report - Nancy Kelner

Have arranged with Radio Station WNTI (Centenary College) to give away free Minstrel passes. In order to give away free passes, we were required to buy air time. We have purchased 15 air spots for each of three concerts for $300. Melanie Thiel, WNTI development director, recommended two pairs of passes for each of the three shows. The three concerts will be Falcon Ridge, Finvarra’s Wren and Rory Block. The passes will be given away on Jeff Rusch’s show on Saturday mornings. Someone will call or email me with the names of the winners.

Reserved space for a ¼ page ad in the 2014 Morris County Tourism Bureau booklet and will need a check for $625 to pay for it. MCTB will run at least 35,000 copies.

Bill Nutt at the Daily Record is interested in doing an article about Uke New Jersey. Kevin Coughlin of Morristown Green is also interested in doing an article. Sent them both Scooter’s contact info.

Asked John Weingart of Radio Station WPRB if he would like to offer a pair of free Minstrel passes on his show. He would , but he is off for the summer. He forwarded my email to the DJ’s who will be substituting for him, and one was interested. I have authorized this person to give away one pair of tickets to David Massengill.

Am working on a niche list for Uke NJ. Discovered the uke festival is already posted on several ukulele websites and assume Scooter did it. Sent a listing to our contact at NJ Monthly magazine to consider for the August issue.

The state of New Jersey will celebrate its 350^th anniversary in 2014 and we may post our events to the website . It was supposed to launch on June 24, but I haven’t seen anything yet. In the meantime, I sent Minstrel and Swingin’ Tern info to an email address that was provided. The themes are Innovation, Diversity and Liberty.

Got permission from Circle Players in Piscataway to set out our flyers there, the next time I go. Made it clear to them that our events occur on Friday and Saturday nights (when they may have shows), but this did not seem to be a problem.

Morris County Tourism Bureau website, in its 101 Things to Do link, had the wrong phone number for Swingin’ Tern. Asked that they correct it, and they did, the same day. Our contact there, Deidre Schunk, is very good to us.

Emailed the publicity committee and the full board on June 24 about taking over the publicity committee chairmanship in 2014. Attached a job description. Hope to hear back from some folks.

NJ Monthly magazine’s July issue has the Minstrel birthday show listed in the events listing.

The June 28 Minstrel was listed in the Top Ten list of things to do, in the June 26 email blast from the Morris County Tourism Bureau.

Gwen Orel of the Irish Examiner (on our Celtic niche list) asked me to post Finvarra’s Wren to the NY Irish Arts calendar, so I did.