Notes from May 16 Comms Group conference call.pdf

8/6/2019 Notes from May 16 Comms Group conference call.pdf

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Conference call of the Communications Work Group

Monday, May 16, 2011 4 pm to 5:15 pm

Attending: Alan Polk, Mitch Cohen, Beckie Hilton, Melinda Towes, Tom Colkett, Robin Allen, Lisa

Schnellinger.

Alan clarified the roles of the Forest Service staff in the four teams: Mitch will be the forest service’s

representative to the communications group; John Campbell will be for Resources and Public Education;

Larry Thomas on Volunteers.

Alan will be providing oversight to all the teams and making sure we are all working together rather than

getting sidetracked. “Feel free to contact me anytime you want to.”

Beckie said she objected to how the decision was made about the new communications group leader

after Lisa resigned that title. She felt it was handled poorly and that Lisa did not consult with the group.

Lisa apologized and said she discussed it with Alan and Robin, and that going ahead with Robin was

based on her impression that the other two members of the group were not interested in leading the

group.

Lisa asked whether anyone objects to her being in the Communications group and offered again to

withdraw from any group work if there was a sense that it was a problem or conflict of interest. No

objections were raised and Beckie and Melinda said they felt Lisa has something to offer as a member.

Alan advised that it will take time for the group to feel comfortable with the process. Mitch said he

works with others on our website, online, and “it takes a lot of patience and understanding to

communicate this way.”

Alan said that the other groups are still figuring out what their priorities are, but that “they are going to

be looking to us to provide them some support.”

Robin said she needs to add phone numbers for the members of the Comms group.

Name Email Phone(s)

Alan Polk [email protected] 770-297-3033

Mitch Cohen [email protected] 770-297-3095

Robin Allen [email protected] 404-819-4655

Beckie Hilton [email protected] 706-717-8210

Tom Colkett [email protected] 770-316-7609

Melinda Towe [email protected] 706-455-2921

Lisa Schnellinger [email protected] 770-905-5107



Lisa asked about the larger contact list from people who were at the last meeting – not only name and

email address, but phone numbers and affiliation. Alan said he will follow up with Andrea on getting that

information.

Regarding the spreadsheet of contact information that is being developed, Robin has added IMBA data,

mostly as internal – some external because they are farther away.

Tom will input the numbers that Alan sent for the vehicle groups.

Melinda said she will put the equestrian groups in this week. She has 36, including addresses, emails,

phone numbers. She and Alan will get the DNR – wildlife contacts.

Beckie said that it is difficult to get all the hiking groups. There are some national hiking orgs, but hiking

organizations are not as well organized. Beckie asked Tom to also help with the hiking groups.

Alan said he had 56 [?] contact points to send to Beckie and she said she would enter them.

Mitch asked, what is the list for?

Robin explained that some contacts are internal to the process, some are external. Mostly we will be

communicating with internal but some will be for groups at large.

There may be some question about whether a particular group is internal or external, and that can be

cleared up later.

Beckie asked if our group is just a clearinghouse for communications, or is it to address the other issues

raised on the handout list that we received?

Alan said this was up to the group and that we have to do what is best for the group

Melinda said that the demand arose because the user groups need to know about things being done by

others, for example they are not aware of a work day being scheduled, trail closers, etc. The comms

group should do anything that has to do with giving the users an easy place that they can access this

information.

Beckie said perhaps we need to develop a handbook so that we could give this to individual clubs so that

a club would know who to contact (in the forest service – other orgs too?), to find out how to get in

touch with and how to conduct a workday

Melinda said this information can be collected and available “on the website”

Mitch asked, what website? Has one been set up?

Lisa clarified that this information could be posted on ChattahoocheeNow, the Forest Service site, as a

Google doc, or some other page that is not the property of anyone.



Alan noted that the Comms group will be taking a lot of the info the other groups put together, and

figuring out how to communicate that to the different interest groups and the public. “The tool chest

could include a whole bunch of different things.”

Alan said other groups are handling some of the issues that also came up on the Comms group list. The

public education group is looking at signage, trail damage through resource group, trail maintenancethrough volunteers group.

Robin asked about identifying the team contacts for leaders, and Alan said some don’t have them yet.

But it has been agreed that neither FS staff nor facilitators should lead these groups. John and Larry are

trying to get the Resources and Volunteer groups to identify somebody as the leader.

At the latest this would be known by the next meeting – who the leaders are, and their contact info, and

also about having conference calls with the leaders of those groups.

There was discussion about how to send out announcements and handle email distribution lists. After

June 7, we will look more at the details of communicating information.

Reviewing the FS website – Mitch said the FS “would like to know better how we are falling short on

content. We are continually striving to get the content that people are looking for.”

Robin said that navigation is even more important, and that probably this is where most people have a

problem with the FS website.

Mitch explained that the primary navigation on left column of the site is part of the national website

design, based on national forests across the US, and so it is standardized:

“I have no direct influence over the terminology being used, as a national portal to 196 (?) national

forests we have to keep that consistent, so that visitors are accustomed to finding things in the same

place with the same types of words.”

However, the right-hand side of the FS site is more locally driven, and then they can use pages within

that content as an index to a certain section within the local website.

As FS brings more into the portal, people make requests to change the words, and the website

development unit can turn certain aspects on, Mitch said. “If you have ideas please let me know.”

He warned that it takes years sometimes for things to move forward, “we’re the government.”

Alan said they have made some changes, though not all have been made yet. They have talked about

making the collaborative process highly visible, and Mitch is the one physically adding that.

Robin asked if the FS would be announcing the June 7 meeting.

There was discussion as to whether the announcement was internal and how to handle it. All the

meetings will be public, and “The more people that know, the better.”



New people can attend at any point. But as time goes on, all agreed, getting people up to speed will be

more difficult.

Alan said the participants that put their emails down at all the phase 1 meetings are saved by his staff

assistant. He said they will send out an email.

All organizations need to make sure that their interest is represented in the meetings.

Mitch offered a suggestion, because people come and go from the team, should there be a way for the

committee to have an email account of its own?

Tom suggested Facebook but Alan said the Forest Service cannot use Facebook.

Mitch suggested setting up a gmail account – that is only for this committee’s business of distributing

communication. That way we could set up lists for different purposes tied to that account.

There was no decision taken about whether to do this.

Robin asked about the 156 miles of trail that were going into the grant proposal for a trail assessment

study.

Alan said the districts identified that we need to have these 156 miles of trail assessed in terms of: are

they sustainable, do they need to be rerouted, what do we need to do? These are non-motorized trail

systems.

It’s a spreadsheet, done by FS, so it’s public document. Alan will distribute that to the group.

Lisa asked about the individual users who are not part of any organization or may not have heard about

it through any organization.

Alan said “all the initial news releases went out to everybody (on FS email lists, on web site, through

newspapers and their web sites). It gets huge when you’re trying to contact everybody in the world.”

The meeting ended with everyone wishing Beckie well on her cataract surgery.

Notes from May 16 Comms Group conference call.pdf

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Transcript of Notes from May 16 Comms Group conference call.pdf