present: everyone but Arie (who has other meeting)

NEXT MEETING: 11 AM FRIDAY

Announcements:

• Kamila not here Wednesday
• Steven still in contact with Rob Zverina, who is very interested in the editorial position. It's just 4 months for now, from mid-June.
• We now have a new Central European introduction to CARtoons, to be translated into the four Visegrad language versions.
• Daniel gave us the contact for a company in Brno that will make two banners for 1500 CZK or so. Kamila will contact them, to make WCN banners in time for Tabor.
• We'll be sending out a member organisation survey at the end of the week.
• There's a concert on Monday where we can share an info table with Automat.
• Our fax number is now the same as our telephone number. So please change it in e-mail signatures, business cards, etc.
• Radka will be 3/4 time rather than full time, because job doesn't take full time.
• Freesources (articles) are now offered in HTML as well as RTF.
• Stickers have gone to printer.

Agenda items:

• Carbusters magazine

We spend (in printing, postage, staffing, plus 330 EUR/year office expenses) 12,200 EUR per year on the magazine. Income is 8,600 EUR, but this includes a portion of our EC core grant although no money was counted from our individual membership fees. So the hypothetical loss is about 3,500 EUR per year. It would about break even if 100% of individual membership fees were counted towards the magazine. Subscriber numbers have ranged from 300-400 consistently, without the necessary energy being available for subscription boosting. Around 2,000 copies are distributed by professional distributors, with an average sell rate of about 40%. Our print run should be less, to lower amounts going to distributors and so we have fewer copies left in office.

• Should we publish it? Is it reaching the audience it needs to? Is it the most effective way to reach our outreach goals? Does the title turn people off, or should there be a subtitle explaining it's not about smashing cars?

Points:

Steve: It needs to continue. It's the most visible project we have, people at the last AGM felt it's important. Though it doesn't have a wide readership, there are ways we could increase it. It could perhaps even be decentralised, run outside of the office.

Joao: There should be a reader survey. (Agreement.) We'll try to put a link to the online survey form.

Randy: I think the narrow scope of the magazine is the main reason why subscriptions are so low. It's a lot for someone to receive a magazine four times a year about carfree topics.

- If so, what should it look like? (printed, electronic, smaller, bigger, more professional, etc.)

Steven and Steve: We haven't had someone working on subscription boosting, someone experienced who knows how to market the magazine and develop a strategy.

Randy: I think the first step along that line would be to have a consultant for a couple hours to outline what would need to be done to boost Carbusters readership.

Steven: There are not enough people devoted to the magazine, so there's no one to implement whatever a consultant would recommend.

Kamila: This year we probably can't increase the amount of spending on the magazine. We can't afford to hire an extra person to work on subscription boosting.

Steven: It could be a volunteer position.

SYNTHESIS:

We should definitely print it through issue 30. We can't add more staff for now. We can focus on how to boost subscriptions by finding a volunteer for this. We'll do a reader survey immediately. We should cover a broader range of content (including practical information). We'll put the PDFs of back issues on the Internet when time allows. We should start to prepare a Carbusters Reader in English covering issues 1-30, in the page size format of Do Or Die, which will piggyback with work on the Visegrad versions of the reader, which would be smaller.

- How much energy would go into it? (staff time, etc.)

See above.

• WCN bags

Annie (Jowett) has made canvas shopping bags for WCN Resource Centre. We discussed various graphics that could be silkscreened on them. No decision made yet.

• Istanbul TCC VII trip

Kevser, the host of the 2007 conference, suggests that Randy go to Istanbul after Tabor to work out conference details. Randy thinks it would be better for coming few months at least to work out as much via e-mail and Skype and maybe make a trip later to Istanbul instead of after Tabor. Agreement.

• Websites

A couple months ago we decided about some necessary changes to the Carbusters.org website, plus there are some things needing updating on Worldcarfree.net. Steve is going to delegate certain things to Anna and maybe Vincent after the magazine is done. For next week Steve will bring a timeline and it will be divided into sections that people can do on their own, etc.

• Autoholics Anonymous

The final report for a start-up grant for the AA project is due May 1st. We don't have so much to show for our work so far. Steve is the project coordinator but has been busy with other things and says he hasn't been as organised as he should be. We'll discuss this broader subject of the office structure next week (Friday, 11 am). The general feeling is that with 10 people the current structure does not always well and may not be sustainable.

• Next EVS Volunteer?

Deadline is 1 June for volunteer starting 1 October, or we could do deadline 1 September for starting 1 December. Kamila feels the second deadline is the only realistic one. Graphic design is one skill that we probably need. So we table this until next week or after, because we'll have more info on what positions need filling.