On Nov 27, 5:16*pm, Vsoars wrote:
As my earlier posted stated, as Chairperson of the SSA Publicity
Committee, I have the project under way now. *I am preparing two of
the "hockey rink" shaped CDs. One Cd is a SSA Media Kit and the other
is The Soaring Publicity Handbook. (One for members to give the media
and one to assist members.) *There is no replacement for a smiling
person .But we need to put the materials, including photos that can
instantly be used, in the hands of the media. *There is currently no
way to do all we need to do from the web site as it is set up. The CDs
will be available at the convention and after that, at the SSA office.

How about some of you volunteering to make contributions to this
project? *It would be even more fun than chatting on this group site
and will actually accomplish something worth doing.

On Nov 26, 9:36*am, bildan wrote:

On Nov 26, 6:50*am, Tom wrote:

Great idea. Could this be placed on one inexpensive disc we could give
to people who take a glider ride?

Tom

I think a giveaway CD or DVD has great potential for promoting
soaring.
The SSA promotion committee has been thinking of something like this.
I don't think it would take much 'demand' to get it done.

How about one of those business card sized, "hockey rink" shaped CD's
that can be carried in a wallet? *There's about 50MB of space on
them. *In volume they cost around $.50. *The digital media content
could be universal with local contact information printed on the disk
label.

However, realistically, no piece of hard plastic is going to sell
soaring as effectively as a warm, friendly person talking about their
enthusiasm for the sport. *We still have to talk to people when they
visit our operations.

Bill D



If there is no way to put this stuff on the web site the SSA has more
problems than publicity. I'd really hope that is not the case.

Many journalists use Macintosh, especially amongst the magazine/
newspaper industry (where I've worked on software/technology), and
that has spilled over to many folks in the professional blogosphere.
Your funky CDs won't work in their slot loading CD-ROM drives, are
likely to get stuck/not eject or worse. Even in non-slot loading
drives you'll have maybe more more problems with the mini-CD's that
full size ones. Many journalists on the road now are likely to be
carrying ultra potable laptops and may not have immediate/easy access
to a CD-ROM drive.

Once a CD-ROM ships, you've got to keep it up to date, manage
revisions (how do you track who has got the out of date versions?),
allow timely revisions etc. Worse you have not encouraged the media to
go to a consistent location on the SSA Web, so if something timely,
either a good PR opportunity for soaring, or worse case an accident or
some public black-eye then the SSA does not have that Web portal to
reach the media through. But media portals are not one-way and the
simple ability to track the access patterns with Google Analytics or
other tools can be useful. Or go the next step and ask jounalists to
register to access their portal. This can be very simple to
implement.


I agree that journalists/editors likes access to high-quality media
(with clear ownership/rights attributions) and in the right high-
resolution formats (e.g. photos in TIFF or well done high resolution
jpg, with color space tagged, and preferably some decent gamut like
AdobeRGB, not sRGB, even better tag the image metadata with the
copyright/usage information, that will make art editors happy.). But
journalists also like the absolutely most up to date information and
contacts to people who can provide specialist answers/attributable
quotes etc. Things like explanations of technical terms/correct usage
guides if done properly are usually appreciated (how many times have
we seen the pilot of a glider called the glider, or seen hang-gliders
and sailplanes confused?). Long introductions for executives, a bunch
of info about organizations etc. are often ignored and a turn-off -
the media usually have very little time to wade though stuff and want
quick answers and especially things that will help them produce the
most correct/well informed articles. Bullet list of facts and common
Q&A work well. A few pages at most. All this stuff is all much better
served via the Web.

Darryl