Present:
Garvin Quinn
Bob Reynolds
Debbie Archer
Ashley Wood
Ellen Ritter
Virginia Morgan
Gloria Mosby
Dee Shore
Haven Miller
Tom KnechtGloria Mosby reported that Carla Craycraft, the 1862 representative to the PLC and a communications committee member, is no longer active in the day-to-day operations of communications at the University of Kentucky because of her eXtension activities. Another person will be appointed to serve out her term. Haven Miller said he had been assigned to carry out her communications committee duties. Garvin said a replacement PLC representative would be selected during the PLN meeting in Charleston. Gloria encouraged the committee to get their registrations turned in and hotel reservations made for the August 28-31 PLN meeting in Charleston.
Status of CECP Modules Being Developed:

Marketing Extension Programs - Ellen Ritter:
Goal is to have something up for people to look at prior to the meeting. When that is done, she will e-mail the group. They are in the "putting together" phase. She said it has been a learning process. Newsletters - Ashley Wood:
Dittos on everything Ellen said. He said he would like to have something in electronic format before the Charleston meeting. He will be scheduling meetings every other week to make progress with the module. His goal is to have something together before Charleston.Copyright/Intellectual Property - Tom Knecht:
Said he will block out some time to work on the module and hopes to have it completed by the South Carolina meeting. Writing for the Newspaper - Haven Miller:
The module is pretty much complete. The working group is pleased with the course. There is an exam at the end. Interactivity still needs to be added. Haven asked if the modules are being reviewed. Ellen, who is on the steering committee, said that the review step starts with the committee itself. There is to be a communications group review and an IT review. Garvin said there is a seven-step communications review process. He recommended that the group look at the November conference call minutes to review the procedure. Ellen said when the steering committee met, it was decided that the objective is to empower the committees. There were some questions raised about some procedures, but she thinks that with the steering committee it is a prerogative thing. If they want to send it out when it reaches them, they will. She said it doesn't prevent courses from being posted. It is kind of a seal of approval process when it reaches the stage of the steering committee. There may be some times when groups develop modules that overlap or are repetitive, so the steering committee would need to make some decisions at that time. The Writing for the Newspaper module has not gone through the seven-step process yet. Haven will revise the module, add interactivity and then submit it for the seven-step review.Accountability/Impact - Sharon Omahen:
Sharon was not on the call, but Garvin pointed out that this module may somewhat duplicate what is being developed by another PLN committee. Ellen said that the steering committee will have to sort some of these things out. She said we may need to do something from the communications perspective while the evaluation people do something from the evaluation perspective. She said that the strongest module of all may be to blend both of them.

Media Relations - Tom Knecht:
Danny Gardner, who was working on the module, is retiring and won't be doing any more work on it. Tom is putting out some feelers to see if we can use the content from the media relations workshop, but he hasn't had a response. Tom said he will follow-up on this issue.

Preliminary information about the Charleston SR-PLN meeting (August 28-31):

Garvin asked if everyone had received the e-mail from the PLN that included information about registration for the meeting. The meeting is August 28-31.

Program ideas for communications committee sessions during the SR-PLN meeting:

The preliminary schedule includes a number of time slots for communications group meetings. Garvin said that we need to talk about what kinds of things would help us to best utilize those blocks of time. He suggested that we need to propose a preliminary agenda by the August 10 teleconference.

Ellen suggested that we should spend some time with the CECP modules. She said that there is going to be a continuing expectation that the committees will be developing further modules. We might possibly spend some time talking about some baseline things that need to be developed for training so that we can go through them methodically and in a priority order. Also, last year the issue was raised about how we get this process down deeper into our units. We're the only ones who go to this meeting. The sustainability issue comes into play. We need some time to do this. Garvin asked how much time might be needed. Ellen said she didn't know, but that as the schedule is refined we can discuss this as a group, look at the taxonomies we did, include some group discussions to develop some priorities and maybe break into some small groups to decide what kind of content would go into each. That would also help us decide who else to involve in the development of the modules and give us a head start on future projects. Ashley asked if we would be hearing anything on eXtension at the meeting. Garvin said that on August 29 there will be a general eXtension session followed by a CECP session. Dan Cotton has been invited to visit with our group at the August 10 teleconference if he is available. There probably needs to be some discussion oriented toward marketing eXtension. Maybe that needs to be a segment at the South Carolina meeting. Ellen and Ashley brought up the issue of the communities of practice and that there has been some discussion about it. It may be good to talk about that topic during our session time. What is the role of communicators? We need to get some technical questions, among others, answered. Garvin said that Carla plans to attend the PLN meeting. He said we should think about eXtension questions we want to ask. Ashley asked if the issue of Spanish language materials will be covered during the meeting. Garvin suggested that we could discuss sharing Spanish materials. Ashley asked what has been done since last year. Garvin asked if someone would be willing to provide the leadership for that discussion. Ashley said we need to at least put that down as a discussion item. Tom said he learned quite a lot at the ACE meeting and that he would enjoy hearing what others are doing. Garvin asked for some ideas on how to present our state reports during the PLN meeting. Ashley suggested that everyone bring something that could be shared among the states. Ashley suggested that the majority of our work be concluded by Tuesday afternoon.Tom brought up the issue of in-service training curriculum. This would be a good agenda item. Tom will provide leadership for this topic. Garvin requested that the group continue to think about possible discussion topics and asked the group to share ideas via the listserv.

Garvin said he would compile and summarize these suggestions before our next teleconference.

Date/time of next committee conference call:

August 10, 2005, 2 p.m. CDT