[Lnc-business] Memo to LP State Chairs: Send us your Affiliate News

Fri Sep 12 15:36:34 EDT 2014

I apologize for not replying to this e-mail sooner.  I was out of town last
weekend, so today is "e-mail catch-up day."

  _____  

From: Starchild [mailto:sfdreamer at earthlink.net] 
Sent: Monday, September 08, 2014 7:41 PM

"While I agree with Brett and Scott that the calendar
(http://www.lp.org/event) is embarrassing as it is due to the paucity of
content, there's a better solution than deleting it or limiting what's
listed there to LNC meetings and conventions. It would be more embarrassing
not to have a calendar on-site at all, or to have one that's even more
limited.

Activists won't only be interested in stuff happening in their own states.
People have friends, family, relatives, colleagues living in other places.
People travel -- I've attended Libertarian happenings in other places while
traveling, and we've had out of town people show up at our local events. We
meet people at outreach events who live elsewhere. Of course we could simply
refer these people to their state party's website or something, but if you
want to maximize the likelihood of someone getting involved, it's better to
make it easy for them. That way you can say, "I see here that the LP in your
town meets on (day/time/place)," or "Hey, did you know the Libertarian Party
in your state will be having a _____________ happening at (day/time/place)?

   starchild"

starchild - to "make it easy for them" in terms of having all events on the
National Party's web site in addition to the relevant state LP web site,
there is a cost in terms of staff time, but more importantly, the calendar
would quickly become too busy to be useful.

That is why it is better to refer prospective attendees to continuously
updated event calendars that are kept on each state party's web site.

"The problem with just saying "Let the affiliates keep their own calendars"
is that calendars on state party websites tend to suffer from the same
problem -- too few people have access to post events, and consequently
little gets posted, because it's just too much trouble in most cases to
contact the state party with an event, get the info to the right person who
can post it to the website, then wait for them to get the listing up and
hope they get it right. Activists *might* be willing to deal with this red
tape to send in their own events, if they know who to contact and can rely
on the info getting posted promptly, but if they have to go through this
process every time they want to see a libertarian event they come across
that's of interest to LP members posted, they're just not going to be as
likely to do it as if they know they can quickly go and post it themselves
and see it listed right away. 

   Starchild"

Here, starchild has identified something that I agree is a problem.  Having
only ONE person who can add events to a web-based calendar assumes that that
person is always available, and never gets sick.

When the National LP comes up with a signed contract that all affiliates
must sign, I am loathe to try to use that contract to  micromanage our
affiliates.

But - it would be very tempting to include a clause that there must be at
least 3 people that have total access to the affiliate's web site, and that
all 3 of them have the ability to add or edit content.  That doesn't mean
they have to be web designers, it just means they should be able to do
simple edits like adding events to calendars or updating the officer list
after each convention.

   Scott Lieberman

PS - in the past, starchild has given me blanket permission to forward any
of his personal e-mails sent to me to anybody, without having to ask his
permission.  So - since his e-mail was sent to all LNC members, I assume
that he is implicitly giving me permission to forward his e-mail to the
official LNC-Business e-mail list.

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