Agenda
- Check In
- Review WWWs
- Review Agenda
- Finances
- Weekly Events Logistics
- Opening words for the service
- Song
- Newsletter
- Ad experiments
- Evaluation
Check In
- Eric ... had a wonderful day with my mom ... she got to go to the cave on the island in the lake
- Ben ... I'm still feeling like I have not accomplished enough or made up for all the time I spent in the last few days reading comics and watching YouTube videos
- Brandon ... I feel good about the vacation, well-rested and ready to get things done ... irritated about my internet not working when I got back, so I need to do some more meditation
WWWs from last time
- Brandon ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing
- Brandon ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing
- Brandon ... Set up the analytics ... by next call (working on it)
- Ben ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing
- <s>Ben ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing
- Ben ... draft a Spring 2013 newsletter ... by next call
- Ben ... Propose a set of AdWords that have high enough search volume (using the Google Keyword tool) and are pointed in our direction ... by next call
- Eric ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing
- Eric ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing
- Eric ... Propose a revised description for the first test webpage ... by next call</s>
- Shelley ... review the website about public-domain poetry ... by next call
- <s>Shelley ... Post Sol2013 photos ... by next call</s>
WWWs
- Brandon ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing
- Brandon ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing
- Brandon ... gather Sol 2013 expenses, contribution rate and balance and send them to Eric ... by next call
- Brandon ... think about symbolic actions to go with the 7th-season opening words ... by next call
- Brandon ... ask Mark Nilsson if we can release the video under Creative Commons (ShareAlike, Attribution, Non-Commercial) ... by next call
- Ben ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing
- Ben ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing
- Ben ... send out the summer newsletter ... tonight
- Ben ... gather Sol 2013 expenses, contribution rate and balance and send them to Eric ... by next call
- Ben ... send out any revised schedule info ... Tuesday evening
- Ben ... read Eric's suggestions for the opening words ... by next call
- Ben ... think about symbolic actions to go with the 7th-season opening words ... by next call
- Eric ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing
- Eric ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing
- Eric ... gather Sol 2013 expenses, contribution rate and balance ... by next call
- Eric ... think about symbolic actions to go with the 7th-season opening words ... by next call
- Eric ... write the text of the ad for the Carl Sagan experiment ... by tomorrow
Finances
- We want to create a virtual "SolSeed coffer" comprised of some portion of each of our bank accounts, and track how much we're each contributing per month
- Brandon's current contribution rate is $930/month, and after what the Sanders spent on Sol 2013 there's just under $2000 in his SolSeed "partition"
- Eric has been "contributing $500/year" but spending more than that
Weekly Events Logistics
Service: July 27th , 8:00 am PDT (11:00 EDT) (Ben) Rotation: Brandon, Shelley, Eric, Ben Work-Bee Sunday July 28th, 1:30 pm PDT 16:30 EDT Seeing Nature Readings and Practices: next is 2013-10-20 13:00 EST
Opening words for the service
- Brandon proposes working on one season at a time
- Starting with the seventh liturgical season on the list of 8 (each one is half of a real season)
Eric's draft
The seventh liturgical season runs from the fall equinox to mid fall (aproximately November 2nd). It covers the near future, through the SolSeed movement's struggle to achieve the Destiny. What are the advances of this period? People. Practice. Dyson Trees. Space Colonies.
Barren world ... another ... barren world ...
And here ... <gasp> ... Earth!
Cities! Farms! Forests! Seas!
The SolSeed Movement forms.
In the world's nurseries, people are born.
And for every person ... there is a story!
Our story begins with the people, our members,
Those who answer the call!
Next came the practices, the movement,
Both the glue which binds us together,
And the reminders
Which align our actions
With our highest aspirations.
Then came the new trees!
The trees which diversify SolSeed,
The trees which colonize barren worlds.
Finally, SolSeed makes her colonies!
Bringing lifeless worlds to life,
freely available to all spacefaring creatures.
People. Practice. Trees. Colonies.
From barren worlds ... a family of living worlds.
Discussion
- Ben: Are "trees" too specific? Can we find a poetic alternative? ("organisms" doesn't work)
- Brandon: We don't really know the order of future events
- Brandon: This is poetry, meant to be inspiring and visceral
- People can easily connect with the concept of trees
- We need symbolic actions to go with it (like our current ones with the candle, seed and soil, cup of water, and 3 deep breaths)
Song
- Brandon and Eric are okay with Ben owning the song and licensing it to other members, etc
- Video (currently unlisted):
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bapoh1WT9SQ
- Brandon would like to ask Mark Nilsson if we can release the video under Creative Commons (ShareAlike, Attribution, Non-Commercial)
Newsletter
Things to add to the next newsletter:
- The PSAS Rocket launch (June 30)
- Brandon doesn't have the cool visuals yet
- The Revised We Believe
- needs to be revised first ... Brandon wants to tweak the language based on our discussions and add endnotes
Ad experiments
- Ben focused on high-volume searches in building his table, but more specific ones are likely to get much higher click-through rates
- Eric suggests we divide up Ben's list among us
- Brandon prefers to start with just one, "Carl Sagan," and figure out what the results from that suggest
- Need an ad message focused on people who searched for "Carl Sagan"
- Hypothesis for first experiment: "There are people who resonate with our message so strongly that the presentation on our website hardly even matters, and some significant number of people who are searching for 'Carl Sagan' are among them. For our Carl Sagan advertisement, we expect a Click-Through Rate of 15% ... of those who land on our page, we expect at least 15% will click 'Our Beliefs' and that at least 2% will go all the way to submitting their email address on the Join Us page." This results in $2.50 per live email address with a population of 900 emails per month available.
- Brandon: I think we are going to be disappointed with the results ... unless we know that we are going to be disappointed with the results and that this disappointment is a crucial part of our process.
- Eric: Once we have some people signing up as a result of this type of experiment, we can do other experiments involving sending them drip emails
Evaluation
- Brandon: I'm excited! We're doing great work and getting things done
- Ben: I must admit, because I talk to Lion a lot and he tends to say we're doing it all wrong, I'm not sure we're doing it right (eric and brandon say to take what Lion says with a grain of salt)
- Eric: I really enjoyed this meeting ... one of the most positive meetings in which we progressed that we've had in a while ... double thumbs up!