2017-03: Branding

Location:  Steve Izma’s house 35 Locust Street Kitchener, ON
Date: March 13th, 2017
Time: 7:00 PM

What’s your brand? Do you have a brand? How do you choose a brand? Is branding important for NonProfit organizations? What is the value of a good brand? What is the cost of a bad brand? Have you ever changed your branding? How much work was it for the SysAdmins? Did you have re-do the Web site? The e-mail addresses? Business cards? Letterhead? What legal considerations are there for choosing a brand?

Bob and Marc have the questions, together all of us have the answers.
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Meeting Notes for Branding (2017-02-13)

This meeting ended up being more about our own re-branding needs, and the business of running KWNPSA as a non-profit organization. We’ll have another session in the future on Branding to discuss the experience and gather the advice of other organizations.

• We started with a discussion on the different syntaxes used in markup languages, eg. Markdown, Mediawiki, PMWiki, MoinMoin…

Hosting Services

• Many Non-Profit organizations are migrating from CCj/Clearline (Steph Smith, Cedric Puddy) to IndieServe (Mark Steffen)
• Marc Paré will take over the hosting for KWNPSA
  • Marc is currently using 123EHost.com
  • This is for the interim, until Marc has his own server set up
  • The hosting OS will be Mageia
• Mailing Lists
  • Steve Izma will be the Mailing List Manager
  • We currently have our Discussion and Announcements mailing lists on CCj/Clearline
  • Steve will look after the mailing list migrations as soon as Marc has Mailman set up
• Wiki
  • Mediawiki is being used by everyone at this meeting,
  • Currently being hosted at http://sobac.com/kwnpsa by Bob Jonkman
  • Will be migrated after Marc has set up the Mageia server

Sponsorships

• CIRA – Has provided $100 for the previous and this meeting.
• TechSoup – provides low-cost Microsoft licenses to Non-Profit organizations
  • NetSquared (part of TechSoup) is an umbrella group for Non-Profit organizations’ IT staff
    • If we get a venue without A/V facilities, can NetSquared sponsorship provide, say, a projector? Marc to ask Eli…
• Microsoft
  • We will gladly accept Microsoft sponsorhip and host an evening dedicated to Microsoft products
    • Perhaps have as a guest speaker a product specialist from Microsoft?
  • We will continue to focus on Free Software / Open Source solutions at other meetings
• Google
  • Apparently Google is a sponsor or a member of NetSquared
    • but we have not seen support from our local Google office, eg. request for a venue

Formalizing the KWNPSA group

• The formal structure of the group will consist only of a Treasurer
  • Marc Paré will be Treasurer, will take care of any finances received from sponsors, donations, &c.
  • Funds received from sponsorships &c. will be used for venues, hosting costs, domain name costs.
• Bob Jonkman will ask Eli van Giessen to re-brand the meetup.com group as KWNPSA – Kitchener Waterloo Non-Profit System Administrators — a NetSquared Group

Marketing KWNPSA

• Business cards?
  • We need someone to design a KWNPSA logo
    • The KW part is important to our geographic locale; highlight or separate KW from NPSA
  • Marc Paré has found with other organizations that business cards are just as effective as posters
• Let more people know that KWNPSA exists
  • Marc has a list of local KW Non-Profit organizations List he has contacted about 100

Meeting format

• KWNPSA has a collegial Round Table Discussion format, which suits Non-Profit organizations
  • Contrast this with formal presentations at KWLUG
  • or the social restaurant meetings of KWVoIP

Mailing Lists

• How do we deal with badly configured MUAs (Mail clients) that try to reply to the Announcements list?
• Do we need two separate lists?
  • Steve Izma will investigate the use of “child lists” in Mailman
  • “Child lists” will allow “Discussion” to receive “Announcements” so people only have to subscribe to one list
• DMARC problems
  • Steve will activate “munging” on Mailman so badly configured mail hosts like Yahoo Mail will accept messages
• We will have KWNPSA branded e-mail addresses
  • To be seen if this helps or hinders the DMARC problem
  • Lends authority to Announcements; requests for venues, &c.
    • Marc Paré marc.pare@kwnpsa.ca
    • Steve Izma sizma@kwnpsa.ca
    • Bob Jonkman bobjonkman@kwnpsa.ca
  • Available to anyone who helps organize the group

Wiki

• Meetup.com is closing its Discussion Forums where we used to publish Meeting Notes
  • Paul Nijjar has a .gzip file of all meeting notes
  • Bob Jonkman will upload these to the Wiki (they’re in the Public Folder as npsa.tar.bz2)
    • Public folder (RO): http://sobac.com/owncloud/s/CQr2YmVw6VZ91We
    • Upload folder (R/W): http://sobac.com/owncloud/s/35Gyy6yTOG5Ak9z (contact Bob Jonkman for the password)
  • Steve Izma will write a script to convert these from Markdown into Mediawiki syntax and upload them
• Bob has been testing different data structures on the Wiki, eg. transclusions for meeting announcements, sub-folders for meeting notes.

Branding

• Description of group: Resource Group for Information Technology in Non-Profit Organizations
  • Similar to a Mission Statement, if not identical
  • Also the Vision — use one phrase for all
  • We will refine this description on the Discussion List with other members
• Are we KWNPSA or KW-NPSA?
  • It’s a non-issue, we’ll spell it out in full on posters and whenever we make announcements
  • Let’s see what the Business Card designer does

Venue

• Marc Paré will pursue Communitech and the Downtown Community Centre for “venue sponsorship”
• A venue at Google may not be possible (high security facility)

Meeting notes taken by Bob Jonkman.