We’ve been having some trouble getting motivated over in the Electric December corner – mainly because the event currently seems so far away. However, things look set to change – we’ve decided to build pushing for more submissions into our brief, so we need to focus on that imminently. This mainly means getting our social media brains into gear – so keep your eyes peeled for that in the near future.

We’ve also decided we need to document what we talk about more efficiently. So minutes of all future meetings will be up here as and when they happen. Alas, we only decided this halfway through last week’s meeting, so the below is very simple…!

27/8/13, Electric December Meeting

Present: Nicola Wood, Joanna van der Veen, Rosie Cooke, Sam Bailey

Apologies: Ella Barraclough

Main Task: Send feedback to David Redfern about last year’s website. Make a start on planning rest of campaign

Eventual aim: give enough feedback such that David Redfern can produce a design brief that we are happy with.

Joanna: has already fed back. AP: others to feed back by this time next week

1. General Concensus on Design: good points are the amount of information on the website, and the way it is written. Main bad point is that the website is ‘not very fashionable’. Needs to be rebranded, and a concise logo is needed. See blog post comments for detailed feedback

Rosie: big push for hand-rendered effects on website. Will engage a younger audience (and specifically, both brackets of young people) much better. Suggests a colour palette of purple and blue. AP: post lots of examples of things on the blog / pass it on to David Redfern

[discussion about pros and cons; main Q – would Watershed’s current designer be able to do this sort of thing? AP: Talk to Hannah and / or David about this]

2. Key Question: do we want to have lots of people a little engaged or a few people really engaged?

Rosie: boost confidence of people if number of views is high– is there a way of having a public monitor for this?

Joanna: As they’re mainly first films, isn’t finely directed marketing better? We don’t want lots of people to watch a film, think it’s not very ‘refined and then write off the website

Nicola: We could use SEO techniques to get the numbers up and, if it does genuinely interest people, they will stay anyway

3. Nicola’s feedback on mash-up of last year’s films

Has written some copy that could be used (JV: make sure it’s not too wordy – will mean people lose interest). AP: discuss this with Hannah, and write it up on the blog.

4. Joanna’s feedback on research

Has produced research spreadsheet of films festivals and youth groups, along with contact details and Facebook networks. Q: how to share this?

Nicola: add a new tab to the existing googledoc

Rosie and Sam: Mentioning progress face to face is a must too. Sometimes things posted online can be missed

5. Other action points

Joanna: set up Hootsuite account & draft facebook message to send to relevant groups

Rosie: Work on mood board for website ideas, and feed this back to David

All: watch past films, isolate key ‘themes’, and relate this to dates over September, and Nov / Dec to make sharing them more relevant on social media. Choose films to be in new mash-up

Nicola: Do some more work on mash-up ideas (!)

Sam: start thinking about how & when to watch this year’s submissions, and ideas for getting local schools involved