Fort Collins Youth Broadcasting

I spoke with a broadcast engineer today.  He was very nice and rather informative and had some funny stories of the PSD getting shut down 🙂

Anyways, I’m concerned.  We have a meeting on Wednesday as I’m sure has been established.  I don’t think there’ll be an agenda and it’ll be a get-together to complain and moan about the end of school pressures and whatnot.  I doubt there will be much project-talking going on at all.  But I’ll try.  People are tired of school and of this project, which is not a good thing.

So hopefully stuff gets moving soon.

Now that there are some people on board this extravaganza I like to call a Capstone project, I’ve decided to post any further of my personal comments and stuff like that under my name on the blog.  And create a category for other people to do the same.

Now then, onto the real stuff.  Things haven’t been too hectic lately.  Which is a shame.  Elizabeth is now the Head of Business Division, which is a good thing.  Kim is now the Head of Media, which is even better.  Whew.  Now I just have to get Elizabeth to get some people under her for once 🙂

I met with a man who likes to go by the name of Dave several days ago.  He works for Larimer County in their radio division, and he was able to help me some in my quest.  He referred me to some broadcast engineers throughout Fort Collins that he said might be able to help me get some stuff done with the FCC license.

Speaking of the FCC license, I went through the whole thing today and actually found it…not too bad.  Not as bad as I thought it was going to be.  You see, the trick is to read the instructions alongside the application itself.  Yup.  A dictionary might be good too, but I didn’t have one of those with me.

Other than that, some other pretty basic stuff has been happening.  We got an eVoice phone number which you can see in our contact page, and hear my lovely voice for the recording (I was sick when I made it so it sounds weird, all stuffy and whatnot).  We probably won’t have the eVoice number for too long as I’m trying to get an IP-PBX up and running somewhere.  Or maybe a virtual PBX.  But RingCentral doesn’t have 970 numbers.

Another lovely expense is something we geeky techy people like to call a virtual private server.  I decided to get a VPS for Fort Collins Youth Broadcasting because I decided that we needed to broadcast over the Internet on port 80.  I made that decision before making the NPO and having a board of directors and all that jazz.  I made this lovely decision for port 80 broadcasting for one simple reason: being compatible with the Poudre School District.  So people can listen to the station in a computer class.  Woohoo!  Seems more like a VPSWasteland than VPSLand for the time being.

Along the line of expenses, I still need Elizabeth to find some people to do Form 1023.  That is a business issue, not an Executive Director issue.  Form 1023 is long and very painful, and I don’t want to do it by myself.  🙁 Yes I’m a wuss when it comes to long paperwork.  And it’ll probably be expensive to mail too!  Agh!

So anyways, more needs to happen.  We have a meeting on Wednesday which is just oh so peachy.  I do have hope for finding studio space, though.  The guy at West Olive was quite nice to me, but unfortunately he had to give the space to a paying customer.  🙁

More coming soon to a computer near you…..

Will be held in the counseling room at Poudre on Wednesday from 7:30 to 8:00 AM. There’s a long agenda, so be prepared.

I, Jacob Wood, executive director of Fort Collins Youth Broadcasting, Inc., do hereby declare a general “rule of thumb” to be used in all organization meetings, that the agendas shall be kept to one page in its present format, with the Discussion Topics on top and Key Points below it, basically a detailed explanation of the Discussion Topics. This aforementioned rule of thumb applies only during the school year and meetings held before late start on Wednesdays.

—signed: JAKE WOOD

We don’t like long meetings.

The following positions have now been temporarily filled and are awaiting official membership applications or permanence.

• Jacob Wood – Executive Director
• Elizabeth Bloeman – President of the Board / Head of Business Division
• Kim Graves – Head of Media

On April 18, 2007, Fort Collins Youth Broadcasting, Inc. filed its Articles of Incorporation with the Secretary of State.  They are available for public inspection on the Secretary of State’s web site, located at http://www.sos.state.co.us/.

On April 18, 2007, Fort Collins Youth Broadcasting, Inc. held an informal board of directors meeting. It was attended by all directors as well as the executive director, Jake Wood. At this meeting, we discussed:

• how to address the potential lack of interest for being a director in the bylaws
• the authoring of the bylaws
• the fund-raising goals and requirements for the next 4 months
• strategies and implementation plans

The meeting was 35 minutes long. It was decided that:

• the treasurer and secretary positions, if needed, can be rolled into one position
• Elizabeth and Jake will be writing the bylaws
• $20,000 should be a target required fund-raising, $50,000 should be a goal
• Corporate sponsorships, local business donations, and other non-profit organization donations were preliminary ideas and suggestions on fund-raising. Other topics were discussed as well.

A future meeting date has not been determined yet.

On April 11, 2007, Fort Collins Youth Broadcasting, Inc. held an informal board of directors meeting attended by 75% of the four directors.  The following people were in attendance, those highlighted in blue are members of the board:

• Elizabeth Bloeman
• Simone Cordery-cotter
• Justina
• Jacob Wood

At this meeting, we discussed:

• Officer positions available
• Who would like to fill these positions, if any
• Names other than Fort Collins Youth Broadcasting, Inc.  None were suggested.
• A request that people see if anyone else would be interested in being on the board
• Go over Proposed Structure #2 and take suggestions on improvements.  None were made and will be re-evaluated at the next meeting.
• The importance of October 12
• Next meeting was scheduled for next Wednesday to be held in the Counseling Conference Room from 7:30 to 8:00.
• No questions.
• Adjourned.

No official times or notes were taken at this meeting because of the lack of an official secretary.

Next week’s meeting will likely address:

• A survey of those interested in officer positions
• Discuss monetary and “people” requirements of the station
• Fund-raising requirements, goals, and a brief introduction to an implementation plan
• The authoring of the bylaws (who will do it, what needs to be said, etc.)
• Recruiting plan for members
• Any additional suggestions or comments to act on before the next meeting

Again, the next meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, April 18, 2007, in the Conference Room in the counseling center.

In October!

We have 6 months to get things rolling.

I just looked at Form 1023.  Yikes!