Fort Collins Youth Broadcasting

If you’ve ever been to an FCYB meeting, or know anything at all about the way I try to run FCYB, you’ll know that I use words like “accessible” and “convenient” a lot. Specifically, I want people to come in when it’s “convenient” for them and I want organization information to be “accessible” whenever possible. I believe I’ve adopted these goals for two reasons:

1. Where I live. Living here in the middle of nowhere really makes it difficult to have things going on in town and whatnot. Living an hour away is inconvenient for everyone, and missing out on the information and whatnot is also a problem.
2. The fact that virtually every other non-profit organization that high school students are forced to work with don’t care about our schedules. Being a student-driven organization, I believe it is our responsibility to provide as many opportunities to as many people as possible, while at the same time not interfering with their other volunteer requirements or school or work. This also weeds about people that want to work with us “just cause.” Only people that are truly interested in working with us will set aside the time and make the time convenient to work.

SO, with these two facts in mind, lately I’ve been focusing a lot of attention on how to keep communication flowing between members as much as possible, and how we can start communicating with each other easier, quicker, and more reliably.

Obviously the first tactic I took on was the forum. It has its glory moments and it has its failures. The first failure: only about half our members are registered on it! Not good! Second failure point: those members that are registered, don’t necessarily check it as often as they should. Glory moments: see any conversation that has had more than Don or myself contribute to it. This leads me to another failure point: see the Members list. Don and I have the highest post counts. A majority of my posts are responses to Don’s posts.

I believe the forum is fixable, though. I think we should write some rules for it (I especially like the idea of three-before-me, like used in Socratic seminar in Ms. Sayers’ class, although we’re not verbally speaking so I don’t think that’d be an issue. Essentially I want to avoid open questions turning into conversations of who just so happens to be on the forum at that point in time.) Once we write rules or whatever, I think it’s doable.

The second thing I tried was the e-mail list. Generally there was lots of cross-reference between the forum and any e-mail that I send out. However, e-mail is unreliable. Messages get caught in junk too often, or you have former presidents of the board who just don’t have the time to check their e-mail. Damn I feel bad for her.

So we’ve got written communication down. There’s no point in wasting trees and sending out written announcements in schools. There are two problems with written communication: a) there is a delay. E-mail, forum, anything, the messages sit there until the person goes and checks them. Sometimes this delay isn’t acceptable. The second problem: sometimes things don’t get clearly communicated in writing, and therefore need to be reclarified, simply adding more time needed to get your final answer.

To battle this scenario, I’ve proposed purchasing a RingCentral Virtual PBX. Well, I got a 7-day free trial using the company debit card with a phone number I can hardly remember (1-866-408-8..? see? i suck). This 7-day free trial turned into a 1-hour free trial, when I simply upgraded our plan to a paid plan so I could then pay an additional $5 to add a Texas number to do some testing.

Unfortunately, the tests revealed that RingCentral is not powerful enough!

So I reimbursed the organization for my foolish expenses. I sent them $20 via PayPal. I also have to return the $50 wireless card that I purchased for no good reason (actually at the time it seemed like a good idea, then I realized we actually had to fix up the studio), only to then immediately purchase a Boost Mobile phone. (Yes, the idea has changed from T-Mobile to Boost.)

Here’s what I wanted to do with RingCentral, that RingCentral is apparently INCAPABLE of doing (these bullets are summarized, and I’ll explain more below):

• Have multiple toll-free numbers (2, to be precise) that have different menu options.
• Get a local number in my area (the Fort Collins-Greeley metro area. I can’t believe they don’t have it, or Denver! They don’t even have Denver!)
• Have extensions that route to various other extensions

For those of you who do not know what RingCentral does, looks, or feels like, it’s technically considered a hosted, virtual PBX. Essentially, people dial a number (your “RingCentral number,” which is typically toll-free, or a local number if you’re in one of the select markets), and then are either confronted with a variety of options (press 1 for Sales, 2 for Services), or they are routed based on rules you specify to voicemail, your cell phone, etcetera. Hopefully this makes sense.

However, it’s not powerful enough! And I, being the “here’s what you need to do” kind of person that I am, have written up these:

Ways that RingCentral Needs to Improve!

First off, RingCentral oversimplifies the purpose of a PBX. I believe there should be multiple “types” of extensions. These “types” of extensions should be:

• A “Department” extension
• An “Employee” extension
• An “Information” extension

A “Department” extension would be the kind of extension that is pressed when you reach Sales. The “Department” extension, is not really an extension, but simply forwards to “Employee” extensions based on rules specified in the “Department” extension. For instance, in the Sales Department extension, from 9 AM to 11 AM, calls are forwarded to Employee Extension Roberta. From 11 AM to 1 PM, calls are forwarded to Employee Extension Paul. Then, from 1 PM to 5 PM, calls are forwarded simultaneously to all extensions associated with sales, or are rotated.

Why do this? Because then it actually follows the rules of the person the call is being forwarded to! It actually follows the rules as to when a person is available to speak. What a concept, right?

Secondly, multiple people make up a department. So it just makes sense.

The “Employee” extension would essentially be the same thing as what the typical RingCentral extension is right now, where they can forward to a phone number blindly, do complete call control, only take voicemail. The only thing that would be removed is the “Play Announcement Only,” simply because that wouldn’t make sense for an Employee’s extension.

Instead, the “Play Announcement Only” becomes the “Information” extension. And vwala, RingCentral has just perfected its extension system.

WAIT, there’s MORE! RingCentral should allow customers to register a local phone number with a company like VoIP.com, Broadvoice, iCall Carrier Services, etcetera, and use it with RingCentral! All RC has to do is register with the SIP provider, and it accepts calls for it 🙂 It’s a fairly simple and cheap way to get around the problem of having such a limited number of area codes provided by RingCentral.

Now….for the grand finale: extensions should be changeable depending on which toll-free number you’re calling! What we wanted to do was have a business line and a studio line. When you called the business line, you’d hear something like “Thanks for calling FCYB, to do this, press 1, to go here, press 2.” When you called the studio line, you’d hear something like “Thanks for calling (insert station name here).  To speak with the on-air DJ, press 1.  To make a song request, press 2.  To leave a voicemail for any show host, press 3.  To reach our parent company, press 4.”

But guess what kids, YOU COULDNT DO IT!  Why?  Because the RingCentral extensions are THE SAME throughout your ENTIRE account!!!!

And, RingCentral only lets you have ONE account per credit card!  Otherwise our problem would be solved 🙂

So.  Essentially, what it boils down to, I think RingCentral needs to adopt more IVR qualities than it already has.  It’s not powerful enough for even our needs, which is sad because we’re only a group of around 20 teenagers trying to put together an Internet radio station.  Nothing major, right?

Apparently it’s powerful enough for real estate agents, though, and that’s all that matters to RingCentral.  *sigh*  I guess we’ll use up our one month and move on.

I’m fiddling around with RingCentral and just spent $20 to do it. We’ve got two phone numbers right now: 1-866-480-0615, and a Dallas, TX phone number: 214-432-4860.  We’re never going to use that number, ever, and I only did it because creating a new, local number was free (no set-up fee, that is), but I did have to pay the $5 monthly rate (part of the $20).  The other $15 came from activating our trial.

I PayPaled $20 over to FCYB to pay for it.  If they like it, they’ll either cancel the transaction or something, but I owe FCYB $5 now for the local TX number.

So in the midst of getting us a 7-day free trial for RingCentral, they said “Um, you’ve used THIS credit card before, so we’re gonna bill you NOW!”

I’m sure there’s a clause somewhere in the fine print that permits them to do this.  And I would’ve paid for the first month ($14.99), BUT it said it was going to charge me $44.99?  That didn’t make any sense to me, so I canceled out of it, and now our sweet vanity number is GONE (1-877-233-FCYB).

Well, it’s not gone, but it’s not available for registration anymore since I stole it from myself.

Unfortunately I have a doctor’s appointment at 1:00 in the PM today.  I say that’s unfortunate because Qwest is supposed to call me up today in the afternoon.  There’s got to be a way to “call them back,” though, simply because you can’t guarantee you’ll be at your phone all day to activate Qwest service.  I also find it ironic that you need a phone to activate a phone.  What happens if you don’t have any phones?  I suppose you’re just out of luck.

In the meantime…still not sure if I’ll be making it to school tomorrow.  Hopefully Simone will still run the meetings.  Not sure what she wants to get accomplished…I haven’t seen her version of the agenda.  Also not too sure if they’re going to start painting Friday or not, or if we’re just going to come in on Saturday and paint all day.  The doc might give me some anti-biotics which would be superduper helpful to get rid of this sore throat (I think it’s tonsillitis, so nothing too terribly exotic, hopefully some prescription drugs will get me up and running [and eating and drinking] again).

Qwest: Spirit of Service. They should change their name to “Qwest: very expensive, and doesn’t treat all customers equally.”

My parents are on the Glacier View Fire Department. Supposedly, GVFD gets their Internet and phone at residential rates because they’re a non-profit organization. Well, when I spoke to a Qwest representative (Veronica, I think was her name), she told me that non-profits don’t get any discounts.

…as they say in Canada……EH!?!?!?!

Needless to say we are not giving them our business for phone. But we are giving them a 1-year contract on DSL. 1.5mbps down / 768 kbps up for about $50/month plus the incredibly ridiculous amounts of taxes, surcharges, and other retarded fees and taxes and surcharges. The “phone,” I have decided, will be a T-Mobile prepaid cell phone. In fact, here’s a picture:

It’s cheap, and you get great reception in the studio. Plus we don’t have to worry about ringers or anything! 🙂 I’m not expecting this phone to get used that much, in fact I wouldn’t be surprised if it only gets used for emergency dialing. Everyone’s cell phone works in the studio, so there’s really no point in having a line down there. Plus, “call ins” will be handled with VoIP. It’s cheaper to do VoIP for a radio station since the call audio is already on a computer system, and thus easily outputted to analog audio. No expensive hybrids or anything like that to buy.

In other, studio-related news, we’re still trying to decide on what colors to paint the studio. Blue, black, gray, white, black, and blue are favorites thus far. “Dark colors” in general have been picked. Casey, a person in my entrepreneurship class, described what he wanted simply as “dark colors.”

Personally I like the idea of gray walls. Here are some webcam pics of some radio studios (KALC Alice 105.9 and KSME Kiss) that I got earlier today:

Notice how in both studios they have fairly “bright” walls, white/grayish. To be specific I’d say the Alice studio has whiteish/grayish walls and the Kiss studio has more of a beige wall. Obviously these are webcam pictures, so the color quality isn’t exactly stellar, but it demonstrates what a typical radio studio would look like. (But then again, we’re no average radio station, are we?)

Plus Simone wants to plaster the walls with posters and stuff anyways. So why not paint it something normal and just plaster it over? I like the idea of gray because it matches with the equipment (most equipment is black or some tone of gray or silver), and we can paint a logo or hang something on the wall and it will most likely look good (since gray is a mixture of black and white, a black poster will look just as good as a white poster would)

Those are my plain and simple thoughts. Oh, and it SUCKS being sick! Being home sick! Grr.

So anyways, hopefully the people at Qwest will call me when I’m actually available (meaning here at home). Of course, if I’m not here, I guess I’ll just have to call them back!

In the meantime…hopefully I’ll be better tomorrow and be able to go back to school. Staying home all day is really, really, really boring.

And that reminds me, Justina dropped off our grant application, and apparently the people who work at the Bohemian Foundation are very quiet. Hmm……

We need to find:

• 3 “gold” sponsors
• 4 “silver” sponsors
• 5 “bronze” sponsors

per month we want to operate throughout 2008. Meaning that for March, we have to have at least 3 gold, 4 silver, or 5 bronze sponsors signed up. We can obviously have more, but essentially we have to produce $157 per month to operate (assuming we get our Bohemian grant).

Also, speaking of the grant application, I FAILED miserably at my task to get the application to the foundation for two reasons: a) first and most importantly, i FORGOT the application at school in my locker, b) I couldn’t FIND the building. Gah. So I’ll be scanning the pages with signatures and hand-written things and consolidating it all into a PDF document and e-mailing it to them. Or, if for some reason they don’t accept applications by e-mail, I’ll hand-deliver it immediately after school on Friday.

Thirdly, not sure if I should order the phone line tonight…I’ll probably do it tomorrow after school for sure…I just don’t want to spend too much money on a DSL modem and whatnot right away.

That’s all for now folks! Oh and we picked a color for the space…but Justina and my mom and myself have some issues with it being too dark. In a small room with no window, dark color wouldn’t be so good. Stay tuned for more on…the color ordeal (dramatic music plays)

EDIT: I almost forgot!  Stephanie Lacy has expressed interest in filling the Secretary / Treasurer position to replace Justina.  Now that J is VP and Simone is president, we need a secretary / treasurer.  I also like the idea of having an odd number of people on the board so we don’t have to have any tie-breakers.  So…in addition to more on…the color ordeal (same dramatic music as before), I will also have more on, STACY SAVES THE DAY!

An electrician is going out to our space to check the phone line on Monday (or, not really the phone line, but the jack that’s in the wall that goes out to the phone).  If it’s alive, we’ll be ordering our phone service on Monday after school.

Also, anyone who’d like to come see the space and give paint/color ideas should come after school on Monday anytime between 3:10 and, say, 4:15?  If you want to see it some time later than that, give me a call.  Otherwise, happy Friday/almost Saturday!

The Secretary of State approved the filings of Fort Collins Youth Broadcasting for charitable solicitations. Essentially, it’s a “license” to solicit for charitable donations in Colorado. Our registration number is 20083000774.

If you have any questions about our charity status, please contact us.

Signed the lease today.  I’m hoping to start moving stuff in on Monday, and we also get the keys on Monday.  I also have to remember to talk about the phone line and how that’s all going to work out.  Things are starting to happen people!

I’m thinking Simone will be promoted to president, Justina to vice-president, and we’ll accept new applicants for secretary / treasurer.

by Jake Wood 🙂

I just read an About.com article, under their non-profit section, about how non-profit organizations can use “social media” to help their cause.  It’s called “The Young Are Wired for Social Media: Is Your Nonprofit?”  I was drawn to read the article simply because of its title, containing many of the aspects of our organization.  First off, “young” is an obvious keyword.  Secondly, “social media” was something that caught my attention.

When I think of “social media,” I think of networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Bebo, and the many other sites available for the cause.  After giving it a lot of thought, I’m wondering how FCYB and its mission to start a media outlet for high school students fit in with social media.  In the About.com article, the author, Joanne Fritz, mentions a book called Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age, written by Allison H. Fine.  One specific aspect of Fine’s book that Fritz mentions is that generations born since 1980 “dislike and tune out traditional news media….They wish to be engaged, not talked at.”

I thought this was a very interesting statement, especially since we fall into this “net-gen” category.  If the “old” way of traditional one-way communication (broadcast) is a dying cause for the “net-gen” generation, what are we doing?  One may say we’re embracing the old method of communication and will get nowhere with our own generation.

However, what if we were to also accept and embrace the phrase “They wish to be engaged, not talked at.”  Our organization is currently debating between pursuing podcasts, Internet radio, AM radio, FM radio, or some combination of the above.  Personally, I think it’d be an incredible experience if we were to integrate the demands of the younger generation (direct engagement) with the reach and accessibility of a local broadcast medium (AM/FM), combined also with the flexibility, further reach, and tools available for use with Internet radio.

The real question is, how would we go about doing such integration?  For years, radio stations are broadcasting phone numbers and saying “Call us now!”  When I did my 2-hour job shadow in the morning hours at a radio station, they got one phone call.  Even then, it was a simple phone call, at the most it was 45 seconds long, and was a single-question, simple-answer call.   This is not the kind of engagement I want to see happen with our station.

Today, there are so many mediums of communication (e-mail, phone, IM, even those social networking sites each have their own communication tools) that it’d be difficult to organize the information shared between them and use this information in a productive manner.  However, this challenge doesn’t exist if you can’t empower your audience to participate in your attempts at creating an interactive broadcast medium.

So, my challenge for FCYB, and for myself in a sense, is to try to turn the traditional radio experience into something interactive and captivating.  While this was one of our goals from the very beginning, the article gives some specific insight into how people of our generation are perceiving the media.  I believe that our organization retains the insight, mind power, and spirit to do such a thing, and I can’t wait to see it happen.

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On a sidenote, here are some other interesting quotes from the article:

• “This group of young people does not like or understand hierarchy or bureaucracy.  It is, indeed, spirit crushing for them.  They expect transparency and honesty.”
• “Net-genners expect communication…Those who get it answer their e-mails within an hour.”
• “They do not understand ‘proprietary’ or secrecy of any kind.”
• “They make their own media.”
• “They are accustomed to being around people of all colors and persuasions.”
• “They desire not only openness but also authenticity.”
• “They will judge organizations and pass those judgments onto their massive networks.”
• “…they will be reluctant to fill out a membership application or give too much personal information to organizations”

Overall, I thought it was an interesting article.  You can find it here (will open in a new window).