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Meeting of 15 February 2013
Present: Janet
Dauphney, Loreto Doyle, Michée Lemieux, Anne-Claude Pépin,
Angelo Spinazzola, Tom Wilson, Director of Tourism and Recreation,
Victoria County
Regrets:
Jitka Zgola
- Call to Order
- We met at the Dancing Moose Cafe at 10:00 am.
At our invitation, Tom Wilson (who lives in Jersey Cove, and so is a
resident of SABDA's catchment area) gave us information regarding the
County's tourism funding programmes as they may apply to our project.
We also updated him on the status of the project, which was originally
slated to be built last spring, and for which we received funding from
the County.
- Once Tom had described available programmes, and
given us some ideas about how to improve our upcoming product, he
left the meeting, and we discussed his ideas and suggestions.
- Project Funding
- Tom described the County's tourism goals
and related funding programmes. He reminded us that the County's
year-end is March 31, and he talked about what we might do with
the remaining available funding for the 2012-13 year.
- There is a pool of about $3,000 remaining
in their Destination Marketing fund from which the
County is willing to fund 100% of our costs in this area, provided
we can demonstrate an in-kind contribution from ourselves.
Acceptable application of this funding includes contracting
someone to build and maintain a social-media presence for our
new web site. If our site is successful, we may not require so
much of this in the future (our "advertisers" —local groups
and businesses who take a paid page on the site—will certainly
generate traffic to and from the site, for example), but to
make the site successful, we must publicise it, and
develop enough interest in it that other sites will
link to it.
- We agreed that it will be beneficial to locate
someone who knows and/or cares about our community, who
also understands how to make excellent use of social media, to
create and maintain regular activity on Facebook and Twitter,
and also to update our web site when necessary.
- There is some money available for anyone
interested in buying advertising in the Doers and Dreamers Guide.
The County only funds about 5% of total costs. Tom mentioned that,
where the Province used to print 750,000 copies of the Guide, it
only does about 250,000 now, suggesting that people no longer make
as much use of printed destination advertising. We agreed that we
have no interest in getting into the Guide at this point.
- Two other funds currently exist.
- The County offers 50/50 funding for capital
projects. We don't have any project currently in train that requires
investment in capital assets.
- As well, there is 50/50 funding (still some money
in the 2012-13 pool) for creating brochures or maps, developing a
web site (this is the funding for which we successfully applied last
year), and doing on-line marketing. We looked at these, and think
that (provided the funding continues) we may wish to produce
location spotting maps for use at the new Cabot Trail info kiosks
later this year or next year, but we are not ready to consider this
now. As well, we agreed that we will want to place ads leading back
to our site on other "appropriate" sites, and possibly invest in
schemes like Google Adwords, but do not think we have
time to consider how and where we might do this just now.
- After discussion, we agreed to focus our efforts
on applying for the Destination Marketing funding at
this time.
- Action: Loreto
will send an expression of interest in the available funding to Tom
in the next few days. She will also begin looking for a person who
can provide the necessary skill in creating Facebook and Twitter
activity for us, and who also has local knowledge/interest.
- Web Site Project Status
- Tom also advised that we should submit a status
report on our project to date, setting out progress and financial status
to satisfy the County's requirement for reporting on use of funding.
- Action: Loreto will,
with input from Jitka, create and submit the required status report
before March 31l.
- We briefly talked about what else might be done
to improve Mike Targett's demo web site, speed up results from him, and
increase interest among community members. We talked about presenting
information about, and perhaps even a demo of, the new site at our
upcoming AGM.
- We agreed that we would wish to preview and
approve any content that Mike includes in the demo before it is
presented to the public, and confirmed that it is not possible for
site content to be released to the Internet before we have so
approved it—we don't yet have a hosting company.
- SABDA is to supply all content for the web site.
So far, we have provided Mike with a good range of photographs,
as well as a list of links to community groups and businesses, and
several sample "days", or itineraries. However, much more content
must be developed. We would like to have some available for the
demo site. We agreed that those of our board who have active
businesses will supply "people pages" content for the demo site, so
that we have something to show to businesses and community
groups while they consider signing up for the site.
- Action:
Loreto will go through previous minutes and notes, as well as
the RFP for the site, and create and distribute a list of content
types that we can produce or suggest to Mike. She will ask Mike
whether he will be prepared to demonstrate the draft web site
at our AGM in March.
- Action:
Anne-Claude will firm up a new date for our AGM with Jamie as soon
as possible, so that we can ensure Mike's availability to present, and
do a bit of advertising to the community to get some attention for
the AGM.
- Action:
Angelo will begin to compile a list of businesses from the base of
Smokey to the Exit 11 turn-off. We will eventually approach these
businesses individually, to discuss their interest in buying space
on our site.
- Next Board Meeting
- We did not set a date for our next business meeting. We
will do that after our upcoming AGM.
- Meeting Adjourned at 12:30 pm.
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