Joint Telecon Outreach and PR Committees
Cayuga Lake Watershed Network
March 1, 2007

Present: Sharon Anderson, Mary Seitz, Roxy Johnston, Judy Pipher

Sharon hosted a joint telecon of the OC and M/PR committees to begin discussion of improvements to the website. She asked us to consider:
1. Broad goals of the website? If visitors could take away only one thing what
would it be? Second thing?
2. How does it fit with the organization’s broader goals?
3. Primary audience? (Order members, funders, public, elected officials. Government employees, students k-12, students college, other water resources professionals.)
4. What do top 2-3 audiences want from website?
5. Given audience, what we want them to know, what they want to know, specific measurable, achievable, relevant, time specific objectives?
6. Content as a result.
7. Organizational/navigational structure to achieve objectives?
8. Frustrations and difficulties using our website
9. What should be changed or lost?
10. What preserved.

Web tips:
1. People skim the web, reduce content in half
2. Meaningful sub-headings
3. Bulleted lists, small number of bullets
4. Inverted pyramid: Most important first, followed by longer, more specific detail
5. One idea per paragraph

We had only half an hour to discuss these issues, as a precursor to meeting at Julie’s at 10am Sunday March 11. Note that clocks spring forward at 2am Sunday. Therefore we barely got started and will be looking at a computer screen once we begin Sunday. Only items 1 and 3, and 4 from the first list above were addressed, but other items entered the discussion and are not called out by number.

1. Purpose:
The website provides a source of information – both on the watershed and basic watershed resources, as well as Watershed Network programs. We discussed the home page – generally committees as well as other people Mary contacted to review the website, liked “What’s New”, since it contained little, easily digested, tidbits. Also items that are timely such as the current link to de-icing information are good. Water quality should be of interest to all.

3. Who reach:
Most of our discussion centered on this topic. Friends interested in environment, not professionals are a main focus - need links to more, easily obtained information on the health of the lake and watershed. Information on events and annoucements that disappear from the home page need to somehow be made permanent and accessible.

It was commented that there was nothing for the average citizen – need to come up with a way that the average citizen can learn more (that person might go to Lake and Streams). For example, “the wet spot in your yard” might be a title that means more than “rain garden” to visitors to our website.. The message needs to be “Save yourself money and time” and making small changes can have a positive effect on the watershed

Other examples for the average citizen include tips on: Car maintenance, leaves, grass clippings. And it needs to be pointed out that farm-friendly practices not only help the watershed, they also save money in the long run – back to the theme “Save yourself money and time”.

There is still need to define our primary audience(s). “The general public” or “people who are not water professionals” is still too general. Sharon illustrated this by identifying three subsets of the “general public.” The most readily available information on the website would be different for each of these groups of people:
1) people who consider themselves environmentalist but know little about water issues
2) people who are well educated but for whom environmental protection is not a priority. For example, a person who reaches our website when poking around for information because the family will be renting a lakeshore cottage for a vacation.
3) people who read or hear news about a hot topic such as water chestnut invasion or Halfman’s presentation and want to get more information.

4. What want people to get from it:
· It was noted that regarding the program by Prof. Halfman in February, a TV interview that Sharon did was good; however the way it was shown on TV did a disservice to water quality, although the newspaper did a reasonable job. The implication in the TV piece was that “farms are bad” if they do not implement friendly practices. Should the website clarify and comment on local reporting? Is there any way to prep. TV commentators as well as print journalists to make sure they don’t misrepresent us, or put the watershed in a bad light?
· State of the Lake (Hard to find information on this on the website)
· Water quality (Hard to find information on this on the website)

To add navigational ease to finding out about issues such as those above, Resources needs to be broken down a bit.

Current vs. Long term items need to be separated.

Watershed
ð Lake, Tributaries needs better definition and links.

Collapse administrative information about the organization such as personnel and meetings under Network tab.

Focus on information

Mary thought we should use “New language” from the “Balanced scorecard”.

Submitted by Judy Pipher with modifications by Roxy Johnston and Sharon Anderson