The marketing committee was brainstorming
before Christmas about ways to promote AIS. One way that has
never been utilized in recent years is to get people
interested in a subject and shown them an example of
information about that subject that is available if you are
a member. Actually most of you are too young to remember
that AIS used to put out a limited number of reprints. For
those who know the modern world a reprints were common for
many journals way back in the 50’s and 60’s where an article
of interest was published as a separate unit and distributed
to interested parties on request. It was felt then that it
promoted the journal. Today all of this is done by e-mail. If one was interested
in promoting ones journal often reprints would be advertised
as available on request. This was very common in the
scientific community of which I was a part.
It was suggested that there could be a
variety of ways in which we could use this marketing
technique to promote the AIS bulletin by making available an
article from the past or even perhaps occasionally present
Bulletins. On further thought it was noted that presently
every use of a bulletin article requires a motion by someone
to the board and then board approval. For example I remember
the New Zealand Iris Society requesting the use of an
article to be reprinted in their project a few years ago.
Although it only took 15 minutes at a board meeting to
approve it who knows how long their request was submitted
before we had the meeting. I cannot remember the board ever
denying such approval. If we had five requests a year, that
would mean five e-mail discussions for two weeks each. We
would have to repeat the discussions that have already
occurred within committee again for the board. Al this work
just to get started on a promotion tends to kill any effort. I would like to make
the motion that the AIS president has the authority to
approve uses of Bulletin articles being reprinted.
--
Bob Pries
Zone 7a
Roxboro, NC
(336)597-8805