- [Audrey] All right, this is the CDCI communications update
for the fall retreat in 2022.
Now, I'm only gonna have 10 minutes at the fall retreat
to go over everything update-wise
and there are three big updates that I wanna share with you.
One is an update on the annual priorities
and where we got to with them as of last year.
Two is that we have new CDCI WordPress sites
that are now available
for all project personnel and their projects,
as many as you need,
and that has some policy implications.
And we also have a new CDCI Communications Manual
and Accessibility Policy,
which is gonna change the way
that we approach communications moving forward.
I'm Audrey Homan.
You can reach me at C, as in cat,
H-O, M, as in mother, A, N as in Nancy @uvm.edu.
That email address is not intuitive.
It is just UVM's magic.
Reach out to me over email
and you will get a one-day response
as much as humanly possible.
If you have something
you need to have happen on the same day,
you need a response that same day,
come find me on Teams using the chat function.
I don't use telephones
because my hearing loss is fairly extensive,
but I love videoconferencing
'cause you can turn on the captions.
I generally work remotely
and I will try as much as possible
to fit my hours to your needs.
We all have families,
we all have households and vibrant exterior lives,
so I'm happy to work with your schedule
to make a better schedule meeting happen.
And moving forward, I'm gonna send out weekly updates
via the Communications channel in the CDCI all-team
inside our Microsoft Team's ecosphere.
I do also have six dogs
and I am told that I make amazing enchiladas.
Now, this presentation,
there's a lot of information to cover.
That's why you are currently watching it
as a captioned screencast
or you're reading it as a human-readable transcript.
We don't expect you to take it all in today.
But the thing that I feel really strongly about
is that if you don't get a chance
to ask your particular question during the fall retreat
or you don't feel comfortable asking your question
during the fall retreat,
come find me afterwards.
There are no unimportant questions.
If you are thinking the question,
someone else might be thinking the question,
and it's important
that we're all on the same page moving forward.
Now, starting with our annual priorities from FY22,
that was last year,
one of the priorities was to create project brand videos.
We currently have 11 of the 20 projects
have brand videos.
They're small. They're short.
They're amazing.
Everyone's done some amazing work
summarizing what their project does in plain language
and sharing them out.
And we've been lucky enough to have ASL interpretation
for all of the brand videos we've recorded so far.
We're also working with projects
to determine where and when translation
into additional languages,
languages other than the default of English,
which is what we are recording in,
are necessary for brand videos.
We're going to keep on working on those brand videos
throughout this year
to make sure every project winds up with one.
Another priority was to update all project websites.
We are currently at 17 project websites out of 20
that have been updated.
The last remaining three are on my shortlist for fall 2022.
We additionally were able to overhaul
the entire CDCI website.
The research section. The academic section.
There's now a brand-new news and events section.
And we did it largely with the help of our CAC,
who provided some very useful feedback,
not just to us, but to the UVM Web Team.
And in fact, some of the things
that the CAC brought up about our website,
we were able to present that to the UVM Web Team
and create changes in the UVM Web Team's policies
for the whole entire campus
to make UVM websites more broadly accessible.
We also launched a podcast, "CDCI Connects."
Right now, the podcast is available on our YouTube channel.
We had six episodes in the first season
and we're currently slated to release double that number
for the second season.
The first four episodes have already been recorded.
The first two episodes of this season
have been already released.
Again, you can find those on our YouTube channel,
and moving forward, you'll find them
as part of our CDCI resource database.
What we did is we wanted to launch the podcast
in what's called a soft launch
to make sure that the project
is sustainable for us at the Center,
to make sure that we weren't gonna be,
you know, just throwing out a bunch of products
and working with people that we care about dearly
and then not being able to move forward
to continue to tell these stories.
So this year, we are gonna be available as an audio format
using the larger podcast subscription platforms,
such as Spotify and iTunes and Podbean.
So we wanted to thank everyone
who has already worked with us to produce episodes
in the first and second seasons.
We were running at about 40% of our guests
in the first season
were self-advocates or family members of self-advocates.
There was a lot of overlap with CDCI staff
leaning in to do some of the interviewing.
If you are a project
or a project director, project personnel,
if you're involved in research here at the Center,
we still have a number of spots available
for the second season
and we would love to have you come on the podcast
and talk about what you do.
Or, as you are creating events or creating conferences,
please reach out to the folks
that you are hosting at your events and your conferences,
your keynote speakers, your presenters in general,
and see if we can bring them on the podcast.
We are lucky enough to be able to offer a $60 stipend
to self-advocates and family members of self-advocates
for appearing on our podcast.
We are trying to pay folks fairly for their work.
Wait, what happened to life histories?
Right?
So here's the scoop on life histories.
Life histories is 95% produced
by Green Mountain Self-Advocates
and they took a couple years off from life histories.
So we respected their decision in this matter.
And moving forward with this year,
they've returned to life histories
and they've officially contracted with us
to produce two new life histories this year
in addition to our podcast episodes.
So we are incredibly excited
to see what they are able to produce this year.
Another one of the annual priorities last year
was to create a resource database for CDCI.
And I've pulled together a quick timeline
to show the general phases
of creating the resource database.
We came up with the idea and formalized it
in September of 2021.
Presented it to all of the project directors then.
Everyone was really excited about it.
We weren't able to start building it until January of 2022.
The build phase continued through May of 2022.
At the beginning of June,
we were able to get in our early adopters.
Those were a number of projects
who were willing to play with us in the sandbox.
They were very forgiving when things broke
or they wanted to create different models of things
that we had not discussed previously.
It was a lot of fun to work with a number of these folks.
Specifically shouting out to Maureen Nevers at AAC,
the CDCI CARES Team,
Supported Employment and the UVM Autism Collaborative,
Vermont Continence Project,
all of whom leaned in and asked a bunch of great questions.
So going into September,
we can finish building the resource database.
The thing that has to be finished up at this point
is we have to take all of the project website streams
and knit them together
into one CDCI organizational stream
so that what you wind up with is a searchable database
where people who are searching for resources
are able to search across all of the teams
who are contributing resources to databases.
And the launch of that knitted stream
is currently set for November of 2022.
This means that CDCI WordPress sites are now available.
Every CDCI project can host their own WordPress site
on CDCI's server space.
They are UVM server space
that we are able to host our own WordPress builds,
which means that we can add different themes
or different plugins.
Each CDCI project can have multiple sites
to address different needs
because they all will feed into the same
CDCI resource database.
We will work with you
on any additional plugins you might need.
We will work with you
on any additional formats you might need.
CDCI is modeling specific accessibility
and translation plugins
for the UVM Web Team and IT leadership.
There's a lot of discussion around accessibility
and WordPress provides a lot of tools
that are useful in this regard
and we want to be able to show
the UVM Web Team and IT leadership
a demonstration of what these can look like in action.
An important note here
is that these WordPress sites are designed
to replace existing CDCI Google Sites
and take the place of additional ones being created.
UVM specifically refuses to allow us to create Google Sites.
There are concerns around the legality of them.
There are concerns around the accessibility of them.
There are concerns around the security of them.
And so existing CDCI Google Sites
need to be retired by October 31st, 2022.
That's coming up fairly shortly.
But the idea is that if you have a CDC Google Site,
I can work with you to transfer your resources
into a CDCI WordPress site that is hosted at UVM
or find additional solutions for you.
Some of these WordPress sites are simple resource databases,
other host discussion forums.
They have various levels of security
and public visibility to them.
There is really a lot of flexibility that we have
in building dynamic websites for projects
that projects can update themselves,
and that's kind of exciting for everyone involved.
Brand new this fall is we have a CDCI Communications Guide.
And, all right, it's 20 pages long.
Resist the freakout. Resist the freakout.
It's 20 pages long,
but if you want to read the whole thing, more power to you.
I wrote the whole thing, so I've read the whole thing.
But it's really designed to be searchable.
So when you have a question in the moment,
you can search on a specific topic or a specific keywords
and it'll take you to a section
that is exactly about the topic that you're looking for.
Among the other things that the Communications Guide covers
are types of communication support,
how to get communication support.
There's a guide to media and website production
and there's all about fonts, colors, logos,
and document templates.
There's a style guide.
So we've tried to anticipate any questions
that folks might have right off the bat,
but we will be updating it
on a regular basis moving forward.
Some of the services you'll be able to read about
and find out how to get are video production,
Drupal website updates, WordPress sites and support,
checking out multimedia equipment.
We have multimedia kits for doing field recordings
that you are able to borrow.
You can get accessibility audits of documents
and other websites, presentations.
You can coordinate news and media coverage
through the CCDI Communications Guide.
You can find out how that works.
You can find out what UVM's policies are
around talking to the media.
And you can also figure out how to get event support
through the guide.
Where does this beautiful guide live?
So it lives on Microsoft Teams inside the CDCI All team
in the communications channel under Files.
It's actually pinned to the top of the screen
under Files there.
CDCI also has a new Accessibility Policy.
It's brand new and it's in draft format,
which means we are asking for feedback from staff
by October 31st
on this draft of an Accessibility Policy.
It covers accessibility for Drupal sites.
It covers accessibility for WordPress sites.
It covers accessibility for documents.
It covers accessibility for events
and presentations and flyers and brochures
and anything else you can think of.
We hope we've gotten it all,
but we clearly will not have gotten it all,
so that's why we're asking for feedback from all CDCI staff.
Providing feedback is not mandatory,
but this is your opportunity to weigh in
and make sure that your voice is heard.
So we're hoping folks can do that by 10/31,
by this coming Halloween, 2022.
You can find the draft of the CDCI Accessibility Policy
on Microsoft Teams
in the CDCI All team
under the Communications channel,
again, in the Files section.
It is not pinned,
but it is one of only two loose files
hanging about in the files area.
It is called the CDCI Accessibility Policy.
I just covered a ton of information.
We haven't even gotten to our annual priorities
for this coming year,
which are a whole other democratic process
we're gonna launch.
So I'm sure you have questions.
I would love to hear your questions
'cause it's pretty daunting
trying to work all this stuff out
without you weighing in
and letting me know how things are going,
how things are working out for you.
So if you have questions,
please feel free to ask them as much as possible
at the fall retreat.
But when we run out of time for questions,
please come find me on Teams using the chat function.
We can jump into a videoconferencing session together,
we can jump into Zoom,
or you can email me your questions
or we can grab some time at Mann Hall outside.
I am masked,
and so I ask that if we're meeting inside,
you be masked as well.
Or it is gorgeous outside, y'all.
It's fall in Vermont.
There's a number of beautiful picnic tables
and additional open areas that we can hang out
and chat face-to-face outside if that's your preference.
So you have a number of different options:
chat in Microsoft Teams, email, videoconferencing,
or we can meet face-to-face.
I just wanna know your questions.
I'm really hopeful that we can have a stellar year
for communications this year.
I'm incredibly impressed with all of the work
that the projects did last year,
all of the passion that everybody brought to their work,
and I can't wait to see what this year brings.
Thanks for listening.