Hello again, WESTAF Trustees:
This will be a relatively brief bi-weekly, as I am writing to you from Hong Kong a little bleary after nearly 17 hours in the air, en route to Bangkok and then Bhutan. Mostly though, I wanted to…
WELCOME NEW BOARD MEMBERS!
A warm welcome to Amber-Dawn Bear Robe, Lisa Becker and Paul Nguyen. We are so very excited to welcome you onto the WESTAF board of trustees! Thank you so much for agreeing to serve on this very special board with some other very remarkable people. If you’d like to learn a little more about your new fellow trustees, here are the candidate letters (and bios) from the recent board book. Really looking forward to working with you, and don’t hesitate to be in touch with any questions you might have. I’m going to be a bit hard to reach through November 11, but Executive and Board Coordinator Natalie Scherlong is at your service! I have also included below the last most recent bi-weekly update for your information and, as a reminder, there is a wealth of additional biweeklies and other important trustee-related information at our password-protected trustee site.
FOLLOW-UP FROM DENVER MEETING
It was an action-packed board meeting, and it looks like you all managed to escape Denver just in time before winter landed with a thud! Before too long, we’ll be following up with both trustees and staff to harvest the conversations and connections generated from our two days together. More to come soon! In the meantime, thanks to all of the trustees who wrote in to say how much they enjoyed the convening.
UPCOMING TRAVEL
I will be on the go a bit in November:
November 14-16: Attending the Creative Placemaking Summit in Phoenix.
November 19-20: Attending RAO (Regional Arts Organizations) meetings in Washington, DC.
November 21-23: Visiting Portland and presenting to the Oregon Arts Commission.

CAFE
Since the implementation of social bookmarking widget, AddThis, in mid October, users have shared 132 Call Detail pages—mostly as Facebook and email shares. We’re continuing to work on moving clients to the new service agreement; 44 out of 752 have been transitioned so far. We’ll also launch a search for the CaFÉ communication and support coordinator in mid-November to replace Lani Morris, who is moving to the WESTAF grants coordinator role.

CVSUITE
We’re continuing to work on a new design direction for the CVSuite Top 20 campaign in a way that strategically furthers the CVSuite mission. Our goal is to have a Top 20 list out by March Advocacy Day. Rebecca Scroggins from Mecklenburg County is waiting on a vote for 1/4 cent sales taxes to go to the arts; her renewal of CVSuite will be dependent on the vote outcome. We had a great conversation with the International Economic Development Council (IEDC); they are working with areas in recovery after major disasters to support economic growth, and specifically, they are working with the County of Hawai‘i, an area recovering after the Kīlauea eruption. The county is interested in gathering information on their creative economy and how to build growth there. 

GO SMART
All FY19 invoices have now been paid, and there have been a few questions about deferred payments, which is a sign of improved record keeping. The New Orleans Jazz Heritage Foundation had three demos but ultimately opted to go with another company. They were pleased with the GO Smart interface and said it “very user friendly and colorful, which is so different from all the other application forms,” however, they didn’t think they would be able to review forms in the way in which they were accustomed. We’re actively working to see if they reconsider.

PUBLIC ART ARCHIVE
Lori is preparing for part II of LYRASIS’ Community Collections Spotlight Webinar: Exploring the Public Art Archive. The presentation is scheduled for November 1, and over 50 public art professionals working in the humanities field are expected to attend. The team continues to work toward closing sales contracts for the PAA CMS (and potentially additional engagement tools) for Mural Arts Philadelphia and Santa Monica, CA. PAA is also finalizing the development of static urls for artwork detail pages so that users can link directly to individual artwork records, improving the user experience for all audiences.

ZAPP
Two ZAPP team members traveled to Alexandria, VA, to participate in an Art Festival Directors’ conference. During the two-day event, we conducted 11 one-on-one ZAPP sessions with current or prospective clients. Overall sentiment toward ZAPP was positive, and we received great feedback about new features. We also conducted the annual Oversight Committee meeting, where the group approved the FY20 annual operating budget and the partner payout—of which WESTAF (at 81% ownership) receives in November or December; the WESTAF payout amount in 2019 is $283K.
That’s our abbreviated biweekly for now.
Thank you for all you do!
Christian