Executive Director's Report to Council 03/08/01

INTRODUCTION

The Office has worked steadily in the time since the last Council meeting, with Beverley "holding the fort" while I was on holiday. I'd like to thank the new Chair for taking on the task of maintaining the liaison with the advertising company in my absence as this added to his already high workload.

All Action items were completed in the week before I went away except approaching John Hine about the Addendum to Society documents. I will action this next week.

REBRANDING AND LOGO COMPETITION

After the AGM adopted the new name "InternetNZ" for rebranding, it decided that rather than engaging a designer to create the new logo, the Society should hold a public competition (AGM1-54). As a part of the decision the AGM determined that the competition should be completed within two months of the AGM, i.e. September 22. The Budget set for the Rebranding process was $50,000. The work to create the competition was delegated to the Executive Director as an operational matter, in line with the rest of the re-branding process undertaken to date. As a matter of courtesy and information the Executive Director provided the Council with a copy of the Design Competition proposal on July 13, supplying answers to questions which were likely to arise (copy at end of report).

The Logo Competition will be formally launched next Monday August 6. After consultation with the Chair, the closure date has been extended by one week to August 29 in order to maximise entries. This means that the formal launch of the new brand will now take place on October 3 2001. I attach a copy of the new timeline and a copy of the ad at the end of this report.

I understand that some of the Councillors wish to discuss the allocation of expenditure , and I attach another copy of the Budget.

The website prepared by the advertising company will be labeled as an InternetNZ site in the URL. They will provide the secure site with the Competition Q&A, Design Brief, Terms & Conditions, and the entry forms. If we had full-time technical staff we could have handled this aspect ourselves, but we do not.

The advertising company - after speaking with three design/advertising companies I selected Rob Grindlay of Fruitful Communications to assist me with running the competition and I am very pleased with the work produced to date. I attach a copy of their 'credentials' for your information.

Judging Process - as promised I also provided a recommendation for judging the competition in my July 13 email. Rob Grindlay has suggested that more senior design people would be likely to take the competition seriously if we were to have a respected senior designer on the panel, and he has offered to find such a person. He believes that they would be willing to participate on a voluntary basis. I therefore RECOMMEND

"THAT the judging for the logo design competition process be as follows:

1. The first round of judging to comprise a straw poll of all financial members of InternetNZ based on all submitted designs.

2. The top ten choices are referred to a judging panel comprised of the following people:

• The Chair of InternetNZ
• The Executive Director of InternetNZ
• One Councillor of InternetNZ who currently works in the design/communications industry
• Two ordinary members of InternetNZ - preferably with experience of the media/design/communications industry, and preferably representing a younger age group than the rest of the panel
• Rob Grindlay, Fruitful Communications
• Senior Industry Designer (as recommended by Rob Grindlay)"

I suggest that the two ordinary members be the two who volunteered at the AGM - Jonathan Ah Kit and Brendan Sue. Council will need to decide which Councilor to choose.

INTERNETNZ.ORG.NZ

The return of the domain name internetnz.org.nz looked to be promising. Mr Murray Potts had picked up the name when Bruce Simpson did not renew it. I phoned Mr Potts in Taiwan and discussed the issue with him. After consulting with the Chair, I offered to 'swap' one of the other names I registered in the lead up to the rebranding decision, and Mr Potts [requested compensation. (actual email removed to confidential section - E.D.)]

The Chair declined to purchase the domain name from Mr Potts, and there the matter rests.

Technical Manager

The replacement for the Technical Manager is in hand. On the basis of his experience with us, John Vorstermans has recommended that we restructure the job into two parts. One part-time contract position will be for the webpages and the mailing lists, and one for maintenance of the network. I am meeting with John on Monday to finalise the recommendations. In the meantime, John has been helping out on an ad hoc basis.

Alternative technical arrangements

In the normal course of events I would not be unavailable at the same time as there was no-one other than myself on staff to do the technical work. A process is underway to ensure that there is voluntary back-up in the unlikely event the situation arises again.

Sue Leader
Executive Director

From: "Sue Leader" <exe.dir@isocnz.org.nz>

To: isocnz-council-announce@isocnz.org.nz

Send reply to: exe.dir@isocnz.org.nz

Priority: normal

Subject: [i-c-announce] Logo Competition Marketing Plan

Date sent: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 18:00:25 +1200

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Greetings

Please find attached the high-level plan for the Logo DesignCompetition. In my absence the Chair will act as contact point with Rob, however you will see from the timelines that the launch will occur when I get back. With the AGM decision to have a competition rather than paying for a designer, we have had to shift the way we do the promotion of the new brand. Much of the Competition promotion is aimed at publicising the new new brand at the same time as getting the widest possible publicity for the competition itself. The budget for the exercise is within the budget allocation, however I expect that there will be questions. I'll try to answer them now.

1. Robert Grindlay is a partner in Promotus Advertisng Agency. He also has a smaller agency which specialises in non-profits and SME's - this is Fruitful Communications.

2. Budget - there are two allocations for 'Media Placement Costs" - I have no doubt that some Councilors will feel this is too high, despite being in Budget. I would urge you to consider this carefully as we constantly pull back budget in this area (the 'do it yourself' approach). I believe the results speak for themselves. Having said that, Rob will be working hard to reduce that figure as much as possible by selling the concept of who were are to editors etc, rather than relying as we do currently on friendly [sic] reporters. The intention is to get free placements/banner ads where possible. (BTW - it is this one to one approach that the ad industry means by "telemarketing activity"!) I note that the deadline for booking copy in the print version of Netguide is this afternoon and I have authorised just under $1K for a 1/3 page ad. I believe Netguide is the most effective of the print media to reach the wider, but internet-aware, people. This issue is on the streets on August 6, which is when the competition launch is live. - Website costs - two thirds of this figure is for the content, and the content is primarily the design brief for competitors. The design brief has to be written anyway. We *could* put this on our site, but for the amount of money involved for the the web-side given John will be gone by then, I recommend accepting this. The intent is to provide a completely new area, which wil act as a test area just as we did with CatalystIT for the survey redesign. This will be password protected.

JUDGING

We propose a two or three step process -

- all logos on webiste when competition closes

- voting mechanism for straw poll for all members

- top ten choices submitted to a judging panel for assessment of

sutiablility across all media

- EITHER - the judging panel makes final choice

- OR - the judging panel picks the three best and the members

or the Council vote for final design.

This will allow all needs to be met - participative and useful, workable design.

I suggest that the Judging Panel be fairly small - perhaps the Chair, one Councilor, the ED, Rob Grindlay, and one or two members (I have two members who volunteered after the call for volunteers at the AGM).

INTERNET.ORG.NZ

I have contacted the nameholder of the above name, and am negotiating for it's return. I believe this will be successful.

INTERNET.ORG

Despite trying via NSI and MelbourneIT I have not been able to register this name (they don't like my credit card - despite Amex saying there's no problem). I've asked John to go ahead and do this.

<sigh>

Cheers
Sue

Sue Leader - Executive Director
InternetNZ
Voice: +64-4-472-1600 Fax: +64-4-472-1207
Level 4, Hibernian Building, 89 Willis Street (P.O.Box 11-881) Wellington

http://www.isocnz.org.nz

InternetNZ DESIGN COMPETITION & IMPLEMENTATION TIMELINE (AS AT 30/07/2001)

TO BE ADDED TO PRINTED COPY

1. Budget
2. Ad copy
3. Credentials

© 2001 InternetNZ
Last updated 6 August 2001