Summer/Fall ’20 Participants
See video of our participants brainstorming a special introductory series they plan to host. It’s an opportunity for readers of our magazine to take a deeper dive into the wellness, art, food, and fashion areas our participants work with day in and day out.
Pre-Launch Meetings (condensed)
On August 8th and 9th, 2020, a number of the zine participants meet virtually as a group for the first time since interviewing with Slow + Sustain Magazine in a collection of Q&A’s. The group takes the time to think about how to engage with their audiences upon printing and publishing their content to share with other women; readers who may also be interested in starting new businesses or sustaining their existing ones.
Attended by: Megan Connolly; Michelle Wen; Maggie Fearn; Ann Tham; Ujjwala Singh; Lisa Dosson; Selina Sanders; Rebecca Redondo.
Facilitator: Jessica Lo.
Detailed Meeting Notes:
[08/08/20] Outline of discussion & resolution: Individual articles ready for soft-launch on 08/16 (disseminate initially as a locked area); requests for improvement on table of contents layout – make similar to WsFH by including images from articles; discuss pricing and access passcodes for different levels of subscription, similar to Patreon’s model; ethical tactics for fund-raising; set up a calendar for one-time or continuing events; cross-marketing; printer and discounts; choose between high quality Hong Kong printer and blurb.com (decide that lower quality for a periodical is acceptable vs. a more nostalgic piece); ship from LA hub (solution: use USPS media rates to redirect domestic U.S. orders); sales directly from Blurb include $1 profit; promotion idea (Megan) to do a “giveaway” on Instagram; connect with women’s organizations like WE NYC (https://we.nyc/); promotion idea (Michelle) to post frames of all participants on Instagram and include videos or screen recordings; mission statement; emphasis on inclusivity and community during pandemic (presented as a “pandemic production”); website pending; visitor experience; user flow; workshops with interactivity; brainstorm workshop ideas; livestreamed Zoom meetings recorded and archived for subscribers; treat zine like a business directory made up of women founders/co-founders; marketing tool to promote our participants! Workshops but also panel discussions as an alternative to the skill-share format of interacting with our audience; story-telling around each business; opportunity to invent new offerings for a pooled audience at introductory/group rates (being sensitive about overall reductions in disposable income across the board during a pandemic).
[08/09/20] Outline of discussion & resolution: Soft launch for Sunday 08/16 so everyone can see their individual articles online and proofread/approve; thoughts about locked area with nominal fee to articles (later decision to make these online articles free); Rebecca suggests showing cover and table of contents to help sell the zine and using a survey style tool like google docs to find out how much time everyone can put into this project (visibility to thoughts about similar themes so we can link common threads); website publish date is 08/16/20; deadline for print is 08/24/20; manual process to update the table of contents layout as a last step; schedule time for either individual workshops or event panel discussions; discuss workshop ideas; pitch possible collaborations (aka panel discussions) versus solo ones. See unlocked areas regarding our September and October 2020 offerings for final groupings.
Full-length unedited videos available to participants only.
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