You’re welcome to join us if you can do one of the jobs below.
THE REWARDS: Each working volunteer earns a spot in our organizing committee, a vote in our major decisions and a blog on our website, which has been averaging about 120 visitors a day during the last couple months, and rising. Members are totally responsible for the contents of their blogs, and can post prose, poems, photos and YouTube videos, all automatically shared to any other social media selected -- Facebook, Twitter, etc. Thanks to Erik Martinez Richards for paying for a website upgrade, bloggers can see how many visitors are coming to each posting on the blog, where they came from and what search words they used, if that was their route. These volunteer blogs should deepen the website itself even further, attracting more visitors.
POSITION #1: INTERNET MANAGER, which would mostly involve constructing postings out of incoming material, basically keeping the website and Facebook page up to date and in good shape.
POSITION #2: VIDEOGRAPHER. This volunteer must own a hand-held video camera. Eric Martinez Richards, our chief photographer, wants to expand his department with videos of all the readers, featured and open mic. Individual videos of the readers would be posted on YouTube, and from there onto our website. We would have a special page for videos of each month’s readings. Of the 15 readers at our last reading/open mic on June 5th, there were at least 10 whom some attendees would have loved to see again to further digest their poems. A poem read once is difficult to get because the mind wanders, but if it can be watched two or three times, it can really be appreciated. Also many people who can’t make it to our readings can watch the videos. And we have many visitors, a growing number, from beyond London, even from outside Canada, who of course can’t come. The videos would also form an archive of our events. Years from now some of the early readers may obtain notoriety, and fans may one day wish to watch their early readings. We already have a couple open mic readers who seem to be on their way.
POSITION #3: SECOND STILL CAMERA. This volunteer would need a good still camera, and would be expected to replace Eric Martinez Richards when he can’t make it to an event. Also the person would work together with Eric after the events, helping to crop, brighten, etc, the photos and post them to the websites.
POSITION #4: EBOOK EDITOR. This is a bit more tentative than the other positions. We have an idea that possibly we could produce an ebook at the end of each year featuring the year’s poets. However this may not be possible, costwise, or whatever. We haven’t really looked into it yet. But if anyone knows about it, or wants to look into it a bit (google it) and finds it can be done cheaply somehow, we would then be happy to make them a member and get it going.
These four positions are for poets or poetry aficionados. Volunteers must have two qualities: They must be able to do the task well, at least after a short learning period. And they must be very responsible, which means the task must be fulfilled properly whenever it is needed to be done, unless there is some specific reason that it can’t be and other arrangements are made in advance.
Please email Stan at burfield@live.com