The Beacon

I was on the phone and generating emails all week. It’s like the outside world is simultaneously beckoning and mocking me. After I write this, I may even go for a walk.

If I have time.

My latest concerns are legion. In point form, my task list this week has been:

• Contact all of the contributors for permission to use their work in a sample copy. I’ve gotten confirmation from nearly everyone, so I’m pretty confident that we can go ahead and lay out the rough draft of issue one! I’m totally stoked to see what the mock up will look like
• Try and reach media outlets, to inform them of Flashlight’s existence. PR cold-calling was never my strong suit. Sometimes I get flabbergasted when the people on the other end sound sceptical [I’m sure they get a lot of duds, and they need to verify between shameless self-promotion and actual news items]. Nevertheless, I persevered and made contact with the CBC and the Ottawa Sun. Next up: 4 billion other media outlets!
• Formalize the Educator Resources. I’ve gotten hold of many of the scripts to be turned into Running Records for the enormous task of levelling the text for issue one and I’ve been consulting with some terrific teachers about developing the comprehension exercises and interactive lessons. I hope to have the outline for this finished and up on the site well before we ship issue one
• Try and nail down the French content. This has proven the most interesting of all of the talent scouting that Greg and I have done. Both of us are pretty Anglo, and despite the wealth of terrific French-language material out there, neither of us has met that many creators from la Belle Province. We’re promising 18 pages for issue one and we’re still combing the hills for seven more
• Finalize design changes for the company website. Jeff has come back with some dazzling design ideas for the site and claims he has the power to bring them into existence by the end of the weekend! If anyone can do that, it’s Jeff “the Machine” Wasson! I’m really excited by what I’ve seen so far
• Develop marketing strategies that produce results. What this entailed was essentially reading a lot of hyperbole from gas-bags and whittling it down to its core information. Many Sales Specialists who post on the web or write books are often pretty fatuous. Flip-side of that: Many Marketing Specialists have a lot of really fun [and sometimes impractical] ways of describing reality
• Obtain insurance quotations for the business. This includes Errors and Omissions & Directors and Officers coverage. Unfortunately there aren’t many companies to choose from. Luckily, they’re brokerages so they’ll be looking for the best rates on my behalf
• Crunch the boring numbers. Actually, this week it seemed a lot less wretched to do this, since we were applying those numbers to the Media Kit on the website. I made a pretty nice looking rate card for advertisers so of course; I had to populate it with the most current rates, which required me to do the tedious calculations to arrive at the right figure. Once that was done, that number would get plopped into place and voilà! The end result looks pretty sweet

All in all, I’ve had a pretty cool week talking to a lot of talented and interesting individuals. Tomorrow I imagine will be a lot more of the same, but at least I’ll get out in the afternoon for a few hours. If it’s nice out, I’m even having a picnic dinner!