Hello and welcome to today's business skill webcast creating compelling content for the online world My name is Vesna. I'm from Redback and I'll be a host for today's session When it comes to webinars and webcasts many of us get so caught up in the delivery and technology that we neglect to think about the Content what else can we showcase? How can we get everyone engaged and how do we improve on our series today? We're joined by Sarah Gonzalez and Michael Bunker from Redback. They're here to shed some light on everything online How are you both today? Good. Thank you, Vesna. Very good. Thank you. Awesome. So first I'll turn to you, Sarah So when it comes to creating content for the online world, how are we going? Well, I think one thing Michael and I spoke about before we actually got on here is the fact that Clearly by what everyone's saying they know how to run webinars and they know how to get people online But then when it comes to actually rolling out a series and making sure they're engaging and making sure that they're actually Getting some return on investment. We do get a little bit stuck So what I want to start with today just to actually prove that I know what I'm saying and throughout the registration process You would have noticed that we asked you all what are you hoping to gain from joining today's event? And here's what we came up with so we've got people wanting to improve how they tell stories People wanting to make webinars more than just a Q&A session So it's about that content getting people really engaged and then inspiring them to take action no matter what they do One thing I love to hear is when people say ensuring others participate in online communities Yes, so we're starting already to hear these words online communities nurturing techniques So people are running webinars fine, but we do want to take it that one step. That's what we've sort of been saying Haven't we it is exactly what you said before like people know what a webinar is and they're more confident with the technology So the platforms have been around for a few years They're comfortable with it or they have a provider that is managing that for them So they don't have to stress about that and they can really focus on the presentation and their community and what they're looking to do And a lot of people are asking it's like how can we stand out? Yes, the market is flooded it is and that's a great thing that webinars are day to day part of people's marketing content And they're planning everything, but you do need to learn how to stand out and that's what we're seeing from today So just further to you Vesna I think today is really about going back to step one going back to basics and talking about the content that we're producing How we make it effective online how we get our programs up and running and then how we can nurture and build communities afterwards So like we said, we're doing them well, but let's take it to the next level Yeah, and people are starting to look at things a little bit differently as well Like the data that people have before they were concentrating on the live, but once you get more and more data What are you doing with it? Yeah, we'll tackle that so we can see all the wonderful things that we can do with all of this content All these great objectives, but when it actually comes to creating the content, how does it all work? Well, first of all I just want to give an overview as to how we all see content will be creating and what we've always said is there's two different types of There's two reasons why we actually develop online content, whether it's through a webinar or a webcast So the first is educational content. So that is your professional development You're online training getting people to learn online getting someone who's an expert in their field online Educating people whether it is for compulsory points or whether it is just that online training internal or external And then the second in is that marketing concept So it's about running an event to generate leads to be part of your content marketing plan To be a thought leader to help you with your branding or as you can see there everything from product launches to even onboarding processes So people know all these different reasons and these different applications why they should be creating content But let's just switch it on its head and let's just say this at the end of the day. It's all about education Yes, so I don't care if people are running events and their end goal is to convert someone make them become a customer We have to start thinking of that as a long-term goal And the short-term goal is to really just educate people online So whether your return investment is going to be a dollar figure at the end of the day Whether it's going to get to convert people into non paying advocates or members to get them to actually pay And be part of something it's all about that educational factor and making sure you educate people through a process Don't just run one event and then expect people to convert and become a customer or a member or something like that afterwards Exactly right. So we're seeing people they'll jump into webinars because they need to do webinars But they don't give themselves a true shot at it because you can't measure the return on investment from one event Yes A lot of people get disheartened by that at the beginning of it thinking that okay I'm going to invest all this time as one live event, but that's not going to build your community You haven't proven yourself by doing just one event You need to show that you're committed to it They're advertising when you're marketing to the same people each time and they're also trying to get new people in each one It's only way if you can start building your audience and community will you actually get a true measure of your success? Yeah, most definitely and Sarah you mentioned having a process in place And I know that there is a three-step key process to creating online content Can you just talk us through that and what that involves as well? Yeah, so with the whole educational concept in your mind keep that as we go through this three-step process So the first part of it is creating So whatever it is you just got to do your thing So maybe your piece of content or what you generally produce as an organization is something that's regular Maybe it's not so regular. Maybe it is white papers. Maybe it's blogs. Let's talk about that Then we'll go into the sharing factor So how to actually get that word out and share that content and what are the best ways to market your online events? And then we go into that community step where it really is about nurturing your audience and then creating that path to succeed And also building communities like we said, so if we look at create I think the first thing we need to do is ask our audience is what do you already have? Yeah, you know time and time again We see so many people go into these events and the way they market for example You might be in marketing and you don't have any social media presence at all You run a webinar and you think oh, well, I need to start a social media page Don't do that start backwards and think what you already have and don't go out there and really reinvent the wheel So just wrote that down You've got existing content. So maybe you have your blogs. Maybe you have your white papers Maybe you have any sort of FAQs and if we look at this list here This is just an I'm sure people have so many more things that they can talk about But you know, you might write a blog every single week. You might have 20 page white papers on something How can you actually create that content and curate it and then bring it into the online world?  So where a webinar fits in that slightly different to a written document is that you can create the one digital event You can do it live, but then you can repurpose it that can be coming or FAQ afterwards You can break it up into blogs afterwards as well There's a much more of a strategy around the digital event that allows you to create multiple things And I think a lot of the time and you know, it's fair to go out there and ask your audience what they want Exactly want to learn about but look internally as well So for example, we've got a customer's face in support team and they're on the front line These are the people who are speaking to our customers 24 hours a day in some cases and then you've also got a sales team who is speaking to people They're uncovering their needs and wants so it's about looking internally at different departments and saying well What are you finding customers from the support side need? What do you think from a sales perspective people really where are their pain points and then as marketers? How can we create content online and written and bring it all together to create these amazing programs that bring so many people online And make you look fabulous at the end of the day Everything from even upcoming events, you know Think about other stuff that you have going on and if you have a conference at the end of every year How can you work backwards and then use webinars as a platform to showcase or market those events with key speakers or stuff like that And yeah exactly that you're bringing an international speaker in from say the states three weeks before the actual conference Why not do a webinar with them? That's kind of a teaser event leading up to the conference a lot of people nowadays are only committing to physical events closer to the day So that becomes a lead-generating exercise for you as well You have a unique opportunity with these things to break down the four walls of a physical room exactly what we're doing now Is we don't have the audience with us you guys are all in your own place But you can reach such a wide-scale number of people that you need to be really smart about where you're playing and where you're dabbling Definitely and we've done this before there's no you know We've gotten and we've written down every single piece of content that we actually have and I encourage everyone out there If you've got a piece of paper write down your content or think about your content marketing plan And what you've currently got going on and then sort of start to mind map How this sort of stuff can be taken online and that's where you come to this next step Which is breaking it down breaking it down so more than just a dance move Can we just talk about breaking it down so what does that involve what's what's that all about so breaking it down really is About creating easily digestible information So what you have on a 20 page white paper may not be appropriate for the online part of it So any and I know it does sound all of dirt of course when you're creating a PowerPoint presentation It's the same, but it is actually different because there are so many different other components that you do have to take into account So think of it this way like I said and I keep going back to the white paper because I think that's one the most commonly used pieces of Content got a white paper and may have six different sections in and it might be 20 pages long What can you break down and break into segments and then how will you format that so when you're in the online world? It isn't just about having content that's transferable. It's about interactive tools such as polling Resource folders where you can actually redirect people to actually go and have a look and Segway if you guys take a look in that resource folder, you'll find a webinar organize a hair book Feel free to take a look but thinking about how you can take it to the next level because if sometimes One piece of content doesn't really take well if you have one person sitting in front of a camera and just speaking to the Come around the entire time about something that is and I'm not bagging out anyone But you know tax related or finance something a little bit more dry Maybe you do need to mix it up a bit and show your personality and that goes back to the brand inside of things where you actually have an Opportunity to show your brand and show your personality through these different events that you run We also talk about the style that you're running as well. So today. We're an interview format Yeah, something a little bit different two different perspectives on things even though we tend to agree with a lot Try and think of something that we can disagree on And then you know your presenter and I think um, you know the whole presenter thing is huge Especially when it comes to the passion It really is and I think everyone like you can have the best content of the world But if you have a really boring presenter, I'm sorry No one's gonna listen and it's the same person who's actually like really engaging in a physical event might not be and that's okay You need to play to people's strengths So you do need to go out and find out look even do a practice one with your presenter See how they're gonna actually react with a digital audience because if they're not gonna be the if they're not gonna work out Don't waste your time in it because you've really only got one chance to impress on a digital event Especially in this summer and the marketplace so flooded with them You really need to have a great presenter who's passionate Enthusiastic who's gonna draw people in because at the same time some of you people might be looking at your emails right now I'm just listening to us. We want you watching the screen. So we're gonna be a bit more animated We really want to keep people's attention and you really only got one chance to do that Definitely and I think one of the main things that I always help present is is to act really casual Because if you're speaking really formally no one's gonna pay attention to that You know, you have a really serious face you just have to be relaxed You know, you're talking to someone like they're right in front of you So you don't want to think of this in a really physical event You can sort of be a little bit more formal because people are there in front of you They can feel you but then on screen you just really have to project your personality and just really be there This comes also down to like the best practice and tips and everything that we were talking about with what our audience Is actually want to learn about you don't have to just do a PowerPoint presentation and speakers You can mix it up You can do a panel of speakers without any slide content and have their different perspectives MHPN does this amazingly where they have a written white paper and then they have five different people talk about their Experiences on how they ingested that white paper and the one thing like I love our whole talking about content marketing with the white paper Coming first doesn't need to be that way You can actually do a webinar first and then from that webinar create your written content So you can actually you can flip it up on its head and the old days It always was web white paper first then webinar and now can be a one-hour webinar But then you could break that down into five pieces of fifty or four minutes for a fifteen minute sections And then that can be installments of white papers afterwards So really just be smart about how you can leverage the content that you're creating Yeah, and I think that brings us to another point Michael that is about the blended content So if you're just going to do written content You are actually restricting yourself with your audience But then on the other side if you just do an online content then you can also fall into that trap as well So need to play on both bases. Yeah You know and you want to also engage people engage in different channels so people learn differently So you've got people who learn visually people who prefer to read or maybe just want to listen to a podcast So one of the things that we started doing recently and I think works really really well for those different audiences is We run a webinar and as presenters or as people running the webinar, you know What are the key takeaways from that? What are you know? Like I said think about those easily digestible segments and some people just want to hear four dot points They don't want to listen to someone talk So after a 45 minute webinar think about the five key takeaways Blog about that and then direct people to a recording of that webinar So then you're attracting people who may only be subscribed to your blog not necessarily your webinars You're then marketing your webinars to that audience as well Then you've got the social media stuff and just on this last point here when we talk about editing You know if we are doing an event like this It is 45 minutes long a lot of people don't have the time or the brain power Depending on what day it is to actually sit there for 45 minutes. So, you know, think about when you're creating your event What am I going to do with this in three months or six months time? And how am I going to attract a? varied audience so We have broken this up into eight segments, but if I really want to put pressure on Vezna I could have said okay This is going to be edited into eight different videos afterwards So when Vezna is asking her questions, how can you ask questions that will then appeal to the on-demand audience? So for example every single eight want every single video that people watch Just imagine that it's their first time watching that video And I'll send some links out afterwards in the Recording that we send out within 48 hours and that will actually include an example of how that's been done with another Event that we've run and if it if you do it properly It does take a little bit more work and quite an experienced presenter If you do that properly then it can actually be amazing because then you've got eight different pieces of content to send out in eight different Formats over eight different times So if anyone's got any questions about breaking down that content, we can talk about it for the next 20 minutes Feel free to ask us in the question tab. Yeah, beautiful. Thank you So I will move on now to the why component So we talked about passion and we talked about webinars and it's all really great when you know You've got a really great idea, but why should people listen to you and that came up in a webcast We did a couple of weeks ago. So Sarah, can you please elaborate on why what that means? Why should people come in? Yeah, that's all about I think so a few weeks ago. We did creating presentations just in general but also for the online world And this was getting people to take action and we'll join by Lee Featherby who's this amazing PowerPoint presenter who has actually built a business around it and one of the things that he talks about is really About defining the why so why are people there and if you don't know the why Then people won't know the what yes when it comes down to it So it's the first thing I think is asking yourself. What can you offer people online? What sort of value can you offer and then understand that it's about people feeling something? Yes, so this really goes back to the beginning when we spoke about you know You can have as much content as you like you can break it down And you've got this amazing piece with this great presenter But people just need to press a button to log off at the end of the day So that's when as an organization your branding and your personality your format their interactive tools Yes, all need to play a part in it and eventually you need to be the type of thought leader that is you know People are joining my events. They know what to expect. They know they're gonna have a bit of fun They know they can ask questions and try and keep it consistent and then give people that Consistency in what you're delivering as well and understanding that why so it's about purpose Knowing why you're there. So at the beginning, you know, we who would we be if we didn't practice what we preach? You know making sure at the beginning. We didn't start off with oh, my name's Sarah and I've done this Isn't this and red back does this and Michael does this. It's not about us It's actually about the purpose and why people are joining and joining so Establishing that credibility at the beginning and saying okay everyone. Here's where we are We're going to get straight into it. We know why you've joined Here's a list of reasons why people said they wanted wanted to join this event And then we're going to talk to that. Yeah. Otherwise, there's no point in getting on there and just going on I'm a massive tangent and he actually causes capability versus credibility. Yes So credibility isn't necessarily getting online and talking about how credible credible you are and how many letters are after your name on Your business card. It's actually about getting on and showing that you understand the audience that you're talking to Yes Exactly and I think the other thing is there's actually I see as two why is when it comes to running a digital event You have the why that's going to be getting your audience and that's the purpose and that's it used to always be well We need to the why is I just need to run a webinar and that's different. It's no longer the case There's a lot more strategy behind your live to your hosting and how you're producing content And now with educational is like you need to have clear call to action So you have the why and that's why they're joining it But then why is a market or why is an organization? Why are you running these events? So for me for working with a lot of customers. It's like, okay, we do CBD programs and that's great.  It's like, okay. Well, how are you targeting non-members? It's like, well, maybe do a free webinar on an educational content and then have clear call to actions to point people to your paid content and I think Don't get lost in defining the why if you're getting your audience because that's one That's definitely the biggest part of it But then as an organizer why are you running this event? Is it to get to convert leads? Is it to monetize content all those things? You need to have those two why is aligned together to make sure they're both pointing to a common area Yeah, exactly. I think at the end of the day, it is like we just said your audience But if you're not also playing to your goals and you're just doing it for the fun of it Yeah, they're really you're gonna spend a lot of money possibly and you're just going to alienate people at the end of the day But one other thing that I really liked in this bit when we talk about defining the why is about creating that discussion with people So and when I say discussion, it's not about people typing into the chat box, you know, that's great You're creating that engagement, but it's about what happens afterwards So it's about understanding those key takeaways and I always say every time I hop on an event or when I present an event I ask myself, you know, what are the three key takeaways that I want people to take away? Or what are the three things that I want to learn when I join this event?  How can I make that better? How does this all work? And when we talk about discussion, it's that you know around the water It's like, you know the next day. Oh, you know, I attended this great event and this happened And some of this stuff isn't really measurable I think a lot of it is just that gut feel kind of thing and some things I think if we start measuring everything we just go crazy But there has to be you know, there are tangibles that we can actually measure But don't get too caught up in it think about and you'll get off a webinar or you'll finish with your presenter And you'll know automatically what the gut feel was. Yes, they're gonna be good or bad. It's honestly like I find it really easy It's like what were your light bulb moments? What did your audience just go? What are the light bulb moments if you can clearly see what each one of those words write those ones down? Those will be your key takeaways from it and it might be similar or exactly the same to what you did But it might also be different and that's not a bad thing because you could say uncovered today Yeah, X and actually play to that. Yes. So yeah, most definitely and just one more thing We talked about credibility a lot and I think it's really important for your presenter to actually talk about issues Which are gonna be which the customers will be dealing with to actually talk about What they've done how they've helped their customers and things that customers can relate to and then that really just sort of brings it back And yeah, I think like case studies and stuff like that just tie everything together Yeah, and really make the customer feel all the person online. Oh, wait a minute. Okay, that builds credibility You talking about yourself I think stories they just really kind of bring it all out and people can really apply it. Awesome. So we'll move on now to marketing Oh, just before that. I just want to say something and we've also spoken about this before and when we talk about creation One question also you need to ask yourself and I know you're asking yourself a lot of questions How can I engage with alternative content? Yes, so I think we go into this a lot and we think about like I said how to educate people on what I sell All the product that I'm giving people or the service that I'm going to create for people However, sometimes it's about like I said understand your audience and what they're dealing with So for example, there's a lot of issues that happen in society that either we avoid And we stay away from or we can actually be that thought leader and be someone who's actually helping people through them So and I know it is a little bit fluffy for some people, but I think it definitely And it is valuable as an organization to show that you care And I think it's hard to show that you care through a lot of marketing activities Especially when it comes to you know breaking through technology and stuff and people do see it as quite sales If they have had a bad experience, but we talk about content It's not just about, you know the ABCs of how to have a nutrition plan, you know, what are people in your What's your target audience dealing with? So for example, if you're in the motor trade industry, for example, and your main target audience might be Demographic might be men over the age of 45. We know that in that area that you know Mental health and people actually talking about depression might be an issue that these people aren't really familiar with or know how to talk about Why not get a mental health expert in and talk about something a little bit more nurturing to people As opposed to just a product or something that you're trying to help people with Really tap into people's conscious and really understand what they're dealing with How you can help them and be more than just someone putting on webinars for the sake of it Try and actually create some good from it Well exactly, I love when I see customers do this because nine times out of ten or 99% on the time Companies are 100% transactional. They take and they take and they take and you find that if a company is just seen as that If you go out there and you put on a free Educational webinar or webcast that tackles a personal issue You're gonna hit a much larger audience You're gonna hit people that never joined your digital events before because you've actually had something on a personal note for them But then that goes back to the exactly what I talked about before with the why as an organization are you running these? Those are massive lead generation opportunities to showcase your platform and your presenters and everything and then you can have called to actions on the page of oh Do you have your CPD points coming up for your series? Click here to see our upcoming events You have it that whole strategy around doing events for the sake of doing digital events is one thing But if you're really smart and you have a clear takeaways and actions of I'm going to grow my audience by doing free events That hits a personal note just succeed. Yeah, and I think there's a lot of organizations out there And they do have a social responsibility. It is a lot as an element to what they do as well So start thinking about charities that maybe you already support and how you can bring those in so we've dealt with Organizations before and they've said okay. We're going to we already work with these three charities We charge for our webinars this charity might have something special going on that month or a certain campaign 10% of everyone who joins the webinar that will actually go to that charity Get someone on from the charity to speak and to be an in you know to introduce or something for the day Yeah, there's so many different things that you can do just to tie yourself to some really good initiatives out there And like Michael said give back Start using these online events for different different ways I think just to really I just think it's got a really good feel to it I don't really think it's utilized enough And I think if we can get people using these sorts of platforms for this type of thing I think it I think it would definitely take off if you're wanting to stand out and be seen as anything different do something different Competitors aren't doing it be the first ones to do it And I think that all really just goes back to really treating your webinars as a part of the marketing mix So it's not just selling it's not just it's actually the whole thing You know you're going to be marketing about your charity work your social responsibility So really just treat your webinars as a part of that and um, yeah, and speaking about marketing So with marketing a lot of companies that I've worked with really tend to go wrong here. So what happens? What do you mainly see? Yeah, well, this is a second piece of the puzzle and this is around sharing So this is really about what channels can I leverage? This is what you need to ask yourself And in the follow-up if you download the webinar organize a handbook from the actual Resources tab you'll get a little sneak peek in there about passive marketing and direct marketing and it goes into a lot more than what We're going to today So just as an overview like we said earlier if you are going out there and you're starting to market your events And you're using channels that you're not used to it really isn't going to work Yeah, and I think with marketing It's not just a real push marketing that we need to do We need to start thinking of it as pool marketing as well and understanding that when you're creating an event That's going to lead to this bit of content and that piece of content then it all comes around and then eventually every piece of content that you Produce online will start marketing itself Because what people don't realize is at the end of an event you can market your events once the events over and you send Out emails once events over and you've got an exit survey feedback It all starts to play into each other So first of all just as an overview with passive marketing so one month before you've got your page up You're taking registrations, but I think a lot of people fall into the trap of pushing marketing on people So early yes, and you know we always say when it comes to marketing I'll just bring this up Dedicated marketing where it is that push it's that dedicated email invitation asking people to act now Creating that urgency should be done no more than ten seven to ten days before now If you are running cpd programs or something and you are charging and it is part of the bigger picture That might be a little bit different But in general when it does come to content and you think about your whole content marketing plan And how much stuff you've got going out to me and you know if you're sending this stuff out one month before You're not creating that urgency for people and all of a sudden cycle. That's a month away I'll do with it when it gets there or something like that Whereas if you're creating that urgency online now, you know Make sure you register because there's any limited spaces or something But what you can do with the passive marketing beforehand is you've got that up on your website You might have you know just basic social media not really paid on there And then you've also got a webinar series where you're passively promoting that you might have just say for example This event is on creating compelling content. We might have done a white paper two weeks ago on creating compelling content We might have done a blog one week ago and within that we're actually asking people to register So that's a passive side And I think that needs to be thought about a month before Possibly even earlier depending on your strategy and your audience But when it does come to that dedicated marketing those sponsored ads on your Facebook and you're linked in your last chance to register email obviously really really stick to Right there right now creating the urgency and getting people to register And I think it's really important as well If you can to get your presenter involved in all of that as well Yes, they will have their own following their own social media channels So if they can blog about on their LinkedIn on their websites and promote it as well That really kind of creates that cross promotion Yeah, and that really just helps out as well a lot any kind of marketing really boosts it It's not a physical event at the end of the day And a lot of people are so used to advertising and marketing for physical events and having a really extended lead time for it You do need to realize that this is only good Yeah, I'm not going to commit to a digital event two weeks out just because I don't know what I'm doing in two weeks My meetings always change. It's generally only the day before when I get that last chance to register or my reminder email The day before that I see I got a blank bit of my calendar That's when I register and I think about 80% of our customers see the largest influx of people coming in is the day before The event be surprised if it's not because the most of the ones that I talked today Like they'll have a great steady line of people registering leading up to the event But the highest influx of people is the day before and definitely use words like last chance to register Don't miss out tomorrow very basic marketing, but it just it really does the job Yeah, so beautiful. So we'll move on now. Um, so after the webinar So what happens after the webinar is just as important as the webinar itself So we talked about getting feedback and getting all of those things But when you actually get all those documents and put it together What do those numbers mean and what can we do with that? Yeah? I think one thing that we've seen and it was predicted and everyone thought oh, yeah, it's just online You know, it's not going to take off that much is the fact that Mobile and social and digital has really changed everything It's great for consumers and people out there digesting content and your audiences because it means they're getting the best of everything And there are being nurtured But when we talk about nurturing it's about what happens after your attendees leave And I think a lot of the time and we've all done it. We have an event. We have it online It's amazing. We close it down and then what do we do afterwards? We might put it up on YouTube We're not actually tracking anything But then we've got those people there and like I said at the beginning if we go all the way back to Creating that content and knowing your goal and understanding the why Why are people there if you are running lead generation? You're very very rarely going to convert every single person or even 20% of those people on your event to buy them Yes, what you actually need to think about is what is the long-term goal and how can you drive people along that path? So just to put it in perspective 2900 so that's the amount of marketing messages that we're exposed to every single day That's how many people are actually buying for our attention. So think about that when you are creating these Invitations that are going out to people you are promoting your event But then also you're getting people online if you're not educating them and you're just pushing content on them And you're just talking about how great your product is how great the presentry is by now by now And that's your call to action It's not going to really work that well for me There needs to be a lot of investment in terms of what you're doing and like we said earlier You need to show people that you care and need to sort of empower people on the other end Steer the direction. Yeah, exactly. It's about you working with them 80% so 80% of people now on a self-directed customer journey So what that means is that there's so many places to go and get information now And we all know it if I don't understand the meaning of something and I hear it in conversation I'm going to Google it or if I'm talking to someone about some sort of you know You know a new piece of content or something like that or some new technique that's used in marketing I'm going to go Google or I'm going to look for some sort of information on it However, it's on the customer and it's on us to actually go do that ourselves So people are also interacting with you before you even realize and that's 80% of people 87% of people demand something meaningful and something that really has that brand experience And I so we should at the end of the day So once you're online and you aren't showing thought leadership and you're just going through the motions And you're just talking to people and down to people on these online events What do you think is going to happen to people online? so in order to combat this and what we actually what we actually Provided us on is actually creating advocates online So think of it this way You've got someone who registers for your event and then you've got people who attend And then you've got people who know show pretty simple, right now if we take the next step You've actually then got the people who attend how you deal with them after the event should be completely different To how you deal with those people who actually were no shows at the event Now this is all going to depend on the sort of platform you're using how sophisticated they are But you can do those first five steps very very easily by just setting up two different lists within the event And those who attend and those who don't attend So if someone does attend my event I'm going to send them a recording afterwards and I might have a bit more of a powerful call to action to them If someone doesn't attend, I'm not going to send them the same email, which does have that call to action They weren't on the event. They weren't live They didn't experience what everyone else experienced and they're not really engaged So I might have a different piece of content and instead of sending them the PowerPoint slides I might send them a white paper That's one page and it has five key takeaways and then I'm going to forward that to them So they can actually feel like they're all part of it Yeah, definitely from then on we actually have their behavior so you can leave it there and that's good enough That's still probably 20% more of what most people do when they actually send or probably even 80% more now I think of it From then on how you actually engage with people with your content whether it's your online events or whether it is just your normal content Their behavior would dictate what actually goes to them And that's where it does get a little bit more complex and it does take over your entire marketing strategy to be honest But it does work and it is effective So like I said, this is really really basic nurturing But if you have someone registering for your event, don't expect to convert them at the end of your event Think about the path that you can take them on and the journey So then eventually you can sort of just it's like a whole you know You go on a date with someone and you expect them to pose on the first night It's really not going to happen So how can you wind them and dine them and make them feel like they're part of the bigger picture Before you actually and it depending on your organization and your goals and your audience It can take two weeks or it can take two years and it's all part of the buying cycle And as soon as you acknowledge that it's in the customer's hands and it's their engagement in their behavior That's driving what you do. I think that's when you're going to succeed with your webinars Yeah, definitely, and I think getting the customer feedback and also finding out what topics they care about what they want That really sort of builds that relationship and it says that you are listening to them Michael, is that something that you find as well in webinars? Oh, yeah, it takes it can take a long time. It can be a short buying week of a week Or even on the same day, we've had customers call up who have just been like we need to do one tomorrow We've got a speaker in it's okay. Yeah, we can make that happen other ones I've been watching the business goes webinar series for the last three years and they've just been educating themselves for three years They might never do anything but they still come back and they repeat because they're wanting to be educated But then we have other ones that after a year think of come back to us saying we've been watching you for a year We now are ready Yeah, to do digital events and that's been great And it's really building that relationship and don't underestimate the power of someone who does watch for three years because maybe they'll pass That content onto something else, you know Let's say, you know, they'll have a friend who wants to do webinars or wants to do something and they'll really pass that content on I think yeah, that's important because if you go into this just with a goal to make money or to Really really see it the bigger picture and expect it to happen straight away It's not going to happen. You need to go into this and think of yourself and you know What's what's the purpose? Why are you creating this content? What do you want to achieve out of it? And I think for most people it should be about thought leadership and be seen as those someone who's delivering something different Actually helping people and you know the end goal, of course, is that but let's not get too greedy and that's not you know Focus on that. Let's think about how we can build our communities Yeah, nurture those people to take action But in the meantime have some fun and produce some awesome content. Definitely. Okay, so we're going to move to our Q&A Shortly, yes, so just to wrap up things. We talked a lot about key messages Yes, so if we could just sort of conclude on everything. What are some key messages that our audience today can take away? The gist of it We just want and I think you know just think about at the end You know what's what do we want? What do we want to percolate in people's heads? And this is pretty much this is pretty it and it's yeah making sure you have a clear why why are you doing this? And why are they attending make sure those two are aligned? That's one of my favorite things But yeah, what can you offer your audience and also get them to get feedback as soon as you go to your community? Or to your audience and you say look we're wanting to do this give us your input already They're invested in it. Yeah, so they're already gonna be the ones like oh, I actually listen to me There's a topic I recommend it.  So that's yeah, and don't be scared and have fun because it is a lot of fun And yeah at the end of the day, you know, it is about thought leadership And it is about going out there and delivering value But you still need to have your long-term core to actually mine But I think the biggest thing for me is to really just think about Your goals as an organization as an individual what you want to achieve and don't just think about a webinar as a standalone piece of content and need and it is content And it does actually have to be part of your overall marketing plan because if you're going out there and you've got a Webinar delivery person within your organization delivering webinars. They're not in sync with marketing They don't know how it's going to happen and it's just completely standalone which I think traditionally is how it's been done I don't really think that's going to work I think it is time to reevaluate and to start being smarter and like we said think about you know Taking it to the next level and I think the fact that people are online today It really shows that they do want to take that to the next level and make it a success No, definitely you sort of have to align everything and you do make it work. No beautiful. Okay, so we'll move on to questions So if anyone else does have questions, please feel free to send them through in the chat and our first question today is from Sandy So it is I've had a lot of success getting solo prener's micro businesses to attend my webinars But not so much success in getting buy-in from my target or corporate market any tips on how to get them to commit to attending webinars Hmm Attending or registering that's the biggest thing So I think if you are getting those people to register then obviously you're getting the word out I think one of the things people need to start doing is looking at their conversion rates So you might go out there and you might be having you know 400 people actually viewing your registration page and you might only have maybe 20 people register Yeah, where's that gap? What's happening there? And then with the attendee part of it? So if you are Sandy if you are running free events Then as you have to understand that the average attendance rate on a free event on a webinar will be around 40% Yeah, if you are charging for events and it is going to be a little bit higher But what we need to start thinking about like I said is what happens after the event and that on-demand part of it So how can you then engage people afterwards with that content? Are you sending it to them afterwards? Are you then using your recording emails because I think a lot of people they hold everything so close to their chest And they're like well if you didn't if you didn't attend my webinar I'm not going to send you the content afterwards Which is a big mistake because your largest portion of your audience will actually want to be on-demand nowadays So you need to have two different strategies for that And if you are Sandy getting them to at least get to the registration page That's half the battle make sure you shorten your registration fields That's one of the biggest tips out there is people make it way too long You've only got and also your email marketing people have a glance rate of three seconds on an invitation To see if they want to actually click through so you need to make sure that clear-called actions getting them on to registration page Don't have too many fields. It's going to then stop someone from registering You could always get more information from getting them to download something during the webinar asking them for to input more information later on Yeah, definitely, and I think it's all about you have to do that AB testing So you know try one thing with one landing page and then a different thing with another one and take that feedback Subject lines are very very important You know make it colorful make it sound out. It is about marketing so you can have a little bit of fun with it as well But then I'm the same token same token though some of our customers have found that if they have really flashy invitations They actually don't get through and if you get them back to just text versions for corporates because People don't like seeing it download this image if it's just a purely text-based email for a corporation that actually might be better for your audience So do a little bit AB testing with your emails going out and see which one's gonna work better for you Definitely, and I think also send you asked about attending You should always remember to send reminders to attend and really show the value of attending the webinar and to sort of and say that It is going to be a live Q&A session, you know that attending live There's going to be some value in that rather than attending on demand and then that'll sort of really get them There's a sneaky trick that a couple of people are doing now Which I quite like and that's you offer something in the live event that you don't give in the on-demand and that doesn't have to be something tangible like Downloadable piece of content or a 10% off some people are doing you attend my webinar in the first five minutes first three minutes We'll cover seven points for success on block. So what they do is everyone joins like, okay? Thank you. It's 10 o'clock now our seven tips for three minutes are they do the tips first for everybody's joint And then they go, okay, we're gonna start the recording now Welcome everyone to today's webinar Yeah, that's not part of the recording so only the people that started at the correct time We'll get that piece of information and it's never kept for prosperity purposes So it's a really interesting way of trying to get your audience. Yeah, I think it's interesting What is your goal is it to have people listening live because you're forcing people to join them And who's to say that going to be as engaged or my whole perception would be this person is making me watch at this time Yeah to do this like I've got other stuff to do I'm happy to watch and be more engaged in my own time But the fact that I'm always going to resent you from making me watch So I think it depends on what sort of person you are maybe yeah Don't punish your audience. Yeah, it's all about creating the relationship. It won't be a very nice relationship And I'm also just for the audience as well if you could complete the survey that is on your screen now So we can't get our feedback that would be really appreciated And if you do have any more questions, please do send them through so I We haven't got any more questions coming though through at the moment and Yeah, great Thank you very much And yeah, so just make sure to have a look in the resources folder as well for all of the things that we Mentioned thank you so much Sarah and Michael. Do you have any last thoughts as well on the topic today? I would say like what we have covered a lot of information today And so feel free to give us a call both Sarah and I are here to answer any of your questions The recording will be going out But if you do want to have a chat to someone about more strategy around different things or about webinar series We love having those chats. So reach out excellent and yeah, just for me. Thank you for joining It's always great to actually discuss stuff like this You do it every single day, but to actually sit there and help other people do it as well It's quite rewarding. So like I said, if you have any questions, let us know head over to webinars.com.au Hopefully that will also provide some insight and like I said any questions. Let us know we're here to help Beautiful. Thank you so much Sarah and Michael and thank you so much to the audience for those questions and for filling out the survey It was lovely for you to join us today And we hope to see you at some future business skills webinar events. Thank you. Bye


Okay, so now we're open. Okay, thank you. I will get trained on this. Okay. Good morning, everyone. This is the elementary school building committee meeting of November 4th. And we are conducting this virtually by zoom for the governor's orders. So my first order of business. Is to make sure we have a forum and to make sure every quorum and to make sure everyone can see. Here and be heard. So I am just going to call out names to have people confirm that they're here and can be heard. Paul. Jonathan. Here. Ben. For isn't. Sean. Yeah. Rupert. I'm here. Mike. I'm here. And Steve. Here. And we as, as you know, we are also joined by Margaret Wood and Bob Stevens from answer. And. I, we are waiting for a few more people, but we're going to start the meeting. Because Mike has to leave early. He's going to be with us for about 45 minutes. So I would like to get going. Thank you. The first thing on the agenda is to tell you what happened at the MSBA panel on Tuesday. It was my first time participating in such a panel. And I actually logged on a bit early to listen to interviews. To watch how that process works, which was also. An interesting process. We ended up with. A group of three, which was the goal. And those were Dinesco. LPAA and JCJ. Moody Nolan. And I don't, both Mike and. And Ben were there and we were. Three voting members out of 16 people. So our, our vote ends up mattering a lot. The way they do the process is they go around the room on each other. They gather up information from people and what they saw or anything missing. Then they asked the three from the town. Okay. If you're going to go for three, tell us about that and why. And the rest of them go around the room and say. What their three would be. Then we stop and we vote. You know, so it was a lot of vetting before we voted. So, you know, Mike and Ben, I don't want to be the only one speaking. I want to go back to. Mike, can you at all what came up on each of these starting with maybe Denesco on what people said, I took notes so I can. Say what others said as well. Mike. Or Ben. Yeah, I think there was a lot of favorable reaction to the NISCO. You know what I was recalling, I did not take notes. So Kathy you'll, you'll be better than mine, but. true firm done a lot of MSPA projects and I think they indicated once towns had went to Denisco they they continue to work with them which is generally I think the best piece of feedback you can get is uh so that that's some of the details I remember on Denisco. Kathy or Ben you can certainly add. A few more they both a lots of experience including with elementary one of the MSPA commenters said they particularly like the educational focus and the way they the application was put together and the the discussion of sites with a lot on wastewater and net zero and they have three net zero schools they're working on one so those were all really strong positives and Mike you know I had the one comment from an MSPA person once a district has worked with them they can't say enough about them you know it was like they they rave about them and then the other was they they did give us cost information on each of the applicants and where they how their averages were compared to other average and they're on the low side of costs um so they bring their they bring their schools in um with cost targets. Good morning Allison glad you could join us so we're just wait the three finalists just as you're coming on are Denisco LPAA and JCJ Moody Nolan. So Ben anything to add on Denisco on what we heard? No I also didn't take notes but that was that was pretty much the the gist of what I recall from that conversation. So on LPAA again um they came up as having lots of not lots of schools that they only come in once in a while when they really want another project and they they are returned they the cities that have worked with them and I actually drove out to two of their schools the only thing I could see was the outside of them but um the way they were situated and the the surrounding area was these are newer newer schools and both of them were featured in our write-ups and one of them was in just a gorgeous setting so they use the outdoors a lot for the programs and um so any other insights on LPAA because they all the comments were really positive on them. So I would say one thing that MSBA noted that and it was particularly on this proposal is they are going to ask them and they're going to ask all three of them tell us how you meet the women and minority standards um and this project in particular looked on the minority side of sort of there was a question mark um had they really hit it and um so that that is one of actually the MSBA questions that they're going to be asking of all of all of them in the interviews. So JCJ, Moody Nolan, Mike or Ben do you want to jump in first? Yeah I can I can start I think this was uh it was interesting because there was both lots of excitement and lots of questions is the way I would describe it um there's a lot of excitement about Moody Nolan being involved and the reputation Moody Nolan has some of their work they felt like it was a it was a good application uh the questions around how they are going to work similar to ours frankly mirror our conversation how are they going to work together what's the model we see a little chart with what the model is that needs a lot more explanation I think two people said explicitly uh something along the lines of you know if they short if they get shortlisted we want to have a lot of questions and dialogue about who does what um but also genuine excitement about the application and potential work with both firms um that's sort of what I recall. And the one other um you know the MSBA on the panel is great you know clearly there there are a big spender on this but one other on the question of who does what is they said the architect that Moody Nolan has proposed as a team member is not registered in Massachusetts so you're just really wondering whether there's duplicative effort or not and um one of the schools they did I got to get inside I didn't expect to um the Barack Obama school in New Haven I drove down to take a look at it and we were invited inside and then later I looked on it's a gorgeous school you know everything about it would make it's an elementary school up through grade four with little kids in a pre-k but the they had a sub architect they were the lead JCJ and they had a Connecticut firm and the Connecticut firm features a lot of what went into the building and why it was done and JCJ didn't do as much so I was just wondering which who did what on that project and so it was a question. So we also ended up with the five questions that we're going to ask and Margaret you've probably got it on your screen but we that we were limited to three and this is for the interviews yeah Mike. Can I just make one or two more comments that might be for the for the team sorry so one was I think JCJ was at or slightly below the average cost maybe you said that maybe I missed it yeah but I think the other thing to note is those three were significantly above in terms of the vote count the others but there were four votes for TSKP and one person Steve you'll be happy to hear loved Jonathan Levy or Levy Architects and voted them as top firm and acknowledged that they felt like the work wasn't reflected in the application that the quality of the work didn't didn't match that so there were five total firms that received votes the top three were all over 20 votes TSKP had four votes and Jonathan Levy Architects had three votes but I just wanted because there was people on the team that were advocating or feeling strongly about the other ones and then the last three firms I think Tecton T2 and DRA did not receive a vote by anyone on the on the panel just to round out the the experience for everybody. Thanks thanks Mike yeah and and Steve the the advocate for Levy also picked the three firms it was the three firms that person picked were all because of the high level of design you know and this was an architect so JCJ or TSKP and Levy were that person's choice of three you know zoned in right now yeah so I think one other thing just very briefly one of the things that was interesting uh the three of us did not have this identical rankings right so I actually think that's a good thing right you know it was like there wasn't a team approach uh on the front end and and I think MSBA recognized that and complimented that that it wasn't a pre-arranged thing we clearly had done our homework um I think one person said they'd watched our meeting the this meeting you know where we talked about it and they're really impressed with the level of dialogue that uh this team had on there and I think that was reflected in our ability to participate effectively so I just want to thank everyone for their feedback because it certainly made me better and I think I can speak for Kathy and Ben that it made us better when we're actually on the panel because of the depth of dialogue we had at this meeting the two meetings prior absolutely you know we we didn't even have the the same three firms um I was one of the TSKP votes but the other thing they they said about us um and it is again because of the discussion we came in with is we knew a lot and they they they said this town came in with a lot more insights and having very closely read the the proposals and I don't know what the norm is um with this amount of money at stake but they they were very praiseworthy of what we'd done and they did also note that we had um made public all of the applications after they came in and it wasn't so much a criticism but as to let everyone know that we had done that on the panel so it was an interesting experience and we have the we'll send you all in writing the five questions um the MSBA is going to do the one on minority and women and they also have a fairly complicated question but it worked when I watched the interviews they want to know um in this one you will love Rupert um they want to know how complicated the systems are that are being put in place um and how much effort both costs to run them later and and what do you do because they've been watching more and more sophisticated with net zero but other kinds of features that aren't always that easy to run and do you have manuals so that's one of their stand that will be one of their questions on it and we have market why don't you um give the three that we ended up with we had we had eight questions or nine when we came out of our meeting last time but they would only take three from us so right so I'll just I'll read them and I'll put them in the meeting notes um the I I'm not sure which order that the architects will take these on but they're provided to the architects they've already been provided to the architects and they're asked to address them in their formal presentation so they get you know about 25 30 minutes to make a formal presentation and then there's about 20 minutes for Q&A um so there will be an opportunity to ask other questions so some of the questions that you had um generated I recommended to Kathy be used during the Q&A session if it was appropriate or hadn't otherwise been addressed but the ones that would they will be asked to formally address are how will you approach designing a building which will meet our net zero by law to get the greenest building possible and still stay within budget uh question number two if Amherst were to require the highest level of daylighting provision contained in either chips or lead guidelines which are sustainability guidelines what would be your approach to daylighting for an elementary school project of this type and the third one is Amherst lacks sufficient swing space to relocate elementary students during construction please comment on how this will affect your design approach if possible provide examples of how you have handled this in other cities and towns so those are the five that they they need to speak to directly which does not mean there couldn't be more conversation than Q&A but it gives a certain level of grounding so that they're all kind of touching on the same five issues and during the interviews that I watched there were follow-up questions specific to to the applicants that weren't necessarily in these five and I'll note Allison one of the ones you suggested when I went to visit this one school that I liked a lot I there was an art school teacher who was willing to talk to us and I said how's the building worked and she said it's generally great but involve end users early because there's not enough storage space in the classroom and he would you know and she was she then showed us this pile of stuff along the wall because there wasn't a closet for it so they were so I think there are you know the approach and a few of these applicants actually talked about storage space so I think that's it are there any other questions there are questions for the people who weren't able to be one of us three on what we heard during the MSBA they don't record these or put it up so okay then I think we'll move to number two on the agenda which is I think our next piece Margaret was to return to the discussion of the webpage yeah and I don't have oh Mike go ahead Mike so just because my time may get truncated would the committee and Kathy would it be okay if I just did a 90 second update on sixth grade and school committee votes because I was on the agenda absolutely yeah I think I could do this really really quickly and Ben jump in if you'd like but uh last week the regional school committee voted to uh accept seven in favor one uh posed and one abstention uh to allow towns to send their sixth grade students if they so choose one of the member towns to the middle school so at this point the gamer school committee has voted to send their sixth grade students to the middle school the regional school committee has voted to accept those students in the regional middle school there are logistics to work out in terms of rental agreement and bunch of items like that but the two key votes that were needed have now taken place and they are done so I do think that that will be relevant for the committee especially if the designer gets on because we um with my regional hot on we'll be expecting amour sixth grade students to start attending in the fall of 2023 well ahead of where this project would be completed it actually has implications I believe for one of the questions about swing space doesn't provide swing space but you know we're going to change our space usage in the elementary school starting in 2023 as well with the sixth grade leaving so those two decisions and votes have taken place and uh I think there really aren't any other formal votes other than you know working against space rental agreement some of the logistical details um but that that certainly gives this committee and then the architect and Margaret and Bob some direction in terms of which way we're headed on this project thank you Mike and I we brought this up at the MSBA meeting but it wasn't clear to me how they then adjust because they've given us these two study populations um so I think Margaret at some point just clarifying with them as we making sure they understand that that vote has been taken and yes and when the architects comes on thank you um for that so are we ready to move to the next item then and let me just say because Mike has to leave early um we we will have a representative from Fort River she's not on tonight um so um we will have a new member once she's appointed Tamara Sullivan daily and for the next meeting two weeks from now what we talked about doing so I do want want to catch you while you're on is um having a discussion of how we have a sort of parallel or working group and to involve a larger group of people so I want to make sure that is still an agreed on two weeks from now I mean we'll be able to report on what happened with the shortlist as well but but have a and people should come with ideas to that so we it's it's a starting off okay so web page Margaret so Kathy Caroline was actually not able to join this morning so I'm I can't ask her to give us a visual update but she and I are working on um several pieces that are going to be featured on the opening page and the goal we should be able to send out some screenshots uh next week so that people can see what that's going to look like okay so that that's the extent of this so Margaret then you want to move to if they're the one that I listed as if we have time um you wanted to brief us on the reimbursement formula yeah um so we can I know that Mike's time Mike you have another 10 minutes if if 1015 a little more than 10 okay um I think um I'd like Mike to be um here for this conversation so I'm I'm just going to summarize that um I do want to have a conversation with the committee um about uh how the reimbursement rates work because we've experienced and we've seen in other communities even projects we're not working on a lot of confusion and misunderstanding about the reimbursement rates and and how it works and you know I I want to say um start off by saying I think and I I think we touched on this briefly before that the mescal building authority is is a relatively new invention be it had a predecessor the school building authority and um the school building authority process uh was not particularly equitable rather political um and um when the state kind of closed that organization down and then created the MSBA it really was very much focused on equity um however they the MSBA the authority works within the guidelines of legislation which is you know they were not participants and they were sort of give they are given as their they're operating guidelines and I would say the the biggest confusion I mean basically they put caps on certain costs um which is again to kind of equalize the playing field and and the you know the big ones are um they they cap they don't cap what any community can spend but they do cap what they reimburse on so some good examples um for good reason are they cap what they will reimburse on for designer and project manager fees they cap um one sort of big uh category that is related to site design and that is site work so they won't reimburse more than uh site work that a cost that's more than eight percent of the of the construction total construction costs and you know I could think you can imagine that that is because um what they don't want is for people to be folding in things that were more logically uh municipal costs and not directly related to the school however eight percent is a very low number for a large site we have we have done projects where we were able to say under the eight percent but it's been on very very tight urban sites where the amount of actual physical site was very small so this is the utility work the grading the sidewalks the you know paving all of the stuff that sort of is the setting for the school um and then um the thing that is having the biggest impact at this point is that the again the legislation caps um the cost per square foot that uh the msba will reimburse on and the way the legislation is written it is described as uh eligible they reimburse eligible costs and and this is this is confusing to people because most people say well clearly we wouldn't do anything that's not eligible right I mean that's the whole point is to make us as just eligible as possible but eligible also includes this cap on construction cost per square the foot and and over the you know last decade or so the cost per square foot the actual what's actually happening in the market and cost per square foot um has really kind of started to outpace the msba's cap the msba does adjust it periodically um and it's been recently adjusted and it may be although I would be surprised adjusted again before we set the project cost for this project but it right now I would say it's approximately let me say two thirds of the average actual cost per square foot so the way that works in the funding formula is it means that about a third of the cost of the building is ineligible because of the cap it's not because it's been over designed it's not because the spaces are too big it's not because there's been some you know extraordinary profligacy it's just it's the market versus the legislation and so I think that's really important because um when and I because I didn't participate in the conversations the last time around for your earlier project I don't know what was said in the community about this but I wanted to see you know particularly interested um Mike um and anybody else who remembers the conversation what was said and what might be understood because I think um we want to make sure and it's probably it's a feature for for anyone in the community but I think it's probably particularly important for uh town council um and anyone who would need to take um you know be considered leaders on the project to understand this so I'd like to get some feedback from all of you about what has been what folks have heard before and understand and how we um who is important to wrap into that conversation early Mike. So you know I think it was talked about significantly last time that our official reimbursement rate as I was remembering Sean I'm sure remembers but it was like 68 percent or something like that but then the real you know in terms of the real reimbursement rate was closer to half and it's exactly because of the reason you describe um it'd be interesting for other people to weigh in I actually think that was we didn't get a lot of I don't recall that being a wedge issue last time that there was this gap between what MSBA said our rate was and what it actually is I think the community really understood that pretty well and I think there were other things that were less clear or more controversial um last time but Sean has his hand up and I'm sure he'll he will remember it well. Sean? Mike it was actually 67.3 percent no I think Mike's right I think we were just clear from the beginning that there's a stated reimbursement rate and then there's an effective reimbursement rate and we sort of broke it down into those two categories so um people knew that from the beginning and all the estimates were sort of based on that effective reimbursement rate so yeah I don't remember being an issue we just wanted to be clear from the beginning now whatever our stated rate is this is necessarily what we're going to get reversed for the full project. Okay that's great and last time around solar and the net zero weren't part of our bylaw so um I think that will affect the effective rate this time around unless the state steps up or ARPA money or other money become available for this literally putting in the solar panels because it but correct me on whether MSBA now includes them as part of an allowable cost I think the answer was Jonathan saying no right no yeah not not today not today John Jonathan's hands up I just wanted to say I mean my I am not an expert on this but my understanding and it's kind of confirmed by the way uh Margaret said it is that um in a way it almost doesn't what doesn't doesn't matter quite whether something's allowed to you know to be a part of the project or not because of that cap anything that's in it that's over the cap is our responsibility as a community and I think as long as we can you know be clear and consistent and concise about talking about numbers all along you know so that that information's in the public um you know that that will that'll be one of the best things we can do to keep confusion from from occurring and you know it's it's it's going to be a tough time to be looking at numbers because right now costs are are going up at a rate that's higher than typical and that will also be difficult for for you know the committee I'm sure and and members of the community to wrap their heads around on the previous project was there um a kind of cost calculator created or provided at all that people could go and sort of and you know enter their property assessment and get feedback on what the cost per household is yeah there's yeah we've done that it's actually there's one on our website right now where you can plug in um the cost of the school project and the the value of your home and get get a rough impact of what the debt exclusion um the additional tax impact would be from the project if we go the debt exclusion route so we have that on our website now but we'll probably want to update it because every year with the taxes changed we have to update it a little bit that's great that's good I think that's a really helpful tool you know I mean in general what I think it's it's it's better um it's it's a really good idea to talk about what you're getting rather than what you're not getting um and I think I think I'm accurately representing the MSBA on that you know that's their perspective as well like you don't have to take our money um but this is what we can give you with them within the guidelines that we have to operate on here so Margaret when do you think we will um do we when do you I know we have a stated reimbursement rate which is a little bit lower than it was last time when do you is it when the initial design is done that will have more of an idea of the effective rate so um great question the so there's sort of the the first marker for what the possible cost of the project is um at the end of the um the first submittal a PDP submittal um we typically uh we're required actually to provide the what the options that are going to be looked at in the next step so you do the program submittal and there's a couple of other pieces but it's mostly the program submittal the building evaluates building inside evaluations and then the the last big piece which points to next pieces and the committee has decided to look at this range of options so you know as you know you're required to look at three in this case we may have more I'm not encouraging this but I've seen submittals that head up to Tim um you know I think having been through the the Fort River study you know what that looks like pretty quickly when you have like lots and lots of iterations but the PDP you say this and and then you give a very high level it's a cost per square foot um range of what those are and it it's really what it's doing is it's stacking the options relative to each other the cost relative to each other I don't recommend relying on it and we try to be very conservative when we generate those numbers so that's the first point but I wouldn't do a cost calculator based on those numbers um then and when you get to the point of pointing to the preferred schematic so that's the next submittal so now you the next step is evaluate the options and pick the one you want then you're going to do a detailed estimate of that one which again is based on fairly conceptual design then you have something that starts to look like a real number and then the end then the the last stage is then to do the schematic design which is the first step in the design in the process of creating the what will be the construction documents then you do because now you've got rooms and room numbers and assemblies and all of the stuff then you do a more detailed design it's that last number which is usually the best number to use for the cost calculator and it is also the number that obviously goes in your your vote language and it's the number that the MSBA takes to review before the board for their vote okay and do you know if there are any I know they got rid of some of these are there any incentive points anymore for different things I know there was incentives last time around for if you built the lead school do those incentives still exist yes a number of them still exist and those aren't in our right right now right those because we haven't designed a school correct they get added on to the base rate the base reimbursement rate and the couple that I know will end up applying to you is there are points for you know green building which in the MSBA guidelines is mostly defined by lead or chips which is why it was mentioned in the MSBA's question about building information systems there are also points for building maintenance so they'll review and I'm sure they did this the last time around review your maintenance program and there's a couple of other assets but those are the ones that for a community like this typically generate the most points there's some other things that have fallen by the wayside at one point there was for projects before a certain date and I this would this one incorporated that there was a point for utilizing construction management at risk but that sort of timed out at this point so there's no point for that so those are the big ones sustainability energy particularly energy performance and maintenance program so I see two hands both Jonathan and Mike had their hands up Mike seems to have gone down but okay Jonathan here's one to ask that what what what is the stage that that that that last number you were talking about is at the end of the schematic design phase yes okay and that then becomes the target budget that the designers working to for the rest of the project or is there or is it more loose than that okay no no it's it's the target target budget and and so thank you for bringing this up Jonathan because this is a really important point which I think is going to come into play as well as the designer comes on board so um the schedule for this project was always like pretty fast to get to a vote a year from now a local vote um you know at the time we lost um with the error and the advertising it's become compressed um when the designer comes on board we will look really closely with them at how much time is needed for schematic design because their ability to generate an accurate set of bid documents for estimating that it be really something that we can depend on to capture the cost is critical because if once that budget is set that number becomes the basis of your funding agreement with the MSBA and if the project cost goes up that the funding agreement I think understandably basically says that is on you so you find contaminated soils you didn't find before that's on you you find out that there's you know some other costs that you didn't anticipate that's on you so that number like what comes out of the schematic design estimate is the number that you are tied to for the rest of the project and you it really you need to have the this this is why I'm not going to say what that duration should be it really has to be the designer looking at the project and their team and deciding whether uh you know how much time they need to do it Mike no no more yeah I actually have to run uh to the dentist rather stay with you all but not what Dr. Perry would uh would agree to so um uh no really thanks everybody and I meant what I said earlier the conversations have been really uh influential and you know kind of my role yesterday and will continue to be as we go back to interviews um two weeks from yesterday so thanks again I hope everyone has a great day I have a question just on timing um Margaret has regularly said if we want to have it in a vote year from now but um Paul we in terms of a vote on the school we can do that anytime right it doesn't have to be I know money-wise if you're running an election it's easier to put a ballot question up but we can put a ballot question up a referendum anytime is that correct yeah that's correct and you know I think the goal would be to do it at a regularly scheduled election because you get a bigger turnout so you get a better sense of the community um but the council can choose to put it on choose any day at once uh we just have to follow all this normal protocols that come into place when you hold an election like registration and advance and all the kind of stuff that goes with it so we always you know I think it's always wise to continue to drive towards the November election in 2022 but recognize that that's a pretty challenging goal yeah and that's the only reason I asked it you know I realized it's challenging but if we end up needing two or three more months it doesn't mean that we have to wait till the next you know November 2023 and for those who don't closely follow the Amherst elections the turnout this time was about 30% so it was a lot lower than it was for the first council election but that election occurred with state elections at the same time and it was the first council but it was I might say a lot lower it's quite a bit lower um even though we're right in 2022 election will be a state election yeah so we'll be back on uh there'll be another election that we're tied to so any other questions on this um so the one other before I open it up for public comments that we can take comments on anything from the committee I did want to um on the what we agreed on for the two weeks from now so I will post that meeting is to come with ideas of a working group if we call it a it's not an ad hoc group so it's not just our committee but we bring other people on whether it's teachers other community members that would be helping with public forums with outreach but also as the designer comes on with content so come come with ideas of you know what kinds of people should be on it how big it should be um any experiences last time around with the Wildwood projects that people were part of um you know I've been asked a couple times do we have teachers on the building committee um and the answer is not yet but but that that would be the main topic and then we would also be reporting on we were going down from three to one um and we won't have negotiated a contract yet with them but we can be reporting on it Mike uh Paul yeah I'm just seeing your hands over yeah thank you um so I think we would look to Margaret for some guidance on you know what's the best practice for involving the community and setting up groups like this because we don't have to reinvent the wheel they've done you know dozens and dozens of buildings and there are probably communities that have done a really good job at doing this type of work so I think instead of us just sort of brainstorming randomly it'd be really good if we knew what other cities and towns have done to involve their their constituent groups their stakeholder groups okay and we can all look at it ourselves too I think you know so any go on go ahead do you want me to comment on that or you want to take it up when we talk about the committee next time who might be on this um you can you make a brief comment and then if you want to come in with any more detailed thoughts next time yeah so um I so I think there's a there's an important distinction that needs to be made here between communications and um let me call it I'm not sure advocacy is the right word so uh as I think everybody on this group knows you can't spend public money advocating for a project right and I want to have a separate discussion about what you can and cannot do because there's lots of things you can do like as individuals you can say I think everyone can support this project what you can't do is spend public money the kid this committee or any committee that is um sort of identified and kind of given a role formal role and this can't spend money so what I typically see is that there is a group that is doing advocacy which is independent of this but might be informed by um an ad hoc committee who were you know thinking about how to communicate if that makes sense it's I mean it's a little bit of a fine line but that's the way I would think about it Paul yeah so I don't think that's what Kathy's referring to that's an that is an advocacy group for a question that's on the ballot and you're right that's totally separate process I think Kathy you're talking more about how do we involve more people into the design considerations is that what you're thinking Kathy yeah and and and also just as we're confronting a decision that we know we're going to be making how do we do a public forum how do we do outreach in a way that enough people know that that decision's coming up and they can be are we using the the school apparatus at each school where we do a parent teacher organization so just trying to think through how um before we make the final decision on where we're building that people are invited in and get information and are there different voices that might reach more people so that Phoebe particularly raised this last time as uh it's a way of informing and it's way before advocacy it's just that people know people know where we're down to we're going to have to make a decision on this and what do we know and then yeah and then um we get input just on other people's um they they talked a couple of the proposals talked about this trying to feel about what is the town's been thinking about this for a while and we want to also hear from hear from the town like we can provide you with information so I think it's that kind of group Paul that without making this group enormous you know getting some more people to do that legwork thoughtwork um Ben is our school committee member but some of the school committee other members also are tied to the community in a way that they would have ideas about how to broaden the discussion before we make a decision not um yeah you know to not to be at the table making the decision yeah and you know I I'm just to be clear I'm clarifying clarifying this for anyone who may be listening because it is an important distinction right I think those of you who are already sort of working for the town in particular I think are aware of you know this this line but I want to make sure that anybody listening does not think we're forming an advocacy group we're forming a group to communicate yeah all right so seeing any other comments or questions um seeing none I will open it up to public comments and we have four attendees and one person has their name up either hand up um so Bruce I'm inviting you in I think you are now you should be able to talk if you unmute okay um two quick comments first is really quick um I don't know about others who are regularly attending these but I certainly would appreciate knowing who the attendees are to the extent this is a public meeting if it were a real regular old-fashioned public meeting I would come into the room I would know who was there and I would know who would I would I would know who was there so I think would it be possible perhaps at the beginning of the public comment section to just read the list of the attendees that's a question doesn't need to be answered right now it's just something that if it were possible I would appreciate it it would be more like a really regular public meeting secondly uh apropos of the uh this expanded uh this group that you were just discussing it seems to me that one uh useful uh and very pointed immediate focus would be I think Margaret you have on your um schedule somewhere around April or March or somewhere in this spring um the owner's project requirements or the design program there's a document that really is the seems to me one of the basic documents of any design process is being generated and and for filling that uh document out would be something that certain folks that are probably interested in this process would be very useful and could be quite constructively involved in uh in contributing to that thought process that accumulation I'm thinking particularly of teachers I was with Kathy when we went to these schools and we did go inside and it was clear that the the the design program could have been better and more accurately and more fulsomely constructed if teachers had have been involved this seems like a very good process for doing that some of Rupert's concerns which I share as well as an architect on building maintenance durability and complexities and so forth again could be plumbed a little bit through folks that were interested in this process had some time some experience and it could be let to focus on those kind of questions I think it's a very useful potential support group or however it's going wants to be named and and that design program is probably owner's project requirement document would seem to be a really constructive first focus for this kind of activity thank you thank you Bruce okay we have yes can I just say one thing um relative to the you know who's in the room um I I wanted to formally introduce Bob Stevens works with me because I know that those of you who participate who were part of our interviews or were able to listen to our interviews will have met Bob Stevens but Bob is actually my partner in crime on this um he lives in Westfield and um he's been in the background but I'm going to be asking him to join meetings more often and so I wanted to make sure everybody understood who he was on the screen and why he's a panelist and not a member of the public so thank you um you know I'll find out just on attendees that's been a question on other meetings on how we can do it there are three people right now and one I I'm not going to read out the names but we'll figure out whether we can make that more like who else is in the room we there is one other um hand up and I'm going to promote this person um to panelists please say who you are I think I promoted you Tony yes welcome Tony you can unmute hi uh yeah so my question is about the educational plan I believe that's one of the key steps coming up shortly and I haven't heard any discussion or very little discussion in this committee about it I realize it falls on the school committee and they have it on the agenda for December 14th as a first discussion the Amherst Elementary School Committee and then on January 11th as a vote so in between those dates we have the holidays um my concern is that the public has not yet been involved in this process and there's some big decisions that I think go into the educational plan maybe Margaret can clarify that for example we have three specialized programs as you know at um currently located at Fort River and at Wildwood will those three programs be offered at both this consolidated school and a crocker farm and what implications would that have for space needs at both buildings um if there's a shortage of space at crocker farm will the preschool have to move I realize that doesn't directly fall under the purview of this building committee but it is something that is of concern to me and the dual language program this could offer an opportunity to expand the program there's been a lot of interest and some people have not been able to get a spot in it um would we be looking at expanding the dual language program to be possibly three or four classes at this consolidated school would crocker farm students have equal opportunity to participate in it and all of these decisions have implications to the space summaries that that you will be drafting for the MSBA and the design of the building so I would love to hear more discussion about these topics and get them out into the public realm before they're decided because I think once that educational plan is voted and and I'm not sure you can you can crack me if I'm wrong on this Margaret but I'm not sure how easy it is to change it later um so there's some of my concerns and then also I just want to echo the desire to involve stakeholders early especially teachers and parents and also trying to reach the parents of zero to five year olds because they'll probably be the first cohort in this building and um there's many preschools in the area and daycares in the area that you could reach out to to get involved in this process thanks so much thank you um you know our practice is not normally not to respond to comments as they come in but um we will clearly um take these down and we can it will be a topic one of the issues that all the designer proposals have and it is an educational plan and we've gotten the same person basically on all three proposals who will be coming in and working on that so any other I know other hands are up on public um so we and so I want to take this moment for any other comments comments on upcoming meetings once the designer is selected we'll be able to probably put out a schedule of how often we're meeting but right now it will be two weeks from now and then we have talked about two weeks after that that first week in December will be when we're inviting hopefully we've negotiated the contract and we have a designer on board and that that meeting would focus on meeting that team hearing what they have to say about milestones etc so that is the current my best guess of the next two meetings and then we will have to be working with them on what can be done at each of the intervals we as everyone knows we're hitting Thanksgiving and we're hitting Christmas so we we're not going to try to have you give up other vacation plans um any other questions or comments I don't see any so I think we can adjourn the meeting and Kathy there is one more hand up in the um attendee list I don't know if you know another oh there was another okay thank you Sean okay so I am going to I don't know who this is I'm how do I allow to talk this is a person on the phone calling in can you please say who you are where you live and you are on unmute I hope I am unmuted you are unmuted am I okay hi this is Maria Kopicki from South Amherst so I want to comment about reimbursement you did mention that there's reimbursement points available for maintenance that's up to two percentage points at least it was historically there's also up to five percentage points for renovation and that wasn't mentioned and I think that's extraordinarily important to talk about because as you start to discuss different ways to approach this project that's going to be something that needs to be addressed and needs to be given very thoughtful consideration and fair consideration uh and I'd like you to comment on that and bring that into the discussion as you talk about reimbursement and as you talk about design options thank you thank you for your comment and Maria is correct and that was my oversight not to mention that so the MSBA does encourage the reuse of buildings through the use of reimbursement points so they if you as Maria says there's a total of five points and depending on how much of a building you reuse and how much you build new it's sort of prorated the percentage points are prorated okay now I think that's the only hand that's up I think is the same person who just spoke is that correct good thank you Sean for looking at hands they don't always appear on my screen so then I think we can adjourn today's meeting and hopefully get ready for the intensity that will happen once we have a designer on board thank I thank you everybody for joining early morning and the meeting I'm going to officially say this meeting is now adjourned thank you all see