ULSU EGM

jasonpkennedy

An Focal will have someone down too. I reckon we should have a little press corner down the front with comfy seats and complimentary coffee. :P

wnolan1992

jasonpkennedy wrote: »

An Focal will have someone down too. I reckon we should have a little press corner down the front with comfy seats and complimentary coffee. :P

ULFM hosts invited? :pac:

OhMSGlive

wnolan1992 wrote: »

ULFM hosts invited? :pac:

+1! :pac:

I'll probably be tweeting some of the points made at the EGM anyway, if that helps.

highlydebased

jasonpkennedy wrote: »

An Focal will have someone down too. I reckon we should have a little press corner down the front with comfy seats and complimentary coffee. :P

An Focal shall have multiple people Twitter and all that jazz.

Polar Ice

jasonpkennedy wrote: »

An Focal will have someone down too. I reckon we should have a little press corner down the front with comfy seats and complimentary coffee. :P

I think all the media outlets need to take it to the next step.
Audio & Video! We had an audio recording (thanks to TST) last semester for the extraordinary C&S council meeting

Live video feed PLZ! You'll have earned the complimentary coffee then!

SarahBeep!

Gonna presume there's no facility for ULFM to do a broadcast?

OhMSGlive

SarahBeep! wrote: »

Gonna presume there's no facility for ULFM to do a broadcast?

Doubt it, but maybe someone on the board who knows better can comment on that?

jasonpkennedy

Polar Ice wrote: »

I think all the media outlets need to take it to the next step.
Audio & Video! We had an audio recording (thanks to TST) last semester for the extraordinary C&S council meeting

Live video feed PLZ! You'll have earned the complimentary coffee then!

It's something I definitely think is worth looking into and I will bring it up at the next time I meet with other section editors. As far as I know, it's not something we can do for the meeting on Wednesday, but we should have someone live blogging on Anfocal.ie. I'd love to see video streaming happen soon, so I'll bring it up as soon as i can.

wnolan1992

SarahBeep! wrote: »

Gonna presume there's no facility for ULFM to do a broadcast?

Highly doubt it. Not a live transmission anyway.

Polar Ice

But I desperately need a reason for procrastination at work!

jasonpkennedy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZZ7oFKsKzY How about this?

OhMSGlive

jasonpkennedy wrote: »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZZ7oFKsKzY How about this?

Ah, come off it! There's no need for that!

wnolan1992

Interesting read. I won't reiterate my view:

http://jasonkennedyul.blogspot.com/2012/01/why-we-should-save-co-and-focal_29.html

jasonpkennedy

OhMSGlive wrote: »

Ah, come off it! There's no need for that!

Heh, I know, sorry. Well, I know there'll be tweets flying around from TST, An Focal and the odd freelancer. Should we decide on a hashtag for twitter? #ULEGM?

SarahBeep!

http://jasonkennedyul.blogspot.com/2012/01/why-we-should-save-co-and-focal_29.html

Well worth a read, some great points raised by Jason!

OhMSGlive

jasonpkennedy wrote: »

Heh, I know, sorry. Well, I know there'll be tweets flying around from TST, An Focal and the odd freelancer. Should we decide on a hashtag for twitter? #ULEGM?

Well that's what I'll be using anyway.

Might also use #warzone depending on how things go......

bazkennedy

Any chance anfocal.ie could do a live blog? not the hardest thing to set up

OhMSGlive

bazkennedy wrote: »

Any chance anfocal.ie could do a live blog? not the hardest thing to set up

jasonpkennedy wrote:

we should have someone live blogging on Anfocal.ie.

That should answer your question.

bazkennedy

ah silly me, should read things more carefully

highlydebased

OhMSGlive wrote: »

Doubt it, but maybe someone on the board who knows better can comment on that?

SarahBeep! wrote: »

Gonna presume there's no facility for ULFM to do a broadcast?

We'll do it if it's possible from a technical point of view.......

reunion

SarahBeep! wrote: »

http://jasonkennedyul.blogspot.com/2012/01/why-we-should-save-co-and-focal_29.html

Well worth a read, some great points raised by Jason!

I read it and wow...

He really know enough about what is going on (or else only cares for himself and the paper). He is right, we should get more representation HOWEVER we can't afford more representation.

Think of it this way, the su is back to the levels of 1997 funding, which only had 3 officers then, CEO, president and welfare. Education was added in 2000 and cso in 2006.

To go back to 1997 funding, 2 positions need to be removed OR you need to find 28K per position (kelly says 28K for CSO so I presume it's the same for both, please correct me if it isn't! (56K for both positions)) in savings. This would either obliterate any budget any officers have (so no paper anyway).

TST has remained unbiased as a student run paper so it can be done (no idea when the paper was launched so if it was before the CO position was made, it could go back to pre-CO times). I would also point out, Kelly the current CO is in favour of abolishing the CO too. There is someone who knows the position and wants to see it abolished.

As for Kelly doing a good job for students that is your personal choice. (please read her manifesto from election time here) Regarding ULFM, anybody should realise a listenership of less then 60 (average of ~10) should be a service which is removed, this service is unused by the majority of students. She wished to encourage the ressurection of the station and it is ressurected, but it is taking up too much time of a communications office and she should step back from it and let it be student run. Not to mention the dictatorship nature and unprofessional behaviour she has presented this year (both on facebook, boards and in her own communications blog (interesting article here)).

Any person who decides to run for CO should know that it's a lot more than the paper, the station and some advertising.

Also I would point out, it's just an focal (both online and paper) and some advertising. ULFM is not part of the communications officers role.
Article 33 of the SU constitution outlines the role of the CO.

jasonpkennedy

Thanks for that reunion. I just want to point out that last year, the previous CO raised €50,000 worth of advertising, which is enough to cover both An Focal's print run and the CO's salary. The office is the only one which can be self-sufficient, so this is another problematic area for me.
I must agree with you on TST. They are doing a great job, but the more media outlets available the better. Any of them involved in TST would say that as well, I'd imagine.
Thanks for clarifying the bottom half part for me as well.

ergonomics

reunion wrote: »

I would also point out, Kelly the current CO is in favour of abolishing the CO too. There is someone who knows the position and wants to see it abolished.

For those of you who don't know, my name is Aoife and I was the CO during 2009/10.

I don't usually post about SU stuff as I'm long gone now but I just wanted to address the point I quoted above.

As a former CO I would be completely against abolishing this role.

CO isn't just An Focal or ULFM. The role may have changed when I was there but in my time I was also Press Officer for the Union and looked after all communications. This meant dealing with press queries and writing press releases. I was a student representative. I sat on committees and had working groups. I looked after the website and social media. I made posters. I sold advertising for the whole Union, not just An Focal. That's just what I can remember off the top of my head.

Even if you took An Focal out of the role there was still enough work for a full time person there. In fact myself I suggested that a full time editor role would be created to give the CO more time to focus on the rest of their responsibilites. I know I'm not the only CO who suggested this either. I suggested this as I thought the current CO role had too much work in it for one person and now the Union wants to abolish it completely and have a Co-Op student do this work?

There were weeks, weeks which weren't even 'An Focal weeks', when I had to lock my office door because I was too busy to deal with anything else which may have come through the door.

I'm sure the guys in the Union have valid reasons to suggest this but I've read anything I can on the subject and I can't see how it's justified.

SarahBeep!

Very well said Aoife, Im glad to see people coming out in support of the position!! People dont realise how much work Comms reslly is and just how much money it brings in.

cjthecrow

This was on the SU facebook page from a few days ago, since then the post has been deleted but it was Kelly who posted it on her account onto the thread found here https://www.facebook.com/ulstudentsunion/posts/10150503982887787 Her comment was right above Giana's comment in which Kelly also mentioned that paddy isn't doing a good job. Luckily one of the guys has a screen shot of it all!
"I could tell you things, discrepancies and mistruthss, misconceptions and down right disgraceful abuses of power that has come from that office. It is only my wish to remain a part of a unified team that stops me. Though, I think that may be out the window after recent events."
I for one would love to hear what the hell she meant by this and what the hell is going on!

horsemeat

Jason can I ask you a question,

you're obviously great mates with kelly, you obviously plan to run for comms if the position exists, why does kelly want to get rid of it? i mean it's her who has put this idea forth not anyone else. is she not screwing over a mate in a sense.

i mean she put the motion forth but then i read something from her saying she wasnt sure how she feels about it now. wtf like.

seems badly thought out.

i dont think either position should be abolished, as you say they still get the same capitation fee why should we get less representation. also seems like a fair amount of bad eggs re the cso position.

as in the rest of the team obviously don't like paddy and are half out to screw him over.

jasonpkennedy

To be very honest, I have no idea why they want to get rid of it. I know it's because of representational issues, but apart from that, I really don't know. Wish I could be more help on that front.

Jester252

The best thing that could happen is if the CO became a PRO. That way the position is still involved in an focal and ULFM but the position would have the person take an XO role in them. i.e the person would not be in charge of an focal or ULFM but if something happen they will step in and run it. This will free up time for the person to work on student relations with the university staff and the local community. I understand that the CSO was in charge of M&M and stuff like that. Now if CSO is gotten rid of someone would need to be in charge of theses services and that would be the PRO

reunion

ergonomics wrote: »

In fact myself I suggested that a full time editor role would be created to give the CO more time to focus on the rest of their responsibilites. I know I'm not the only CO who suggested this either.

You weren't the only one to be told that the position wouldn't be created. Making up positions to reduce the work Sabbats take on is why the union is in financial difficulty. People were elected to do a job, not to hire others to do their job.

I have been told the paper makes millions for the SU, however I have yet to see any figures to back these claims. The previous €50K was also in times of the celtic tiger, people and companies had money. The current state of affairs aren't the same as they used to be. Kelly has pulled in €26K (link) (€5k of which spent on ULFM) for the co.

Now I will assume she has €50K of advertising for the year. €28K is her salary (well CSO but I presume they are similar(link)), and the paper isn't free to print so roughly 61c per copy (from here for UCD (for 30 pages (current size of the paper))) which amounts to ~€1,830 per issue (~3000 copies) for 14 issues thats ~€25,620. So communications runs at a loss of roughly €3,620. Now include ULFM's cost of €5K and the lost is roughly €8,620.

If you scrapped the CO and replaced with an unpaid or even lower paid position (say 12K per year) and pulled in €40K in advertising, you make a profit of roughly €2,380.

I would like to point out the paper was created in 1994 (link) so for 3 years ran sufficiently with 3 officers in the SU. So it can be done again.

Also like to point out the advertising rates have in general increased too, which may help obtain more revenue or may have a negative impact (09/10 prices current)

canned_ulkc

I wonder though is it more about aboloshing positions because they are non-representational (IMO the CO is representitive or at least the integrity of An Focal is at risk any other way so far as I can see) and therefore could become part of ULSU staff rather than voted for representational officers?

I mean, is the primary objective to save 2 X wages or is the primary objective to reassign the duties of these roles? If wages is not the primary issue then perhaps there is room to reassign roles and reduce by just one position.

In terms of using the title PRO I think it might be a bit of a connundrum given that a PRO's role would not fit well with the unbiased nature of reporting (through An Focal)

Tony