Cloverleaf Portfolio: Grassroots Radio Conference (2011)

KKFI 90.1 FM community radio and Friends of Community Media in Kansas City will host the 15th Grassroots Radio Conference. The national conference scheduled for August 18-21, 2011 offers a chance for people from community radio stations to connect with each other, learn new skills, and discuss media issues. My participation on the publicity team includes branding, designing and building a website; creating a conference flier; writing articles and content; and building a following in Facebook and Twitter. Alexis B, a volunteer with KKFI, developed the banner image.

Conference website - click on image for full view

The website is built using a fully-functioning "conference organizing distribution" of Drupal, the largest open-source content management system. The distribution has a feature that allows conference schedules, registration, and sponsorships to be built from items submitted directly by those audiences. The cost of the site is nominal: hosting cost $80, while my labor to design and build the site was donated to the conference.

Read website Case Study: Non-Profit Groups Organize Conference in Kansas City

Conference flier

Conference registration-by-mail form (click on the image for larger view)

Facebook and Twitter. The challenge in this project is working with an all-volunteer conference organizing team without experience using social media. The number of people who "Like" the conference page has grown to 160 in 3 months. The Twitter account is new, attracting 110 followers over the same time period. Two social media tools were used to build an audience: (1) implement a Facebook Ad the last week before the conference and (2) countdown-to-the-conference tweets using Hootsuite's scheduling function.