Last week’s Boxcar planning meeting seemed to move too slow for me, which is largely my fault because I was facilitating. It made me realize that its a bad idea to try to facilitate a discussion when one has a lot to try to think about or say about ideas. I felt like I was on a different page, in some ways, and in different ways, from a lot of the people I work with. At one point, I talked about how it was important to think about roles and responsibilities that are beyond what’s happening currently at Boxcar, and nothing could come to mind as a good example. Listening to the radio, I came up with this idea, and while it could be effective from an assy marketing perspective, more importantly, I feel like it will help to generate excitement about books and some of the cultural and political ideas that members of the collective feel are important and offer a more relevent selection of books to the community.
Here’s the role description:
Ordering Consultant
An ordering consultant will assist the ordering coordinator by suggesting books to be ordered for the store, though final decisions about ordering will continue to be made by the ordering coordinator. They will print out “As Featured on This American Life” or “As Featued on Democracy Now!” or other labels to help people notice books that were mentioned in the media. They will find and excerpt reviews of new books (or write ones themeselves) that are ordered to include with the books in the store. They will be responsible for writing a newsletter column, website article, and perhaps a periodic e-mail update/Myspace bulletin to the e-mail list talking about new books.