Continuity Update, Jan. 11

Happy 2016, everyone! This is the year that we move into new digs, and renovate the existing spaces. Pretty amazing!

Here are a few places to put your construction-related attention this week:

1. Sorting, organizing and detritus
2. Space plan for studios and meetings
3. Cool new photos! 

Use the comments section at the bottom of the post to relay questions, comments, general thoughts. Your input helps us give you better, more useful information!

Cheers,
Patti and Beth

Sorting, organizing and detritus

Your desk:
We have extra totes on site to receive your papers that need to be shredded or recycled. Please make time to go through your filing cabinets, drawers, binders of work projects from long ago and think about how much of that material you really need to hang onto, and how much can go in a bin.

• Shred: anything confidential
• Recycle: all other paper.
• Send: historically useful VPR materials to Michelle

As you narrow down the materials and items that you actually plan to move to your new space, try to imagine all of it fitting into one smallish box. If you have more stuff than that, please reach out to your supervisor for guidance, or to a coworker for emotional support to keeping purging more. Keep in mind the new workspaces have few walls for hanging posters and pictures, and the desks are more open and exposed, which asks us all to be a bit more de-cluttered in general.

Some documents must be saved!

This will get a little wonky, stay with us:

VPR has an extensive Document Retention and Destruction Policy. Most of us don't work with documents that are covered by it, so you may not be aware of this policy. Here are some loose guidelines. If you have any questions about retaining or destroying paper documents, please post them in the comments section below - chances are, other staffers will have a similar question.

1. If you work in Finance, HR, Executive, or Administration departments, you are likely familiar with and should continue to adhere to the policy. (Most of the documents covered by the policy are generated by these departments.)
   
   
2. If you ever work on records and documents that go in the Public File, the policy applies to documentation you have have created. Please be sure you are familiar with the policy and are adhering to its requirements.
   
   
3.  For other employees and departments, here is a sample of documents that fall under the policy:

• Administrative correspondence: Retain anything under 4 years
• Fiscal correspondence: Retain anything under 4 years
• General correspondence: Retain anything under 2 years
• Other (business) correspondence: Retain anything under 1 year
• SoundExchange records: retain anything under 3 years for records relating to payments of royalties (server logs, sound recording information for records streamed)
• Copies of contracts or a list of contracts: Retain as long as the contract is in effect.
• Correspondence related to time by or on behalf of political candidates: Retain anything under 2 years

If you have a paper trail that includes these documents, or anything that you think might be covered by the Policy, please be sure you're following the Policy, and if you have questions about the Policy requirements you can ask Brian D., Madelyn, or Heather for help.

Near your desk:
Laurie is very interested in hearing from you about this question: what things do you need regular access to that aren't part of your personal desk?  What are those things, how much space do they occupy? We need to plan space for these things, so please email Laurie with the subject line "I need regular access to these things."

Here's an example:

Hi Laurie - two things from the newsroom:

1. A large bookcase for reference materials. We will clean out the black bookcase upstairs so that there are fewer things to move, but we definitely need a large reference area somewhere.

2. There are several CD filing cabinets up here that we use to store recent programs and newscasts, which we often tape from for stories, listener requests, etc. Those could be stored anywhere, not necessarily right next to desks. Maybe even in Master Control if there is space?

So, think about things that seem obvious to you and make sure they are obvious to others, too.

Space plan for studios and meetings

We let you know back in December that Master Control and Talk Studio will be the first studios to get the renovation treatment, which means Master and Talk are unavailable from Feb 15-March 26. During that time, Studio A will be Master, and Performance will be Talk.

Several staff have pitched in to comb through the schedules for those four spaces to relocate, reschedule or cancel sessions and meetings. Thank you to everyone who has helped with this effort -- your flexibility is making all things possible.

Losing the Performance Studio puts a big hit on available meeting space. VPR is planning to get a trailer on-site for these weeks that will serve as a temporary conference room. The dates where to park it are being hammered out - details soon!

Cool new photos! 

If you're able to get on a building tour, you won't be disappointed! Check this out:

What am I looking at? This is the Crow's Nest! The photographer is standing in the newsroom looking east; the other side of this wall is Studio One. Upstairs on the mezzanine you can see the shape of semi-private space for heads-down work, and also small meetings. Downstairs, you can see the door frames of smaller "Leave Me Alone" rooms and a utility closet on the right.

What am I looking at? The cleanest roof in Vermont, as seen from the Tower Cam. The solar panel arrays are in place, as in the new HVAC unit that will keep the building perfectly climate controlled. As of December 29th the solar array was producing power back to the grid!!! The current array is projected to produce over 100,000 kWh per year, netting out all the power anticipated to be used by everything in the newly constructed space.


Comments, please!
Again, your questions, comments and general thoughts help us give you better, more useful information!