MN-Stf Board Meeting - May 21, 2003 Persons present: [Board] Scott Raun, Larry Sanderson, Kevin Austin, Dean Gahlon [Recording Secretary] Polly Peterson Joyce Scrivner Joyce Scrivner: Damon Warrien is supposed to publish the Fanthology but he is going back to Australia. She wants to publish the Fanthology here are would like to use the copy printer. She would pay the MNSTF rates and any profit would go to DUFF or TAFF. She will supply her own paper. It would be published in the Fall (September at the earliest). The board is in agreement to doing this. Dean believes that the rates for using the copy printer were changed and he will send the email to the board. Dean and Scott believe that the Board decided to lower the rates because of a reduction in base costs. The rate structure should be put somewhere accessible. Larry suggests that the rates be looked at yearly. Fallcon Finances Larry provided a Fallcon banking summary based on Sharon Kahn's accounting. Kevin got an email from Rick when he was the webmaster in which he had some information about a donation to the Dixon Fund that Rich had made without the authorization of the Board. He also put hotel deposits down for the next Fallcon. Kevin wondered if the board had approved the expenses. Dean and Scott discussed whether or not he had the authorization to make the deposit on the hotel and he had not gotten any authorization for the donation. It was thought that Sharon discussed it with him telling him he should discuss it with the board. It is not a bad place to put the money, but he needs to get permission to spend if it is a MNSTF convention. Joyce wondered if Rick had a different understanding of what having MNSTF sponsor the convention meant. Laura Jean believes that they discussed that issue with him when he came to the board. If MN-stf is sponsoring it, the board should see the contract before he signs it. Dean has some concerns about having Rich run a MNSTF convention. There are concerns about food hygiene and safety as a liability issue. The board needs to decide what they want to say to Rick. Larry believes that Rick is looking for someone to take over Fallcon. The MisFits are having another fallcon, OmegaCon. IT is unlikely that we want to have three fallcons. Board decided to ask Rick to talk to them before he runs another Fallcon sponsored by MNSTF. Kevin will talk to Rick and tell him if he is wanting to have MNSTF sponsor it, he needs to come to a board meeting. Larry did say that he opened a MNSTF account for FallCon so that it was coming out of a separate account. Fallcon had a profit of $635.44 of which the board believes that $150 went to the Dixon fund and $300 belongs to MNSTF as seed money. MNSTF budget Larry is projecting that we will have an $8,000 loss for 2003 projecting from last year's figures. Minicon 37 will have a slight profit over the seed money. We will get some money out of our investments and we have $6,000 in saving. Minicon as it currently is constituted will not cover our expenses. The garage sale made $600 last year. Scott suggests paying for Einblatt by subscription perhaps turning $750 of expenses into a nominal revenue source by charging $10 per year. Joyce wondered whether or not that included institutions. We would push the electronic version, but ask for the subscription for paper copies. If the membership has objections, the board will ask them what alternatives they have to offer. The $750 does not include the cost of sending out the Directory so the $10 helps to cover that expense. The directory does not get mailed out to people unless they have a subscription and the members need to catch up with the directory publisher to get their copy. The board decided to go ahead and impliment the change. Dean believes that the electronic version should be neinblatt or keinblatt. Scott will take this suggestion under advisement. Scott will send out the June Einblatt with an announcement that we will be going to the subscription in July. There will not be any significant difference between the published and electronic versions except that occasionally late breaking events or details about events are added on the web after the published version goes out. Minicon Software Minicon needs to buy a copy of Acrobat or its clone to create .pdf files. It is too difficult to depend on volunteers for their legal copies. There is no shareware version that will work for getting .pdfs out of the various applications we use. Larry believes that we will need to get a club copy of Filemaker pro for $220. The boards general view on software is that if the person already owns it or buys it for their own personal use, we are please to have them donate the use of it for Minicon/MNSTF. However, the board does not expect them to have to pay for a club copy themselves. Mincon 39 will have to run on Filemaker Pro, and the concom cannot find the previous licensed copy. The money will need to come out of MNSTF since the committee doesn't have access to the M39 account yet and they need to get the database going. Polly suggested looking into a software donation. Time is a factor. Dean suggests we start the process of looking for a donation and then go out and buy it if the process seems to be too slow. Filemaker Pro ships with both the Mac and PC versions. Larry thinks that it is possible that if we knew that the copy was registered we might be able to get an upgrade or a legal copy of it. Larry is going to look into it. Kevin would like to talk about VPDP duties at the next meeting. MNSTF Picnic Last year we spent $250 for drinks and munchies and $50 for the park. The plan is to do it August 16th at Minnehaha Waban Picnic Area if we can get it. Dean suggests that we have more precise directions published. Joyce wondered if we would want to be somewhere where people could swim, but the board was not clear that there is a lot of interest in swimming. The board approved $250. MNSTF con Parties Geri is planning on hosting a party at Torcon. The total on parties at cons in 2002 for 6 events was $1954 for local and regional conventions and $1200 for the worldcon parties. Payback is slow and painful on these parties. Not having parties is sending a politically negative message especially to other local conventions. The worldCon parties draw the Rasif/smof types. We gain good will at the local con parties. We don't know that this generates more memberships at Minicon. Laura Jean feels that we need to decide when we stop doing this. The next convention is Convergence and there have been interest in hosting a party there. The board will throw $197.30 for Convergence if someone comes forward to host. Joyce asked whether or not Minicon would be interested in bidding to host the Tiptree Award. Minicon 38 (brief) Report Scott believes that it will bring in about $4,000. We missed paying for the storage locker and David was not able to get in. We have been paying annually for 12 months and getting the 13th month free. The moving target to pay is part of the confusion since they do not send a bill for the annual fee. New Bank Account for Minicon? Minicon accounts are currently at Franklin Bank, and we are spending about $60 in bank fees per year for mere existence. Irene is researching where we can get a free or lower fee account. The board authorized her to go ahead and open an account if she finds one with better terms. Minicon, Paypal and Chapbooks This worked well this year and Larry would like to set it up and continue it all year. He would like to sell the leftover chap books and to keep the Steve McDonald songbook in print, making a little money off of it. Scott wants to makes sure that a volunteer is identified to make sure that it gets to production. Larry suggests that we draft the Minicon publications department to do this. Paypal has transaction charges (around 3%), but people really liked it and we took in something like $1200 in registrations. The electronic registration saves work too. There are no fixed charges for paypal. The board says yes to continuing to use Paypal. Hotel for M40 Mincon will have to find a new hotel because the hotel is booked for the next five years to Eckankar. Susan is trying to convince us that we need to move to another weekend, but the board would take a lot of convincing to move Mincon off of Easter Weekend. Additional business None. Next meeting is June 18th. Polly and Laura Jean requested to start the meeting earlier. We will meet at 7 pm. Scott will eat even as we meet.