Mnstf board meeting, 3:30pm Sunday April 17, 2016 at Scott Raun's. Attending board members: Matt Strait (also the recording secretary; by phone), Scott Raun, Aaron Vander Giessen, Hershey Harris, Lydy Nickerson. Others attending: Ann Totusek == Approve previous minutes == Approved! Matt instantly publishes them on the web with a simple click of ":w". == Review TODO list == * "Lydy will put the information for new board members on the wiki." Lydy has not done this. Back to the TODO. * "Scott will make sure that the 2014 taxes get filed after Lydy follows up with Beth F." Still needs to be done. Aaron asks if we have filed for for an extension. Scott says no, and adds that that they won't owe us and we won't owe them. Getting to the taxes is his second priority after Ameriprise. * "Scott will follow up on our 2015 taxes after the 2014 tax item above." Scott says he will deal with these simultaneously. * "Lydy will draft and send an e-mail to the University of Iowa about tapes." Matt notes that this has been on the TODO list since July. Lydy says that in light of what Geri told us recently, she'd like to re-draft her e-mail before sending. Back to TODO. * "Lydy will double-check that she sent Dean the now-definitely-approved Mnstf meeting info e-mail." By now, the president is Emily, not Dean. Lydy reports that Dean never got it. She will send it to Emily. * "Scott will do our Secretary of State renewal that needs to be done by the end of the year." Scott will do this, it isn't done yet. * "Scott will continue following up on Spideroak." Scott will do this. He needs to ping DD-B. Back to the TODO. * "Matt will ask Quartermaster Joel for a list of dates that he can do the storage locker inventory, and then will advertise this date and wrangle people to show up." Matt has e-mailed Joel. Joel says he is in Hawaii and isn't going to think about it until his vacation is over. Aaron reports that Facebook reports that he is back. Back to TODO. There are two TODO items on finances that are deferred to the "finances" agenda item. * "NO ONE ASSIGNED: A multi-year policy for banning people from one or more future conventions will be developed by the board." Matt volunteers. He will draft something and start by bouncing it off Lydy, then the rest of the board. TODO. * "NO ONE ASSIGNED: A hand-off procedure between conventions for records of reported harassment will be developed." Matt also volunteers for this, same deal. Totally done: * "Matt will ask Joel if he wants to continue being the Quartermaster." He will. * "Add Hershey and Aaron to board-chat and remove Kevin and Ann." DONE * "Lydy will continue trying to set up a meeting with Corwin and will inform him of the short-term consequences of not having one." DONE, and we had a meeting with Corwin, and now have a check for $100 in hand. == Review Recurring Task List == Matt has reviewed it and sees, besides things already on the TODO list: * ASCAP: as of February we were waiting for them to bill us. Have they? The bill comes on paper, and Hershey reports that she passed off some ASCAP things just ahead of Minicon to Treasurer Carol Kennedy. So probably that means we've been billed. TODO: Scott will make sure that Carol pays them. * Minicon 51 preliminary finances. Matt (M51 treasurer) says that things are going well and he will be able to submit a proper report at the next board meeting. == Ratifications == Previously approved by e-mail, requiring ratification at a meeting: * Approval of M51 internal harassment policy. * Declaring one of the Minicon 51 code-of-conduct incidents to be a board matter, escalating it from being a Minicon 51 matter. * Declaring Matt speaker to the parties involved in above matter. All ratified. == Finances == * Cats Laughing: We got a check, but Matt reports that it doesn't seem to have been deposited, according to the online banking. It is in Carol's hands. TODO: Scott will make sure that it gets deposited. We need to set up more payments. Lydy reports that DD-B reports that they didn't make any money, net, at Minicon. They are still waiting for their website to get up and running so they can make more sales. Beyond Conventions currently have zero dollars available for us. It is their plan that if Beyond Conventions can never cover it, someone will eventually pay us. They ask for us to talk to them in 90 days (July 15). TODO. Scott notes that we agreed we'd have an agreement on what the total debt was by last Friday. TODO: Lydy will talk to DD-B about getting this done by the end of the month. TODO item: "Scott will arrange with Treasurer Carol to get our money put into a C-share as well as regenerating the Ameriprise paperwork." Previous to this meeting, in March, Scott had reported that the paperwork had been regenerated. Then we found out, "They *DID* get the paperwork Lydy mailed last year. But it was rejected because there were no Client IDs for any of the signers. And this piece of information got lost somewhere along the line. (And there's nothing to indicate that Client ID is a mandatory field.) Charles is sending the necessary paperwork for us to get Client IDs for all the signers to my house. Irene & I will follow up as soon as we get it." On March 18, Scott reported that the paperwork hadn't come. Irene called Charles again. Plans were laid for further calls if it didn't show up. Scott suggested trying to get a different advisor from Ameriprise - Charles may be perfectly good for some people or groups, but we need a level of attention to detail that isn't him. At the meeting: Scott reports that this is his top priority. Scott will ask Irene to follow up on whether the money has been moved to C-shares. TODO item: "Matt will look into alternative places to keep our savings." Matt reports that he has done just a little looking. We could get 0.06% and no fees with a US Bank savings account. That's $24/year. Advantage: we already bank there. Or we could get 0.75% with a Capital One savings account for $300/year. Matt has experience with them. Or 1% with an Ally Bank savings account, which Matt has only heard of. Matt advocates moving all the money to US Bank immediately, and then working on our other options if we want more interest. Aaron asks what this money is for. Matt says it is to protect against major disasters, like cancelling Minicon at the last minute. Aaron: so our tolerance for risk is low. Matt: Low, but non-zero. Aaron: How fast would we need to be able to get at the money? Matt: Not terribly fast. If we default on a hotel contract, they'll bill us and we'll have some time to pay. Discussion of putting the money in CDs. CD rates are very low, so this isn't a terribly good option. Aaron reports that someone he knows at Ameriprise recommends putting all the money in Vanguard funds. (i.e. not in Ameriprise.) Matt is asked why he wants to get out of Ameriprise so fast. Matt says that he doesn't trust Ameriprise after all their antics. The whole time he's been on the board, he's been trying to establish clear control of this money, and we still don't have it. Surely some of the delay has been our own fault, but also surely a lot has been theirs. He still hasn't seen any evidence that we are in full control of our account. We're still not sure we can get money out. Scott reports that we *have* gotten money out of Ameriprise. Three checks to boost our checking account. Twice in December. It took about 10 business days each. This was before the money became a C-share. Matt says, oh, well, that makes me much less worried, but I still don't like Ameriprise and want out. Scott and Lydy do not want to move our money to a no-interest account, even with a plan to move it elsewhere after we have identified that new place. Hershey is ok with Matt's plan. Lydy notes that now that the money may be in a C-share, there will be a penalty for moving it out ahead of a year from when it moved. We all agree that we want to get out of Ameriprise. The only questions are what the penalty might be for early withdrawal (if any) and where it goes and when to make the transfer. We will cancel transferring to a C-share if we aren't in one yet. Decision tree: Where is the money now within Ameriprise? What is the penalty, if any? If no penalty, get out sooner, else later. TODO for Aaron: find us our best investment option. Recurring TODO for Hershey: make sure the board gets to see the statements. == Harassment policy == Matt proposes that we amend the first sentence of the "Rules for conventions" section from: "Each Minn-stf convention shall publish a public policy and also have an internal policy, both approved by the board." to "Each Minn-stf convention shall publish a public policy and also have an internal policy, both approved by the board for that convention. (Each convention in a named series counts as a different convention.)" (The purpose of this twofold: First, to head off arguments about the meaning of "convention". This is reiterating how it is defined in the bylaws. Second, to make it clear that a policy is not approved in general and then available for use at any convention, but approved for one-time use.) And that the following be added to the end of the first paragraph under "Rules for conventions": "The internal policy will be provided, upon demand, to members of Mnstf or the convention." Unanimous approval of these. TODO: Matt will get the policy updated on the web. == Conventions == * Minicon 50: Matt submits the final financial report. Huzzah! Hershey asks about the commentary that we sent a lot of money to PayPal. It is a lot of money! Are we doing something about that? Matt: Yes, now we pass along the fees to people who choose to register online and so effectively have no PayPal cost. People who register online have to pay the PayPal fee just like people who mail in their registration have to pay for a stamp. General agreement that this is a reasonable thing to do. * Minicon 51: There was an incident that was referred to the code-of-conduct committee that we agreed needed to be escalated to the board. We discuss what we thought of the incident and the response to it at-con, taking input from Minicon 51 chair Ann Totusek. We agree that we believe that no violation of the code of conduct occurred. TODO: Matt will draft a letter of apology to the affected parties for botching our response. In this letter, we will extend the at-Minicon 51 $35 rate to pre-reg for Minicon 52 through the pre-reg deadline as part of acknowledging that our response was not ideal. Matt will also write a report of our findings for our internal use. At issue in this incident is that, by unanimous agreement of the board, it was just rudeness. Our policies do not cover rudeness. They are already clear on that. However, rudeness gets reported to us anyway. Moreover, it's not always clear from the initial report whether what happened was just rudeness or something that crossed the line. Lydy: We don't want to dismiss reports of harassment by asking the reporter to try to reclassify what happened as rudeness. Matt: But no one wants to be pulled aside by con staff to have their behavior discussed, even if the eventual outcome is that we tell them that they didn't violate the code of conduct. That is a great way to ruin someone's con. Hershey: I think we need to have a look at the code of conduct itself. One thing is that even if we have a code, we don't need to have a crew of people who are policing and making matters worse and creepy. Scott: One of the assumptions of the code of conduct committee that I'm not hearing you address is that the committee never initiates a response, but only responds to people's complaints. It doesn't go out and search for things to police. Hershey: the fact that, in this case, someone not actually involved in the incident reported is a big deal. Lydy: Yes, I agree that I should have given more weight to that. Scott: But we do have to allow for third-party complaints. Lydy: I agree, although I know that Clay disagrees, and I know that there is a lot of general discussion in the community about this. Since the meeting has already been quite long, we agree to put working on our policies on the TODO list. More things from Minicon 51. Ann: I'm ready to answer questions. Lydy: is Keith staying on hotel for M52? Ann: Yes. * Minicon 52: No further report. * Minicon 53: Let's have this on the horizon; looking for a proposal by the end of the year. Scott will start putting an announcement in the Einblatt that we are looking for bids. TODO. * Decongestant: Hershey reports that she is hot on the hunt for a suitable hotel. After some interesting brainstorming involving ideas of holding the con in a mansion or a group of cabins and whatnot, we have decided to go the traditional route of a hotel in or near the city. Matt notes that this makes it flexible if people want to run more departments this year and makes it more inviting to people who aren't in the in crowd. Matt: when abouts do you think we'll have a short list? Hershey: ha ha I dunno. Matt: ha ha. Hershey: we'd like to have the hotel picked out by the first week of May. Aaron: what are the dates? or is that contingent on the hotel? Hershey: contingent on the hotel. It could be anytime in September or either of two weekends in October. Scott: we could even do August. Or the first weekend in November. * Minneapolis in 2073 - Plan for progress report #9 sometime before November. We are currently holding about $380. Should run some parties. See next item. * Others? Nope. == Worldcon party == * Joel and Matt would like the board to authorize an expense of $1250 towards throwing a Minneapolis party at MidAmeriCon II. They note that Minicons 48-50 made $2600 more than their collective targets, so there should be room in the Minn-stf budget for this. Discussion about whether this amount is appropriate. Sounds very high to some people. Others point out that this is a *Worldcon*! Matt looks up what we spent on a similar party 4 years ago at Chicon: $1098. Well, ok then. Lydy: why not spend this out of Minicon funds? Matt: because it should be a Minnstf party, not a Minicon party, and because I'd like to spend it out of the previous Minicons' surplus instead of charging it against the next Minicon. We all approve! TODO: Scott will notify Carol. == Storage locker == Jim Porter (Minicon 51 and 52 logistics head) wrote to us with some concerns the storage locker company has. - There are six names on the access list. We should remove names that shouldn't be there. They'd like us to update the list annually, or confirm annually if it is not to change. - They want to make sure that people not on the list don't use the access code to enter. They should come in with authorized people. - For Minicon move in/out or inventories, they don't want people not on the list trying to talk their way past the desk. Our authorized people should come get them instead. - The primary name on the account is Dean, but they don't really know Dean or have any contact information for him. - They want to know a week ahead of time if we are going to swarm into the building and have an inventory Matt: who is on the list now? No one present knows. Do we want Dean to be the official contact still? Scott is fine with this. Matt: might Scott make more sense since his address is the official non-PO box Mnstf address? Scott: Let's just see if we can get Dean in good standing with them. Dean will get us the list of names. Hershey is speaker-to-Dean. TODO. Matt will communicate with Joel and Jim. TODO. == Next meeting == May 22nd, 2pm, Scott's place. == New TODO list == Now with the date of the first meeting that the item appeared roughly its current form: * (11-2014) Lydy will put the information for new board members on the wiki. * (11-2015) Scott will make sure that the 2014 taxes get filed. * (02-2016) Scott will get the 2015 taxes filed. * (07-2015) Lydy will draft and send an e-mail to the University of Iowa about tapes. * (10-2015) Lydy will send Emily the now-definitely-approved Mnstf meeting info e-mail. * (02-2016) Scott will do our Secretary of State renewal that needs to be done by the end of the year. * (05-2015) Scott will continue following up on Spideroak. * (03-2016) Matt will ask Quartermaster Joel for a list of dates that he can do the storage locker inventory, and then will advertise this date and wrangle people to show up. * (04-2016) Matt will draft a multi-year policy for banning people from one or more future conventions. * (04-2016) Matt will draft a hand-off procedure between conventions for records of reported incidents. * (04-2016) Scott will make sure that Carol pays ASCAP. * (04-2016) Scott will make sure the check from Corwin gets deposited. * (04-2016) SOMEONE will talk to Beyond Conventions about their payment plan in on or about July 15th. * (04-2016) Lydy will talk to DD-B about getting Beyond Conventions' statement on what they think their total debt to us is. * (04-2016) Aaron will find us a good investment option. * (04-2016) Matt will update the Minnstf harassment policy on the web. * (04-2016) Matt will draft a letter of apology to the affected parties of the Minicon 51 code of conduct incident. Matt will also write up a report of our findings for our own internal use. * (04-2016) SOMEONE will work on our convention code-of-conduct policies. * (04-2016) Scott will put an announcement in the Einblatt that we are looking for Minicon 53 bids. * (04-2016) Scott will notify Carol that the board has approved $1250 towards a party Matt and Joel are planning at Worldcon. * (04-2016) Hershey will talk to Dean about the storage locker: update his contact information with them, get the list of authorized people for review. * (04-2016) Matt will communicate with Joel and Jim Porter about the storage locker.