First meeting of the new board. In the teleport room of Dreampark. 6pm, March 10, 2018, right after getting elected. New board all present: Anna Dudda, Matt Strait, Hershey Harris, Scott Raun, Aaron Vander Giessen. Also present for first item: Emily Stewart. == Emily's Item == We discussed the comping of a particular person at Minicon 53, 54, and beyond. There was some confusion about former guest of honor status. Currently the board does not set any policy about what cons do with former guests of honor. It is each con's decision. It so happens that each Minicon for a long time now has decided to comp former GoH, and for the last maybe-eight years has even used a consistent definition of who that means. Since there's no board-level policy, and Minicons are each run independently, it's impossible for a Minicon chair to grant a "lifetime membership". However, this person was told that they had one. What do we do now? The board is going to tell Clay that whenever someone asks for a list of former Minicon guests of honor, that list needs to include the person under discussion. This will avoid problems in future years. The board is not setting any policy about what is done with this list. Matt will tell him this. == Donations related to Rob Ihinger == We got a thank you letter from Open Arms for our donation of $50 in memory of Rob Ihinger. We got $600 from people donating to us in his memory. Also people probably gave money to Open Arms in memory of Rob Ihinger, since they and we were the two charities he had designated. Scott will get our checks to Carol. == ASCAP == Scott has the new ASCAP form. He will get it to Carol. == Vanguard == Has there been any motion after Hershey gave the forms to Carol? No one present knows. == Welcome to Anna Dudda == We welcomed Anna to the board. She should read the bylaws. We remember that we made a wiki page for new board members. She has now been directed to it. Scott will add her to board-chat and subtract Lydy. == TODO list == * (2016-12) Now that we know it's ok with Margie, Lydy will follow up with professional archivists about tapes. To remind us, these are Scott Imes's video tapes. Some of these were digitized by Geri Sullivan a while back. Corwin and/or DD-B are/were digitizing more. The question is what to do with the physical tapes once they are digitized. Are they interesting for a university archive or similar? The tapes are currently with Corwin. Matt will let Lydy know that she still has this project. The board does not feel urgency about it, but would like to know about what developments occur. * (2017-05) Scott will sort out our PO Box online account. "Still working on that", says Scott. * (2017-12) Hershey and Aaron will shepherd along the latest Vanguard form. See above. * (2018-01) Scott will talk to Carol about 2017 taxes. Scott filed our 990N with the IRS this afternoon. Done: * (2018-01) Scott will talk to Anna and/or DD-B about a "links to friends" page on our website. * (2017-12) Aaron will sign the GPS agreement. * (2018-01) Scott will follow up with Laura about getting nominating meetings and the voting meeting scheduled. == Approve previous minutes == Approved! == Review recurring task list == Nothing revealed by reading this list. == HD projector == Aaron gives us a heads up that Minicon may ask the board to buy an HD projector sometime soon. This would be a capital expense that the board would buy and spread over several Minicons through manipulation of their profit targets. == Officers == We go through the list of officers to see if the present holder will continue and if not, who wants the job. In many cases, the officer is out in the living room. Treasurer: Carol Kennedy Scott will ask. Correspondence Secretary: Hershey Lima Hershey will continue. Membership Secretary: Laura Krentz Laura will continue. Recording Secretary: Matthew Strait Matt will continue. Einblatt Editor: Scott Raun Scott will continue. He actually kinda likes doing it, he says. Rune Editor: Matthew Strait and Kelly Strait Willing to continue. Might conceivably pub an ish, even. Webmaster: Anna Dudda Anna will continue. Archivist: Matthew Strait (including web archives) Matt will continue Quartermaster: Joel Phillips Vice quartermaster in charge of inventory: Terry Hughes Joel has decided to step down. Terry will become the full quartermaster. Current President: Ann Totusek Current First Vice President: Terry Hughes Current Second Vice President: Nico Johnson We have left a voicemail for Ann asking if she'll continue as president. We had a lot of trouble finding someone to be president last year, because it is perceived to be a lot of work. It both requires someone to do a bunch of scheduling and also to show up to a bunch of meetings. Matt wonders if we would have better success if we separated these jobs, which don't seem like they need to be the same person. We read the bylaws. This seems fine. The president needs to be the scheduler, and the top ranking VP automatically presides over meetings in the absence of the president. DD-B agrees to be VP in charge of presiding. Huzzah! We brainstorm other people to ask about being the official president (scheduler), in case Ann says no. == Clay's proposal for event banning policy == Last night Clay sent a proposal to the board wanting us to adopt a new policy related to procedures around banning a person from one of our events, for instance, Minicon. Only Matt has read Clay's whole e-mail. Scott has read some of it. Hershey independently would like to discuss whether we should have a policy about how to handle people who say they have a restraining order. Historical precedent within Minnstf is discussed. It is discussed that reports from a convention chair to the board about bannings only happen after the convention. And in fact, only if "harassment" took place. Bannings for other reasons are not explicitly required to be communicated to the board. More recapping of existing policies occurs. Do we want to add a new policy, either Clay's or a different one? Is there a real problem that needs to be fixed? Do we think that it is likely that a con chair is going to incorrectly ban someone with a high enough probability that we need to try to prevent it? Matt asks whether we are worried that if person A, who we don't know at all, comes to a con chair and asks for person B, who we also don't know at all, to be banned, and doesn't provide anything more than a story, that the chair will ban B. Can we not trust the chair to be reasonable in such a case? We have delegated lots of other powers to the chair also, as though we trusted them, after all. Scott raises the question of what the difference is, from a policy perspective, between banning someone ahead of time and kicking them out during the con. He thinks these are equivalent. We wonder about the focus on restraining orders. Is there any reason to consider them as a special case? We certainly can ban people because we think they are a bad idea to have. Restraining orders are useful information, of course. Matt proposes that we simply make a rule that the board gets informed of any bans that are done. This means that we don't need to wait for the rumor mill to inform us of it after the Internet has exploded. Tons more discussion. Matt moves to table. We'll all read Clay's e-mail and decide if we want to discuss further. == Approval of M53 harassment policies == By e-mail, Matt, Lydy, Aaron and Scott had approved using the same internal and external policies as for M52, with the trivial change of updating references to PHITBBC+MYBOC to instead say "The Minnstf harassment policy". We need to ratify this decision at a meeting. Ratified. == Conventions == * Decongestant 3 Will be September 28-30, 2018. * Minicon 53, Minicon 54, Minneapolis in 2073 No further report at this time. == Next meeting == At 3pm on April 21 at the Minnstf meeting, or at Scott Raun's if there is no Mnstf meeting. == New TODO list == * (2018-03) Matt will tell Clay that he needs to do the guest of honor thing. * (2018-03) Scott will add Anna to board-chat and subtract Lydy. * (2018-03) Matt will remind Lydy about the tapes project. * (2017-12) Aaron will shepherd along the latest Vanguard form. * (2018-03) Scott will ask Carol about continuing to be treasurer. * (2017-05) Scott will sort out our PO Box online account. * (2018-03) Scott will ask the next few presidential candidates if we get no yesses from the queries that are out. * (2018-03) Scott will get ASCAP form to Carol. * (2018-03) Scott will get Rob Ihinger memorial checks to Carol.