Minnstf board meeting Friday March 20, 6pm. Because of COVID-19, and because most of us probably have a just-a-cold, we met over Zoom instead of in person. This is the first known all-virtual board meeting. Attending board members: Matt Strait, Scott Raun, Eric Forste, Aaron Vander Giessen, Clay Harris. Others attending, at least sometimes: Hershey Harris. == Approve last meeting's minutes == Approved. == Review TODO list == * (2020-02) Scott will ask Carol Eschweiler about pool party history. He did! He'll hear from her later. He doesn't need this to stay on the TODO list. DONE: * (2020-02) Matt will draft an amendment to our harassment policy. * (2020-02) Matt will check on the location for our next board meeting. (Turned out to be moot.) * (2020-02) Matt will let Sharon know that we have clarified the nature of the pool party as a Minnstf meeting, not a Minicon function. == Review recurring task list == Eric pointed out that we need to add "forward information about previous convention incidents to upcoming conventions, as deemed necessary" to this list. Matt has just added it. ASCAP payment is coming up. Onto Scott's TODO list. == Whither Mnstf meetings through August, given COVID-19 == * Discussion of virtual attendance at meetings We currently have an informal policy that you can call into a concom meeting and have it count for voting status if the chair agrees, but that you can't call into Minnstf social meetings and have it count. Matt thinks this policy needs to be formalized and go into the bylaws. We are happy with the general idea, but don't want to handle it at this meeting. Because of the pandemic, Matt would like us to, one time only (but we can talk about repeating), to make a Zoom connection for the business part of the voting meeting tomorrow and give anyone who calls in meeting credit. Scott will take care of recording who attends. Who will preside? We'd like the presiding officer to be at Scott's in the flesh. If the president is absent and no VPs are present, Irene will preside as acting membership secretary. Complication: we need to commit to when the business meeting is ahead of time, but it can't happen until votes are counted. Calculations are done. We decide on 6:30pm. Matt and Aaron will publicize. * If there are very few Minnstf meetings this year, do we need to amend the bylaws to temporarily adjust down the number of meetings needed for voting status? And/or go back to thinking of making alternate routes for voting status? Tabled for the next board. * Pure virtual meetings. Scott brings up the idea of having meetings with no physical presence as substitutes for a standard social meeting, which would count for voting eligibility. Tabled for the next board. == Keeping Mnstf directory up to date == There was some scrambling to try to figure out how to contact people to send them their ballots for this board election. The directory is not in good shape. The membership is not clambering for a directory for their own use, but we do need it for voting. Matt asks whether it would be easier to maintain if we were only trying to keep the voting membership information up-to-date instead of a larger list of people. Scott says maybe. As per the bylaws, the responsibility for keeping the directory up to date is the membership secretary, or their designee. Scott has been the designee for a while now (as an effect of having been membership secretary in the past), but has not been focusing on it. We may need to find a new volunteer. == Proposal to ban e-mail voting == It came to our attention that the membership secretary has allowed at least one person to vote by e-mail in the past. We don't want that to happen. We'd like secure secret ballots. Aaron and Eric clarify that instead of *banning* e-mail voting, we should *require* hand-marked paper ballots (so we don't have to later ban Facebook voting, vote-by-fax, etc.). We're all in agreement. Matt will draft language. Scott will get Laura's input. == Proposed changes to harassment policy == Matt sent out three possible sets of changes: 1) Removing dependence on the word "harassment" 2) Requiring non-urgent bans be passed through the board, but still with a 2/3 majority of the board required to overrule the chair. 3) Requiring the board be given pertinent info about proposed bans. Eric objected to #1 before the meeting. Matt and Clay move to table #1. No objection. Eric feels that #2 would discourage people from being Minicon chairs by giving the board an opportunity to micromanage, and wants to know why we would do that. Clay makes a case that we give the chairs a lot of trust, but this is a big deal that should have more input from the board that most decisions. Is this removing power from the chairs? Disagreement on this point. Clay doesn't think this will discourage people from being chair. Matt says that the point of this is that we don't want the bad publicity of banning and then unbanning someone. It's not fully un-doable like if the con bought a $4000 waffle maker and then the board made them return it. Eric wonders what the urgency of this change is, especially since we have just postponed Minicon 55, so there is no con upcoming. He moves to table. Aaron would like to talk through the questions from Eric's e-mails. Eric doesn't like "sufficiently ahead of the convention" as the cut-off for a proposed ban is non-urgent and so has to be reviewed by the board. Proposes that we give a concrete time limit. Scott agrees. But Aaron and/or Clay think that the chairs may use this to game the system: wait until just after the cut-off and then ban someone without board review. But shouldn't we trust our chairs not to do this, like we trust them with lots of money? Yes, Clay mostly buys this argument. How much time would be the concrete time if we wrote in a concrete time? We would probably need at least enough time to have a board meeting where the chair presents information, some time outside of meetings to digest it and seek more information, and then another meeting. No consensus on how much time ahead of the con this implies. Further calls to table this. We table it. == Clarification of meeting budget guidelines == What did we still need to discuss about this? We revised the budget list last meeting and posted it on the web. Rehashing of the discussion of how the pool party is organized ensues. It seems there's nothing that needs to be discussed here. Maybe this was just a zombie agenda item copied from last time? == Status of our savings == The stock market is down ~30% over the last week, but our investments are in funds that are more stable than the Dow Jones and S+P 500. Aaron looks. Our Vanguard funds only lost 15% over the last week. Not bad, eh? And what does that leave us with? $17,700 in Vanguard, after the crash. $13,400 in the main US Bank Minn-stf checking $ 8,000 in the US Bank Minicon account $10,300 in a US Bank CD So we have $49,400 or so, which means we are doing just fine. Only having 40% in the market was a good call. (Even though we didn't really do it on purpose; we did it because we were struggling to get Vanguard working and opened a CD so we were making *some* interest. That 2.6% looks pretty sweet right now.) What's the probability of having to pay the full maximum penalty to the hotel for cancelling Minicon this year over COVID-19? Given that the governor has *recommended* not having any meetings over 25 people through the end of April, Aaron believes we have a fairly good chance of not having to pay the full $34k, but it isn't a sure thing. If it becomes an order instead of a recommendation, force majeure will kick in. Clay and Matt discussed prior to the meeting whether having a one-disaster year of buffer was sufficient or if we should keep a larger buffer. Clay thinks we should bank enough for two years of total disaster in a row. Matt thinks one-year of disaster funds is enough, and doesn't want to raise more money than that. Scott agrees. There's no concrete proposal to change this, so we we're going to move on. == Conventions == * Minicon 55 (now in 2021) No further business besides what's above. * Minicon 56 (now in 2022) Did we approve Don and Sharla for the next two *years* or the next two *Minicons*? We are all happy with them doing the next two Minicons, but we need to ask them if *they* want to do that. Aaron will ask them. * Worst Convergence Ever COVID-19 may well be very active still at the beginning of July. No way to plan now. We will just have to keep an eye on this. * Decongestant 5 Same comment as for Worst Convergence Ever, but for October. * Decongestant 6 Probably (Oct 2021) in the clear for COVID-19. Matt has lost track of hotel searches amid the rest of life. Aaron is going to follow up with a potential hotel by the end of next week. * Minneapolis in 2073 Nothing to report at this time. Probably several more pandemics before this rolls around. == Next meeting == Tomorrow, presumably. Up to the new board. == New TODO list == * (2020-03) Scott will handle the ASCAP bill. * (2020-03) Matt and Aaron will publicize connection information for tomorrow's business meeting. Aaron will create a Zoom number. * (2020-03) Matt will draft language to require hand-marked paper ballots for the board election. * (2020-03) Scott will get Laura's input on the proposal of requiring hand-marked paper ballots. * (2020-03) Aaron will ask Don and Sharla if they are happy running Minicon 56 in 2022. == Tabled items == * Do we need to amend the bylaws to temporarily adjust down the number of meetings needed for voting status? And/or go back to thinking of making alternate routes for voting status? * The idea of having meetings with no physical presence that might count like a standard social meeting, which would count for voting eligibility. * Need to find a new volunteer to keep the Minnstf directory up to date. * Revisions to the harassment policy.