MinnStf Board Meeting - 22-June-1999 Don Bailey Martin Shafer Geri Sullivan Dean Gahlon Polly Peterson (later) Mitch Pockrandt (recording secretary) Joyce Scrivener David Dyer-Bennet Lydia Nickerson Jeff Schalles (later) Agenda: - Need a real street address for Minnesota nonprofit corporation forms - Aussiecon party (Joyce) - Ricoh copy printer information - Dean got an Annual Financial Statement from Linda Lounsbury (but left it at home, he is running off now to fetch it!) - Minicon-L and the uses there-of. - Postage Meter - Minicon Governance (online discussion started) MN Nonprofit Corporation Forms - Geri is running - Margo Bratton on name field - street address of someone active in the group and unlikely to move anytime soon??? Convergence - We did receive check for rental of art panels. Minicon-L (start of discussions) - What do we want of it? What should it be? - Quick overview of starting it by DDB. (Because we could.) - There have been proposals to _talk_ about the possibility of shutting it down or redefining it. - History: Tom Juntenen had original requested its creation. DDB had the technology. The board had approved its existence back then, and hence "owns" it in some sense. - Purpose (early): To get a different group of people involved in Minicon discussions than in other attended venues. - It has many of the ettiquette/interactive style problems of online fora, and is generally better behaved than the online average. - Hazard: Illusion of communication. Too many have been likely to view Minicon-L as an official channel of communication with the Minicon committee. (It was not intended as that.) - Suggestion: Ask the folks on the list what they would like to see the purpose be? What have the benefits of it been for them? - Lydia: Sees it as a place for non-hierarchical communication to take place (much like a roundtable), which has been one of its strong points for her. - Martin: Minicon-L, like most other mailing lists, has become its own community. The problems seen there are ones that are not uncommon in communities. - DDB: It would need to become moderated to really be able to enforce behavior restraints, which probably is not really a useful/beneficial place for that list to go. - 1998 Financial Report from Linda Lounsbury (Dean returns with a single copy!) - Total Income: $14,261.53 - Total Expenses: $13,131.84 (Details to be attached once I get a copy of the report.) Coarse Expense Categories Meetings: 2056.38 Telephone: 340.84 Internet: 50.00 Einblatt: 2817.71 TOTU: 3222.50 Admin: 849.94 Equipment Lease: 610.64 Minicon: 2446.33 Memorial Contributions: 50.00 Professional Services: 687.50 Income Categories TOTU Sales Minicon Sales Given this report, and the smaller Minicon, and plans to reduce expenses, what should we be directing Minicon 35 to make as profit (directed profit)? Maintenance activities and Meetings (estimates at $7500) Projects (estimates at $1600) Looks like $10,000 is a good minimum for what the club needs in a current typical year. Assuming a $60,000 Minicon, we're looking at a directed profit of about 15%, or roughly $5 of a $35 membership. This doesn't set off any alarms for anyone, but it does feel like it is starting to approach an uncomfortable level. Don suggests that we get these expenses into more standardized categories as years pass, to give us a better idea of trends in expenses. What is a good reserve to be kept in long term accounts? (If we're over our reserve, Minicon cuts income, or we do special projects, or run a worldcon, buy an airship, etc.) - Reserve at a minimum should be (one normal year + one really lean year). - $20000, as two years, has been the current minimum desired. - Given recent experiences with a bad year, 2-2.5 years should be a minimum. ($25,000?) - This may not be sufficient reserve, given the perfect set of wrong circumstances with Minicon could leave us liable for a significant amount of cash. ($7000-$17000 as an example). (3 years or $30,000 would be a better number.) - (We have restored our reserve back to $25,000 since Minicon34.) Postage Meter - Is In DDB's front hall! - Dean has a number to call at which we can get a quote of a buy-out value to get out of our meter lease. (Currently ~$600/year lease rate.) - Decision: Yes! Do It! Joyce- Aussicon party - Could share a party with the Philadelphia bid. - Would we rather see Mpls'n'73 sharing space with a bid, or with an already existing Worldcon? - We'd rather leave it to the discretion of the person organizing the party. (Do what works well for you Joyce.) - Would we like to have an ad in the Aussiecon Souvenir book? - We'd rather spend the money on the party. Jeff Schalles and the Amazing Ricoh Copy Printer - ...Jeff brings more solid information... - $4450 for the model being looked at (it's last year's model) - ink works better for archival storage (as opposed to toner of laser printers) - a service contract would be good to have ($450/yr, which would otherwise likely be the cost of one call). Failures are lower than laser printers, but customers do wear them out after millions of copies. - Jeff estimated Kinko's and printing costs for Minicon and MinnStf... @150,000 copies - This machine would do around 4 cents per copy for one year. Assuming it lasts six years, the per copy comes down to 2 cents per copy or less. Geri last estimated club use of 110-125,000/year. Without a service contract, the machine would likely pay for itself in 1.3 years when taking recent expenses into account. - Do we run the risk of failure modes from under-use? Probably not. - We're considering a one-color black-only machine. Other drums can be gotten for ~$750. - Will it be used for what we're envisioning it? Einblatt? Stacks of quick meeting materials? - This _is_ more labor intensive! - If we determine we're not using it enough in a year or so, would we be able to sell it for a reasonable price? Hard to say. They don't pop up for sale used very often. - It does have accounting capabilities built into it (password controlled, 20 accounts). - Requires offset paper, NOT copy paper, because this uses ink instead of toner. ($6/ream) - We seem to be agreed in philosophy that we want to make it available to club members at rates that just cover expenses. - Older models may be available at lower prices but with fewer features. - There will always need to be someone technically responsible for monitoring and maintaining it. * We want to ask about used machines, and to find out if any have the accounting features, and what other practical issues might be involved. (Jeff will call.) * What kind of arrangement might Greg want to keep it at his store (as has already been talked about). Get into details as if it could really happen. (Martin will talk with Greg.) * Let's act as if this is real, and get the details sorted out. * We would want to purchase it by August in order to use it for PR1. * Ask Judy G?: What are the implications of sales tax and other issues of essentially selling copy service to folks? Any other legal issues? (Geri will ask) Minicon Governance discussion status (elements) - Given the success of Glen T. and Susan L.H. in creating and controlling a budget the last couple years, would it be a good idea for the board to appointing a finance officer/overseer in addition to the chair to make sure this function continues to happen well? (Suzerain of Cost and Caution!?) - "Though we may be ambivalent about "strong chair" vs. "strong council" model, we definitely like the "strong treasurer" model!" - The council is starting to look like a "Minicon Board". Is this what we really want? How does this adversely affect MinnStf Board responsibilities? Is this fuzzing lines of responsibility that should be crisper? Is the MinnStf Board then delegating long-term planning authority to the proposed Minicon Council? Does this clash with the notion of relinking Minicon with MinnStf? (Is it permanently instituting the long-range task force?) MinnStf Board does not lose any of its authority or responsibility. - Board's responsibility would be to create mission statement, give high-level direction, etc. and would need quarterly updates back from the council on status and issues. (We're assuming a collaborative roll between Board and Council instead of an adversarial roll. (What happens when this assumption breaks down?) ) - Long term planning should continue to be an ongoing process, not just a reaction to crises. - Underlying assumptions that Minicon _will_ have some written policies (unlike past). - M35 will have the strong chair (decided to be Geri Sullivan), but other elements (e.g. details of council roles and expectations) are still being discussed. - We're still missing consensus on how people would move off and on to the council. - We're generally comfortable with the existence of a council, but have not declared that this is the only possible configuration. - We need to maintain history of what led to decisions, i.e. executive summaries to describe the path that led to a decision. A council could do this more readily. It would allow the board to revisit decisions when needed. - We need to continue discussion on how the council gets selected and replaced. - Continue discussion of Purpose Statement, the Board needs to run lead on this more, and get more input from club members at meeting and such. "The way things work here, Ambiguity is our most important thingie!" Next meeting: - Friday, July 23, 7pm at Don & Margo's.