Minnstf board minutes for Sept 20, 2008 ============================================================================ ** Licensing of Minicon Program Books and Other Publications ** Matt proposed putting old Minicon program books up on the web with some sort of permissible license so that people could share them freely. However, we probably only have a compilation or 1st printing copyright on submissions from people outside MNstf and we'd need to check with the contributers to do this. Most of these people are probably fairly easy to contact. We agreed that unattributed material could safely be assumed to be ours. In the future, we should plan on having program books online from the start and make this clear to people submitting material in advance. For a free license, we can use Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial- No Derivative Works or something similar. This should be acceptable to most contributers. (Main concerns are art from the GoH and short stories.) For past program books, much of the art is from Kathy Grantham, Ken Fletcher, Laramie Sasseville, Giovanna Fregni. It's likely that none of these people would have a problem with their program book art work being on the web and sharable, but we need to ask. If these concerns are met, the board agreed that such licensing would be acceptable. ** MinnSTF Bank Accounts ** Kevin talked to the bank again. This time (the second time in person), they promise, no really, to send statements to the proper address. Carol has confirmed that she has gotten a statement. We have three accounts at US Bank that we want to consolidate -- two with small balances and one main one -- but the employee at the bank was nervous about letting Kevin do this. They want everyone who is a signer to go in and reauthorizes on the same day at the same branch, but not necessarily at the same time. Perhaps Kevin will go back and ask someone else at the bank, hoping for a different answer. Authorized signers ought to be able to close accounts, but this employee didn't like how we were authorized. We still have two Minicon accounts at Highland. We believe these are the Minicon 40 accounts. One is a savings account with $50 that's losing $3/month to fees and the other is a "small business banking" checking account with $792. Both are addressed to "Minicon 2005" with statements going to the old Dreamhaven address forwarded to the new Dreamhaven. Scott will talk to Irene about these. Likely between Irene and Seth they can be closed. The Minicon 42 account was officially closed as of the minnstf meeting two weeks ago. We got $2300 from it. The Minicon 41 account was used for Minicon 43 and was closed months ago. To add to confusion, the Convivial account is also at Highland Bank and is called "Minicon". The Minicon 44 checking account is at TCF with a savings account at ING. No other Minicon accounts are known. Money from Minicons before 40 is assumed to either be returned or lost forever. ** Insurance ** We still only have the odd numbered pages of our policy from 2006. Lisa will call Sunrise Park and see if we can get the even numbered pages. Lisa will also see if she has policies from 2007 or 2008. Matt gave Lisa back all the paperwork he was holding. We are likely not going to renew for 2009-2010, since we can't find anything that's covered that might actually happen to us. ** Copy Printer ** The printer currently puts blotches on what it prints. Scott will call the maintenance people next week. Jeff is not interested in having anything to do with it. Currently the printer is at the new Dreamhaven in the garage. This is not temperature controlled and Lisa doesn't know whether it can be moved to the basement. This is not an immediate concern. The garage shares a long wall with the store and it won't be cold for months. Dreamhaven may not be a good place to keep it in the future. Revisit this issue. Greg may not want to continue his sponsorship of the paper Einblatt. Currently he covers postage, ~$75/month, and the club pays for the paper, labels and ink. Dreamhaven employees have done the folding and labeling, but now there are no Dreamhaven employees. Kevin has the Minn-stf trifolder. If Scott gets this, he and Irene can probably handle the labor. He needs to get money from Minn-stf from Carol for the stamps. Can Minnstf afford this? The total would be ~$900/year for our 180 subscribers. The general feeling was "that sounds bad". If Minicon starts making money hand over foot, it'd be ok, but that's not currently the situation. Are there other commercial sponsors we could approach? The alternative is to charge subscribers $10/year. (Another alternative is to ask people to voluntarily drop off the list to save us money, but Scott says that we did that before and 80% stayed on.) We solicited opinions from the club at the business meeting. No one was opposed to charging $10/year to paper subscribers. There was concern that a few people might really not be able to get it online and also not be able to afford the $10. It was suggested that we simply subsidize these people. There was some concern about this as well (who counts as poor/disabled enough to receive our charity?), but probably we could just quietly deal with it. Minnstf will cover the October Einblatt and we will revisit this at the next board meeting. ** Storage Locker ** Matt, as he said before, is unlikely to spend any time researching other storage lockers due to lack of sufficient motivation. Other board members expressed concern about the jerkiness of our current locker managers, but none were willing to put time into the problem. Rachel has an old quote from last time this came up. She'll send it to Matt. We currently pay something like $1500-$1800/year. ** Convivial ** We have enough registrations to hold the convention. Currently there are 35. Last year had 50 total and broke even, which is the goal. Should be fine. The room block is full. They're looking into expanding it. Laurel says: While I had a blast co-chairing Convivials 1 & 2 with Kevin and I'm hoping things go well this year (which I'm chairing myself), I'm not sure how much longer I'll want to do this or be up to doing it. She's looking for volunteers to run the Fallcon for 2010 or to co-chair or be chair-in-training for 2010. ** Pool Party ** Situation is unchanged. It's still on Feb 14. So far no one had volunteered to host. We solicited for volunteers at the business meeting and got no takers. ** Directory ** Dean will ping Carol. Still awaiting a sample copy for viewing at MN-StF meetings. ** MnStF Fliers, Business Cards, etc. ** Business cards have been dropped at Uncle Hugo's. Had a stack at the old Dreamhaven. Kevin will take some to the new Dreamhaven. New business cards have been printed. No meeting kit yet. ** MNSTF Writing Contest ** We'd like to see MNSTF sponsor some sort of thing besides parties and conventions. How about a writing contest, says Matt? However, he does not want to run it. This could be associated with Minicon, insofar as the prize could include a membership and/or getting your story published in the program book, but should primarily be a MNSTF thing. We'd need to contact libraries, schools, etc to get the word out. We'd need judges and rules and so forth. Oddcon did a "flash fiction" contest: 500 word limit. There were youth and adult categories and the winners were read at the masquerade. We probably could not afford a substantial cash prize unless we had an entry fee. However, this is outreach/community service; we're not trying to make a profit and could even take a small loss (under $100). Lisa may be able to devote time to this. Ask her in two weeks. We solicited for volunteers at the business meeting. Dave Romm and Carol volunteered to at least consider it. Scheming was observed later on. A concern was aired that the market may be saturated with writing contests. Ours should therefore try to be distinctive somehow in order to be viable. Some sort of interesting constraint on the form or content is one way to do this. ** Minn-StF Meeting Locations ** Not counting conventions, we currently have two meetings per year that aren't at houses: the pool party and the picnic. Houses are intimidating for potential new members. Could we have a few more meetings elsewhere, perhaps at a library, coffee house or park building? The question is whether very many people would come to a meeting cold regardless of where it was. Most people (we think) come because of friends of theirs, Minicon, or meeting members on the Internet. If we held an event such as a reading, signing or panel discussion, that would actually draw people. Another idea is to hold the picnic earlier so that it is not so far from Minicon, where we advertise it. Currently it's been in July or August mostly (we think) because those are the only available times by the time we make the reservation. Let's see if we can get a time in May this year (~6 weeks after Minicon). Matt will talk to Bill, who is presumably organizing it again for 2009. ** Next Board Meeting ** At Convivial, Saturday October 18. Sometime after noon. Dean will schedule it and let us know.