Minn-stf Board Meeting 7 August 2010

In attendance: Matthew Strait, Betsy Lundsten, Scott Raun, Dean Gahlon,
Seven.

Item 1: Matt is moving out of town in about a month.  He says he will
stay on the board if the rest of the board wants him to, or he will
resign, conversely.  The remaining 80% of the board thinks it would be
best not to have to do things remotely.  Matt says that, in that case,
he'll resign effective 31 Aug.

Item 2: Status of getting access to our Ameriprise money.  Irene and
Carol have been exchanging voicemails.  No contact has yet been made
with Ameriprise.  Scott believes this will happen before the end of the
month.

Item 3: Status of non-profit status.  Scott reports no progress.  Dean
notes that the IRS published a list of non-profits that were going to
lose their status as a result of recent rules changes.  We are not on
that list.  We don't know whether that's because we're not affected by
the rules, or simply because they don't recognize us as being eligible
in the first place.

Item 4: Status of coming up with a revised profit target for Minicon 46
in light of our bylaws amendment.  Betsy reports no progress.  Carol is
out of town this week, so it will be a little bit before progress can be
made.  Matt asks what it was we told the Minicon 46 chairs in the first
place.  $4000 is the consensus.  Matt will confirm with the chairs that
that is what they remember too.

Item 5: Minneapolis in 2073.  Matt reports that a party was held at
Diversicon.  It was going to be Friday only, but then people threw money
at us until we could afford holding it Saturday as well.  Due to this,
we've spent all of the bid's money, leaving it with, as far as fungible
resources go, -$1.08, a gram of silver, tuppence, and a Taiwanese
dollar.  Matt's pretty sure that's overall negative by about $0.50, but
he hasn't checked the spot price of silver.  Kelly and Joe Pregracke
(a.k.a. Chicago Joe) are at Nasfic now and presumably will manage to get
the one new paying member required to bring us into the black.

Item 6: Fallcon status.  Seven reports not much progress so far.  Matt
asks whether there is any way to register.  Seven says not really.  Matt
suggests that since it's difficult to register, it would be good if the
pre-reg and the at-the-door were the same price, or very nearly.  He
thinks that most people will pre-reg anyway, because that's just what
you do.  Seven suggests maybe not having them the same price, but having
a very late deadline.

Item 7: Checking account currently has only a few hundred dollars.
Where is the Minicon 45 money?  Matt says that some is still stuck in
PayPal until the end of the month and presumably Andra wants to pay
Mnstf in a single check and not a bit at a time.  This is a good
motivation to get our hands on our Ameriprise money.

Item 8: Seven is thinking of making a Minnstf t-shirt which is just for
MnSTF and not for Minicon or anything.  She's worried, though, that not
very many people would want to buy it.  Most of the board says that
they'd buy one.  Either way, Matt says that he thinks that with Cafe
Press there's no big setup cost to making a shirt, so it wouldn't matter
if we only made a few.  But isn't each shirt then very expensive?,
someone asks.  What's "very expensive"? Matt asks.  Betsy has set up a
shirt store at Cafe Press with the shirts selling for $25. But that had
profit in it.  She thinks that cost is about $17.  Since we wouldn't be
trying to make money, we could sell them for cost, which is less than
what we sell Minicon shirts for: $20.  In the end, Seven's not sure
she'll make a shirt except perhaps by hand for herself.  In any case,
the discussion comes around to whether we have a nice vector graphics
version of the MNSTF logo.  Scott thinks he does and will send it out to
whoever wants a copy.

Next meeting: 7pm on 22 Sept at Scott's.