Minn-stf board meeting at Beth Friedman's house, 28 March 2014, scheduled to start at 7:30pm. Attendance: Beth Friedman, Matt Strait connecting by phone, Dean Gahlon, Scott Raun, Lydy Nickerson. * Officers President: Some suggestions floated. Beth will communicate with the suggested people. An attempt was made to do this during the meeting, but the candidate didn't answer the phone. VP: Lydy agrees to continue. Treasurer: Dean will confirm with Carol Kennedy whether she will continue. No actually, Beth is doing it right now and has left a message for Carol. [After the meeting, Carol replied that she would continue as treasurer.] Correspondence Secretary: Hershey Lima will take over from Clay. Membership Secretary: Laura Krentz will continue. Recording Secretary: Matt Strait will allow himself to be labeled as such, since he's taking minutes and that's what it means. Beth will back him up. Einblatt: Scott will continue. Rune: Matt S will continue, but will probably not do it for more than another year. Webmaster: Eric Forste believes that DD-B might be willing. Lydy is calling DD-B. DD-B says: What does it mean to be webmaster? We reply that minimally it means that he has to keep the front page up to date with the upcoming meetings and such. Will he have to do the fallcon webpage? No, Matt S is doing that. DD-B says yes. Lydy promised dancing boys. Archivist: Matt S will continue. No new officer positions are needed, as far as we can think of. * Harassment policy/code of conduct/or whatever we will call it. We will mull over it more. It is easier to discuss by e-mail, since it involves a lot of text. We have a goal of getting it together for the next meeting. Many thanks to Lydy for putting together a working draft. Should it be longer or shorter? Lydy will fix an inaccuracy in the summary statement -- the host of a meeting at which there is a problem should be a first contact. Should the exclusion policy be part of the HP/CoC/WWWCI? Opinion is no, they should be separate policies, since one is about hosts' control of their own space and the other is about people's behavior. And the two policies have opposite effects as far as whether a person can sign into a meeting. Banning someone from Minn-stf is totally different from a host banning someone from their house. And Minn-stf's policy on hosts' exclusion is to make it not a Minn-stf issue by letting hosts exclude people but still letting the excluded people sign in. On the exclusion policy, Dean says that if someone hasn't shown up to a meeting in decades does not need to be told that they are excluded. How long someone has to be not present before this kicks in, we don't know, but decades is enough. We don't need to think of a number, but can do this on a case by case basis. * Minicon 48 Yes, the final final final Minicon 48 check was deposited. The Minicon 48 books are closed. For sure, definitely, certainly, without a doubt, most likely. * Minicon 49 It is now only about $1800 over budget, since we have 324 room nights booked already, as compared to last year's 274. Matt suspects that this is due to us claiming that the con starts on Thursday now. If so, he's brilliant and didn't know it, since booking more rooms wasn't the idea. (The idea was (a) to recognize that the con has started on Thursday for some time now and (b) to ramp up to Minicon 50 being 4 days.) Anyway, making 300 room-nights saves us $1500. The reason that we are still $1800 over budget is because, as we have known since shortly after Minicon 48, the hotel costs about this much more than we thought it did. * Minicon 50 Minicon 50 has neither taken nor spent any money. However, Matt has been updating its budget with better estimates based on M49 experiences. It is now expected to hit its profit target of -$1800 just about exactly, given the new expectation of getting over 300 room-nights. Beth has a Minicon item: The green room would like $300 instead of $200. Matt says ok and shrugs. Matt will let Karen know this. [Matt has done this.] * Fallcon There is a weekend and a plan, but maybe not a contract. We officially approved Patricia to run the fallcon, but there is not yet officially a name, a date or a hotel. Nevertheless, the fallcon committee is free to move all wheels, such as putting up a webpage or sending out flyers, with Patricia's approval of course. * ASCAP We are converting to an annual payment. Previously Minicon paid a per-event fee. Scott is working on it. What will be covered? Action item for Scott: find that information. Why did we start this process, Matt asks? Because ASCAP changed their rules. ASCAP no longer wants to deal with events, but rather with years. So from now on the board will pay ASCAP, not Minicon. Scott will find out when the first payment will be. * Kevin's quest to recover the board-chat archives. No information. Matt asks how much we care. Beth would like to get this done. Scott will ask him. It may not be possible, but Dean and Scott may be able to come up with something. Dean may reconstruct it out of his personal mail folders. * Status of sales tax exemption. Beth mailed the application. It will be up to 90 days. We expect it to be approved. We should get 3 or so cards with the approval. * Task list as a result of this meeting: ** All: Mull over Harassment policy/code of conduct/or whatever we will call it with the idea of having it ready for approval at the next meeting. ** Beth: Follow up with presidential candidates. ** Dean: Work with Scott to recover the board-chat archives. ** Scott: *** Find out what the ASCAP payment will cover. Does it cover the fallcon, for instance? *** Ask Kevin about recovering the board-chat archives. *** Work with Dean to recover the board-chat archives. * Next meeting: April 25 at 7pm [where?]