Board meeting in the Thunderada at METHOD Con 2, noon Saturday Oct 11, 2014. Attending board members: Matt Strait, Scott Raun, Lydy Nickerson, Dean Gahlon. Beth Friedman told us she would be elsewhere, and is. Also attending: Michael Lee, Kelly James, Carol Kennedy, Emily Stewart (towards the end). Matt taking minutes. * Approve previous minutes: Approved! * TODO list: ** Has the check from Highland bank been deposited into our main account? Carol says no, but she still has it and it will happen. Carol notes that she's been out of commission following her surgery, but is getting back on top of things. ** Carol will first talk to Irene to try to get the name of our agent at Ameriprise. However, our person has probably changed since them. Lydy says we shouldn't really care who is managing our account, we just need to talk with someone there. Carol promises to contact Ameriprise by the end of the month regardless of what information we find by then. Matt asks if we know what names Ameriprise has. Scott says that Irene set them up, so certainly her. Dean, Scott and Kevin were on the board at the time, so maybe them. Possibly Richard, but Scott thinks not. Our goals: (1) find out who to talk to -- deadline: end of month (2) find out who the signers are (3) find out how to move money around (4) actually move a couple of bucks around to prove that we really control the account (5) find out what the structure of the accounts are, since the way they are structured now seem very suboptimal. They were supposed to be like rolling 1-year CDs (although not called that), but that doesn't seem to be what they are now. ** Carol is going to give Matt a $3000 this weekend. The checks arrive later in the meeting, Dean counter-signs. Matt gets his. Other things on the TODO list handled below as part of general discussion. * We approve reimbursing Peer $12.65 for mailing Matt a box of Minicon 34-36 financial stuff. Carol will write the check and it will arrive at Mnstf meetings. * Michael Lee is here to talk about 2015's fallcon. He is already set to do JOFCon next year, which is like a junior SMOFcon. It is at the St Louis Park DoubleTree and already set. The contract is nearly identical to the 2014's 4th Street's contract as far as space allocation. It is the second weekend in October. He thinks that the worst thing to happen would be if it and the fallcon happened at the same time in different hotels. He'd like to put them together. Fallcon has been a joint con before (with Ditto), so it's a tradition. Since JOFCon is a one-shot (the second one-shot of this name), there are a lot of things that are yet to be determined. He could get more space at the hotel if that is needed. The hotel is very con-friendly. He has a JOFCon budget based on the assumption that it is entirely self-funded by himself. JOFCon has no sponsoring organization at the moment. Matt would like to talk about how we'd to the finances of a joint fallcon/JOFCon. Our normal scheme is that it is a Minn-stf con with a profit target of negative $200, so Minn-stf covers additional loss and takes additional profit (as long as there's no negligence or anything). That doesn't obviously work for a joint con. Here's a straw man proposal: We give Michael $200, possibly other organizations sponsor him as well, then if there is a profit, each organization takes a share proportional to their investment. What if he takes a loss? We don't know. Michael is expecting about 65 JOFfers, but maybe 100. So maybe it would be reasonable for us to commit to covering 1/3 of a loss. This is not a commitment we're making now. Just an idea. In his contract now, $105/night for standard room rates. $165 for suites. Reg rate is $40, although Michael has printed some reg forms that say $50. That assumed no support. With money from Minn-stf, he could charge less. Does this go as a discount to Minn-stf members? No, the board doesn't like that. It should not be funny deals and it should not feel like a bifurcated con. Matt would be happy with any reg rate under $50, with everyone paying the same. Matt would also like to see no or a very small bump for the at-the-door rate. Michael thinks that would be fine. Michael's next step for us, formally, is go to away and come up with a concrete proposal, possibly including the above ideas. Lydy asks if the hotel is happy with all-night music. Michael says that he has discussed this with the hotel and that it is not a problem. This is very important for fallcon, we stress. Michael says he is not too terribly worried, and that discussions with the hotel will continue. Space: Michael has mentioned a "Minn-stf suite", and Lydy would like to know what he meant by that. Discussion of the suites that are available ensues. Matt still wants to know what it means to be a "Minn-stf suite". It isn't the consuite, Michael says. Is that where the alcohol is? Branding: Matt would like people to be aware both before and during the con that it is a Minn-stf sponsored event, along, of course, with any other sponsoring organizations. The con could be totally uniform with no specific Minn-stf areas, or there could be some designated more-Minnstfy area, perhaps the music room, in order to make it more obvious that it is a joint con. Michael is on board and really likes the idea of having the collaborative element being front and center. This is, in fact, one of the goals of the convention. Michael will get a proposal to us by Nov 15, he says. More discussion of how the jointness would work ensues. Dean would like Michael to reach out to Laura for programming stuff. We like her work and would like it to continue for this joint event. Lydy would like Michael to include how hospitality will be handled in his proposal. This is very important for the fallcon. * Bylaw amendments. We four agree to pass them. We know that Beth has approved. We sign a copy and will start putting them out at meetings to that they become official. The signed copy is going to Dean, so that it goes to all meetings in the sign-in book. Here are the actual amendments that we passed: ----------------- * Amend bylaw I.5, adding: "Persons whose memberships have been revoked are barred from attending all meetings and other Society functions, except conventions. The board of directors may choose to extend this ban to conventions." * Add a new paragraph to bylaw II, making it II.8, reading: 8. There may be circumstances where, for one reason or another, a member is not welcome in a house of another member hosting a meeting. a) For meetings regularly scheduled for social purposes and general convention committee meetings, the unwelcome member shall be allowed to come to the door of the house and have their attendance recorded without entering. This shall be deemed as attendance for voting purposes. It is the host's responsibility to inform anyone being excluded, but the host may request a board member to serve as go-between if desired. b) The policy in (a) shall not apply to meetings held in public spaces, the regular annual meeting, or special meetings. Hosts of such meetings must be willing for any member to attend. c) For other meetings that do not count towards voting membership, hosts may exclude other members as defined in (a), but there is no need to allow their attendance to be recorded. * Amend bylaw II.7 so that it reads: The society shall have an anti-harassment policy that has been approved by the board of directors, and shall publish that policy on a web page that is linked to from the main page of the society's website, and shall be available in printed form at meetings of members. * Amend bylaw VI.7 so that it reads: "Each convention, as defined above, shall have an anti-harassment policy that has been approved by the board of directors. It shall be subordinate to the Society's anti-harassment policy as described in that policy. Each convention shall make available its policy in its paper and electronic publications as appropriate." ----------------- * We pass the anti-harassment policy. Lydy would like like to tweak it later. That's great, we can change it at every meeting if we feel like it, Matt points out. * mpls2073worldcon: Lynn Anderson got a notification from a scammy company telling him to renew his non-profit corporation "mpls73worldcon", which he didn't ever register in the first place. We have noted that someone fraudulently registered a corporation that sorta sounds like it has something to do with us using Lynn Anderson's name, but it doesn't seem likely to cause us any trouble. Matt has the records just in case. Dean leaves to go to programming at this point, I think. Scott, Matt and Lydy continue to be a quorum. * Internal documents: The board is sympathetic to Lydy. We can archive things by sending them to board-chat, but that is awkward and it is hard to find later. Physical documents have the problem that they are hard to find. Electronic documents are also hard to find later and easy to have stolen. Emily suggests Google Docs, which has access control and can't be easily lost. You can set permissions on individual documents. Matt would prefer to do everything on paper. Like a big envelope in the archives' filing cabinet marked "BOARD DOCUMENTS 2014 (if you aren't a board member, you shouldn't be reading this)". Scott recommends that we annually archive what we have on paper as Matt suggests, but ongoing put it on a password protected website, and we change the password every year. All systems will fail if we can't manage to remember anything about what we are doing. We should add to the annual checklist that new board members are informed of this system, and the fact that we have bylaws, and a storage locker and how our banking works and other things like that. Probably new board members should get a sheet of paper summarizing these things. In in the last board meeting before the voting meeting should draw up this document. This is the thing that should go on the checklist. * Next meeting: We propose either 8pm on Nov 22 and/or Dec 13. We need Beth and Dean's availability. * Minicon 50: Has already drafted external policy. Matt thinks that he and Rachel will have a draft of the internal policy by the next board meeting. Maybe two months, depending on other commitments. * Minicon 51: Ann and Kelly expressed interest, but no commitment as yet. We are interested in their interest. TODO list: * Carol will deposit the Highland bank check. We don't need to badger her about it, but Scott will check with her before the next meeting. * Carol will contact Ameriprise by the end of the month and Scott will check up on her about that, since she may need Irene. * We will discuss Lydy's harassment policy amendments. * Beth needs to sign the new bylaws. * Scott will send them out in Einblatt to make them official. * Dean will put them out in the sign-in book to make them doubly official slower. * Matt as archivist (which seems to also mean record-keeper, which he is fine with) will put the new bylaws and harassment policy on the website's records page. * Beth will add to the annual checklist the board transition things discussed in the minutes. * At next meeting, re-discuss the document archival procedure that we have invented here. Then we'll need to assign a board member named Lydy to talk with DD-B about doing it. * Scott will try to find a microphone to plug into someone's cell phone so that Matt can hear better at the next meeting over the phone.