Mnstf board meeting, 8pm Nov 22, 2014 at Beth Friedman's. Attending: Matt Strait (by phone (audio) and Skype (one-way terrible video)), Beth Friedman, Scott Raun, Dean Gahlon, Lydy Nickerson. * Approve previous minutes Approved! TODO list from last time. * "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. " Done. * "Carol will contact Ameriprise by the end of the month and Scott will check up on her about that, since she may need Irene" Carol has talked to them. They aren't very helpful. They need names for who should be on the account. We will decide what names will be on the account after we figure out what the consequences of that are. Maybe Scott and Dean would be good names to put on the account. Lydy wants to be involved, but doesn't care if her names goes on it. Can we get a new account manager so that this isn't so difficult? Dean: What we need is someone who will respond to us quickly and that we can get a hold of. Lydy and Scott will set up a meeting with Ameriprise. Goal: Get the meeting scheduled by the end of December. Bonus goal: actually have the meeting in December. * "We will discuss Lydy's harassment policy amendments." Lydy didn't send out any. She says that the tweaks that she wants are to point out single instance behaviour isn't technically harassment, but we want to cover under the same policy. Two kinds: (1) Extremely bad language and name calling (2) things that are illegal: assault, etc. Beth thinks that illegal behaviour doesn't need special mention because it is illegal and we don't need to state everything. Lydy agrees. Lydy says that she feels strongly about (1) being harassment because even if a person only does it to you once, they have probably done it repeatedly to other people. Beth could come up with some wording that covers (1). * "Beth needs to sign the new bylaws" Not done. Dean will get them to her. * "Scott will send them out in Einblatt to make them official." Done. * "Dean will put them out in the sign-in book to make them doubly official slower." Didn't happen, but Dean will do it now, even though it isn't required to make them official. * "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." Done. * "Beth will add to the annual checklist the board transition things discussed in the minutes." Beth did a bit today, but needs to know what was supposed to go there. Matt will highlight these in the last minutes. * "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." Scott reports that he is still looking. * Matt wants to check whether we are a C corporation for purposes of filling out an W-9 for Pepsi for M49. We certainly aren't any of the other options on the W-9, except that we may be "other". Matt will ask Jonathan Adams for a definitive answer. * Do we care when the pool party is past not-Capricon/CotN/Marscon? Nope. * M49 Matt reports that there is exactly one outstanding item of any sort, and that is getting a check from Pepsi. Once we have this, we will return a profit of $1052.88 to Minn-stf. This is well short of the target of $4100 because the hotel bill was much higher than expected, even after lots of negotiating with the hotel. Besides the hotel bill, all the financials went more or less as planned. * M50 Matt says that we are on track to be 50% larger than M49, which is exciting and scary. Of course, early pre-reg may not really predict the final count very well. Due to the large hotel bill for M49, we are being much more aggressive with the hotel about being clear on what they are going to charge us. We, unfortunately, expect a bill similar to M49's, but at least we'll know it is coming. We will need about 700 members to meet our profit target of -$1700 due to this. Last year was 561 and 50% over last year is therefore 840, so this is possible. * M51 We have not gotten any proposals yet. We think we expect one, but it is up in the air. * METHOD Con 2 We think it made a profit, but we haven't heard from Patricia. * 2015 fallcon We haven't heard anything more since the last board meeting. (No proposal or other communication.) We need to see a proposal before doing anything. We discuss whether we are going to seek competing bids for the anticipated fallcon/JOFCon proposal. Concerns about whether the fallcon/JOFCon combinations would pretty much just be two separate cons in one hotel. But we really need to see the bid. Everyone but Dean thinks we should call for bids. Passes 4-0, with Dean abstaining. * Re-discuss the document archival procedure that we invented at the last meeting. We think the procedure is at least basically fine. We assign a board member named Lydy to talk with DD-B about implementing the electronic end of it. * Other business? Nope. * Set next meeting 2pm Jan 4, 2015, at Beth's New TODO list: * 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. * Lydy and Scott will set up a meeting with Ameriprise. Goal: Get the meeting scheduled by the end of December. Bonus goal: actually have the meeting in December. * Beth will write the language that Lydy wants for the harassment policy. * Beth needs to sign the new bylaws. Dean needs to make sure to get them to Beth. * Dean will try again to put the new bylaws out at meetings, even though it isn't required for them to be official. * Matt will point Beth at the checklist items in the Oct minutes for new board members. * Lydy will make an informational packet for new board members. Beth will help. Lydy will complain about it! * What kind of a corporation are we? Matt will ask Jonathan Adams for a definitive answer. And then he will put the answer on the records section on the website. * Scott will contact Patricia about METHOD Con 2 profit (or loss). * Scott will add "we need bids for fallcon" to the Einblatt. * Beth will tell Peer that in addition to asking for M51 bids, we should as for 2015 fallcon bids. * We assign a board member named Lydy to talk with DD-B about the password protected internal documents site. * Matt will break out the document archival procedure from the Oct minutes into a separate document and send it to the board chat list.