Board meeting at the pool party, 21 Feb 2015 at the pool party. Attending board members: Matt Strait, Dean Gahlon, Scott Raun, Beth Friedman, Lydy Nickerson. Also attending, not all at the same time: Eric Forste, Ann Totusek, Carol Kennedy. Dean enters on the agenda that we should make better decisions about budgets for the pool party, picnic and new year's eve party. Previous minutes approved. TODO list from last time: Lydy has not yet put together the information packet for new board members, but will try to do it this week. --> back on TODO list. Lydy has not yet bugged DD-B about a password protected site for board documents. We will make Lydy's charge easier. She should now tell him to do something reasonable and tell us what he did instead of consulting us first. --> back on the TODO list. Scott is still working on finding a better microphone. He went to Microcenter and didn't find anything suitable. He is going to appeal to GT and may also try Best Buy. --> back on the TODO list. Scott has asked Carol about the METHOD Con 2 check. Carol wasn't sure. Scott going to talk to Carol and Patricia. --> back on the TODO list. Ameriprise: Scott and Lydy went and saw and had discussions. Confusion about who the signers are. Larry Sanderson? Irene Raun? Anyway, we need to fill out some paperwork and put the new signers on it. Apparently we don't need the old signers to sign it. Lydy will fill out the paperwork. Who will the signers be? Matt suggests using the same signers as the checking account. That would be Carol K, Richard T, Irene R, and Dean G. We all agree. Lydy thinks we can mail this in. She will check. This will need Laura K's signature since she is the secretary. --> TODO list. Scott reports that it appears that we have withdrawn about $1500 in the last eight years from one account, and the rep says that we haven't touched the other two accounts. Matt would like a demonstration that we have control of all of the accounts and that money can be moved out of Ameriprise. This can be satisfied by restructuring our accounts to get more interest, plus withdrawing a dollar to our non-Ameriprise checking account. We all agree. Discussion ensues on how to restructure our accounts and how much risk to incur. We agree that a non-zero risk is ok. Discussion primarily about how many accounts is ok to have. Minimum is two, counting our non-Ameriprise checking account. Scott lobbies for three. Lydy lobbies for two. But basically we don't have enough information right now to decide. It depends how easy it is to get money out of each kind of account. --> Lydy will look into this on Monday or Tuesday (TODO). Scott asks Carol if we have, in fact, pulled money out of the Ameriprise money market account. Carol does not remember. Maybe. Or maybe we just talked about it. Scott asks Carol if we are likely to need money from Ameriprise in the next 18 months. Carol would like a few days to figure that out. Carol asks if someone remembers how the taxes work. Beth says that she has been doing the IRS thing online. Someone else will need to start doing this, since Beth is not standing for the board. There is another thing for MN taxes. If it is easy to get money out of the C-share thing, Lydy would like to put everything together into one account. If it is complex or expensive, two accounts would be better, with one being easier to get money from. Conventions: Minicon 49: Waiting for Joel to close the TCF account and waiting for Carol to deposit the profit check. Carol says she will deposit it on Monday. Minicon 50: Matt reports that the membership looks to double. He is projecting a surplus, but is being careful about not letting it evaporate. Plan is to drop at-the-door rates by $5 if pre-reg closes and really is still double last year. The board has some mild philosophical differences over this, but will not overrule the chairs. Anyway, this will not disincentivize pre-regging since no one will know until after pre-reg closes, and Matt has been careful not to change the cost hierarchy, so no one will feel like they were cheated either. Minicon 51: Ann has adjusted her projected budget in consultation with Matt S. She reports that her new budget assumes 700 members and projects a profit of $9000 if everything goes exactly according to plan. Matt says that he thinks this budget is too simple, but that he knows that when he puts it into his real spreadsheet, it will be ok. Department heads: * Sharon K for programming. Ann will put a lot of input into programming. * Will ask Brian and Susan for bar. Joel is willing to do the bar if they aren't. * Kelly J is running consuite. * Treasurer: Matt S. * Matt Weiser will cover the next round of hotel contract negotiations. He may or may not be willing to continue through the next two years. However, he doesn't know of anyone else who will take the job. He does not plan to bail if no replacement is found, but may burn out, so a new person is very important. Registration: pre/at: Ann wants Clay, Clay wants Ann, but they haven't actually talked yet. At-con registration will need clarification, but Ann convinces us that it will be covered. Publications: Meg Frank will do pubs. GoH liaison: Aaron VG. Volunteers: Ann will ask Eric F, but hasn't yet. Logistics: Will ask Duk and Jim P. Art show: Not confirmed, two possibilities. Dealers: Will ask Lisa. Music: Will ask Chas. Have other options if he says no. Gaming: Will ask Matt M. We approve Ann's bid for M51 and M52. HUZZAH! Ann will send her final bid to the board. Ann would like to publicize a mentorship program for department heads. A fallcon in 2015: No one has heard of a desire for one. Dean's item: We agree to institutionalize the following: Whatever amount for a major event we approved last year is automatically approved for the current year. We can always change it, but now a single board member can just answer the question without getting agreement from the whole board. Today the pool party budget was $200. --> TODO this should be noted on the records page as an active policy. Next meeting will be at the Voting Meeting on March 21, right after the results are announced. TODO list: * Lydy will put together the informational packet for new board members. * Lydy will tell DD-B to do something reasonable with the password-protected website and tell us what he did. * Scott will keep trying to find a microphone. * Scott will follow up about the METHOD Con 2 check, or tell Matt that it is done, because the minutes don't say so, but Matt might have missed it. * Lydy will fill out Ameriprise paperwork. * Lydy will look into account types for us to balance risk against simplicity and ease of withdrawal, etc. * Scott will follow up with Carol on whether we are likely to need money out of Ameriprise in the next 18 months. [Matt has just assigned Scott to this since we didn't assign anyone. Objections are welcome.] * Matt will put our new large meeting budget policy on the records page.