Board meeting, 19 Apr 2015 at Scott and Irene Raun's.

Attending board members: Kevin Austin, Lydy Nickerson, Scott Raun,
Ann Totusek, Matt Strait (by phone).

== Formalities ==

Approve minutes of Feb 21 meeting, March 21 meeting. Approved!

== TODO list ==

* Lydy will put together the informational packet for new board members:
Lydy is going to start working on this in two weeks.

* Lydy will tell DD-B to do something reasonable with the
password-protected website and tell us what he did: Lydy says that DD-B
thinks he is waiting for us to make a decision about a proposal to use
Spideroak. We didn't all see it, not sure if we all got it. Minicon rush
and all. We decide to take a look after the meeting and discuss at our
next meeting.

* Lydy will fill out Ameriprise paperwork: Lydy says, yes, she should
do that. Was hoping to get signatures today at the meeting, but forgot
the paperwork. Will also have to wait for two weeks. *Can* be mailed in.
Just need signatures. We agree that we still like the list of signers
to be Carol K, Richard T, Irene R, and Dean G, assuming all of them are
happy with it.

* Lydy will look into account types for us to balance risk against
simplicity and ease of withdrawal, etc.: If we put everything into the
C-share, it takes 2-3 days and a phone call to get money out. There is
a penalty for withdrawal in the first 12 months. It is 1% of the amount
withdrawn. It is a "distributed investment" account. Might make in the
neighborhood of 8%. It can also lose money. It is classified as "low to
moderate risk". We all approve!

* Scott will follow up with Carol about the METHOD Con 2 check [IN
PROGRESS]. Carol has still not found it. Scott has asked Patricia to
look into getting a replacement check. We will cover fees involved with
getting a replacement, if any (it is a cashier's check).

* Scott will buy a microphone for phone meetings. [DONE]

* Scott will make sure he knows the password to the board-chat list.
[DONE]

* Scott will follow up with Carol on whether we are likely to need money
out of Ameriprise in the next 18 months. [DONE]

* Matt will put our new large meeting budget policy on the records page.
[DONE]

== Orientation for new board members ==

Ann and Kevin have both read the bylaws (since last time we revised them).

The "board" and "board-chat" e-mail address system is reviewed.

== PO Box ==

Let it be noted that Carol has paid the annual fee for the PO box and will
be reimbursed for it.  It's $232.  She sent us the user name and password
for our online account.

== Conventions ==

* Minicon 49
  * Closed (before Minicon 50!): Matt send a report document to the board.
    Matt quickly summarized the finances.

* Minicon 50
  * We have to ratify the internal harassment policy passage.  Ratified!
  * Preliminary report: Finances are probably ok.  Matt doesn't know of any overruns,
   except that of course the hotel bill is a potential big swing even though
   we think we kept much better control of it this year.  More info to follow.
   No major problems occurred non-financially, either.

* Minicon 51 and 52.

Ann is adding ibuprofen as a line item for consuite.

Ann has asked Keith Malgren to be hotel head.  Ann will follow up in the
next week.

Ann asks Matt how fast the hotel turn-around is on getting a contract
written.  Matt says he hasn't dealt with the hotel directly, but thinks
that their speed has changed as the management has changed.

Ann will be looking around at a variety of hotels, but we more-or-less
expect to stay with the RadishTree.  She is going for a two year contract.

* A fallcon in 2015 -- we set a deadline of May 1.

We haven't gotten any bids.  However, Kevin and Laurel are thinking of it, so
we should expect one. Whoo! Aiming at September (*not* aside JOFCon).

* A fallcon in 2016

Matt was thinking of it, but is waiting to see where he is living next
year. Kevin and Laurel would be fine with this; they only want to
run 2015.

* Matt would like to open a discussion of the way we organize
conventions.

Matt sees a need for more continuity in Minicon. Without going as far as
instituting a standing body called "Minicon", which we either have never
done, or at least not since before the mid-80's, what would help is a
board-mandate for each Mnstf convention to produce a document describing
their policies and departments. This would be expected to be used by
future similar conventions (e.g. Minicon N, then Minicon N+1), but
would, formally speaking, be a new document each year. This is the model
we have just put in place for the harassment policy alone, and it seems
to make sense.

People more or less think this idea is sensible. The board would like
to see M50's document. Lydy is not sure she wants this in the bylaws
without some sort of trial of the system. Ann would like to have an org
chart in this document.

Scott proposes that Matt and Ann do this trial run and report back at
the next meeting. Then we should submit Ann's M51 version to the board.
We will give an update on how this is going by the next board meeting.
We will give a time estimate on when it could be ready.

== Officers ==

Along with the discussion of con organization is the recognition that we
need someone to keep track of our stuff better, so we'd like to create a
new officer: the quartermaster.

Matt suggests Joel Phillips for this. Ann asks how he would do if given
a particular structure to work within. We wonder what sort of structure
Ann is talking about. A particular spreadsheet format? Ann says she
asked because she's seen someone fail at this task. Lydy describes
this job as (1) inventory (2) answering questions when people want
to know whether we have things. We need to define how precisely the
quartermaster is supposed to know things. "we have some plastic cups",
or "we have 4319 8oz plastic cups"? Ann says the QM is supposed to
coordinate with departments to get a pretty precise inventory. The
departments should be doing much of the inventory so that they have the
level of precision needed. Lydy says that we certainly always need some
sort of quantity information. Lydy also says that doing inventory at con
load-out is hard, so a real inventory of the locker is needed.

Who keeps track of consumables and whether an event is allowed to use
them? i.e. are leftovers from Minicon up for grabs by the fallcon,
picnic, etc.? (The answer probably depends on what leftovers they are.)
Scott says that to some degree the board will have to set policy here,
and we'll have to think about how to divide responsibility.

The quartermaster would be responsible for organizing inventories.

We *do* want the quartermaster to know about things that we own that are
not in the locker.

This is getting complex, so Matt and Ann agree to write a draft
definition for "quartermaster" and send it to board-chat by the next
meeting.

== Bids ==

* Minneapolis in 2073

Matt makes sure that all the new board members know that this is an official,
board approved project with finances and whatnot.

== Ken Konkol ==

What shall we do about him?

Ken was told twice that he could not crash in the consuite Sunday night
at Minicon 50. He decided to hide in the consuite closet, where he
was in a position to overhear a conversation between Lydy and Ctein.
Ken also harassed Lynn at Minicon 50 -- he was told to leave Lynn
alone, and did not. Further, he failed to leave Lydy alone when asked
at the Dessicated Dodo party following Minicon 50. This is part of a
decades-long pattern of bad behavior.

Proposal: Revoke his Minnstf membership (which bans him from meetings
and other non-convention society functions) and ban him from Minnstf
conventions, with no further clauses. (i.e. We don't set any future
review date for conditions for re-entry. A future board could reverse
our decision, but we do not bind them to review his case or anything
like that.)

We review what happens if someone shows up at an event of ours that
they are banned from.  We do have procedures in place for this.

Lydy abstains as an involved party.

Proposal passes 4-0-1.  Ken's membership is revoked and he is banned
from all Minnstf conventions.

Ann will notify him via Facebook.  We can see when he has seen it.
We would like to also send him a registered letter.  We don't know of a
good address for him.  He moves between Minnesota and Florida.

Documentation to back up our claim that he has been a long-term problem.
Ann is working on this.

We will not call attention to the fact that Ken's membership is revoked
and that he is banned from our conventions by making posts on social
media or announcing it at meetings or anything similar. However,
his name will be in these minutes, which are publicly available for
people who care to go look, and may be published (in full) in RUNE at
some point. The Minn-stf president and meeting hosts will be directly
informed since they need to know.

Ann will ask Ken for a postal address as part of his electronic
notification.  We don't really expect him to send him us one.


== Policies ==

* Matt and Lydy propose the idea of a new paragraph for the Minn-stf
harassment policy.

Table this.  Matt and Lydy will come back with the idea at the next meeting.


== Set next meeting date ==

Monday May 18, 8pm.  We may have to revise if Lydy's work schedule isn't
favorable.

== Review of the new TODO list ==

* Matt and Ann will work on a M51 policies and departments document.

* Matt and Ann will write a definition for "quartermaster" and send it
to board-chat by the next meeting.

* Ann will notify Ken, and will save a screen shot of any response from
him for our records.

* Ann to continue working on our documentation about Ken. Ann will send
what she has so far to the board.

* Scott will dig up Ken's history to support Ann's documentation.

* Scott will tell Dean about Ken.

* Lydy will look into what we can do if we can't find an address for
Ken. Do we need to publish a notice in a newspaper to make it official?
(Does that work?)

Missed in this meeting so far and pointed out by Scott:

* Matt will work on a bylaw change to find our odd system wherein
the membership year ends in the middle of a day (at the start of the voting
meeting), but the system for counting meetings towards voting membership
runs on calendar days.  Really, we want the membership year to end
a week ahead of the voting meeting or somesuch.

Added by Matt after the fact:

* Scott will fiddle with the settings on our new microphone.

== Adjourned at 4:02pm ===