Minnstf board meeting, 1pm on Dec 10, 2016 at Clay and Hershey's, 3601 Towndale Dr, Bloomington. Board members present: Lydy Nickerson, Hershey Harris, Aaron Vander Giessen, Matt Strait. Scott Raun sent his regrets. == Approve previous minutes == Scott approved by e-mail. All here approve, too! == Review TODO list == * (06-2016) Hershey will continue to nag Dean about going to the storage locker, updating his contact information with them, and give them the new desired list of authorized people: Joel Phillips, Patricia Zetelumen, Dean Gahlon, Jim Porter, Kelly James. Hershey reports that she nagged Dean in the home of Lydy, and Dean was all like "raaaaaaah!" and looked deeply ashamed. But as far as we know, he hasn't gone in. * (06-2016) Scott will talk to Beyond Conventions about their total amount due and their payment plan. They owe us $1165 out of an original $1265. Report by e-mail: Scott still haven't heard back from DD-B. He forgot to ask him in person last Saturday. * (06-2016) Scott will move all our money from Ameriprise to our checking account. Report by e-mail: Scott reports that they tried to set up a direct transfer, gave up when it took too long and ordered a check with expedited processing ($25) instead. It should be in the PO Box by Monday Dec 12. DONE: * (11-2016) Matt will buy an Epson WorkForce DS-520 for archival work. He has it now. * (11-2016) Matt will ask Quartermaster Joel for the latest inventory sheets (asked, see below). == Review Recurring Task List == Taxes: We should try to get the "postcard" in soon for 2016, since it's really easy. Presumably we could do this very soon after New Year's. Let's put this on Scott's TODO list, as long as that turns out to be ok with him, since he has been doing it. We decide to add a new recurring task, which is to annually review where mail that can't go to the PO box is going (currently Scott and Irene, from the state). Matt has done this. == Quartermaster/Inventory == We asked Joel to send us the inventory. He drummed up inventories for the Minicon Rumpus Room tubs and the fallcon consuite tubs. No general inventory seems to be forthcoming. What should we do? The board calls for a real inventory that produces list of things we own, at least at the level of summaries of tubs and, like, we have N big fridges of size la-la-la, and M whiteboards, etc. We think that Joel is great for going to the storage locker and drumming up people, but that we may need someone else who will actually write down what we have. A proposal is floated to do an inventory during Minicon move-in/move-out. This proposal is roundly shot down as insane. We would like an inventory *before* Minicon 52, since Alice is starting with programming and needs to know what she has. Likewise consuite. We discuss the role of the quartermaster. TODO for Hershey: talk to Patricia about her interest in helping with inventory and related topics. == Archivist == Location of archives. Matt was thinking of moving everything to his apartment for some relaxed curation. Currently he has about three filing cabinet drawers of archives in his apartment, and there are four filing cabinets in Marian's basement. Maybe they could be condensed down to, say, three cabinets total if Matt had them all. In either 6 months or 1.5 years, when Matt moves out of his apartment, they will probably have to go elsewhere, perhaps another fan's house who is likely to have said house for some decades yet. No definite plan is made. The board says that this is the archivist's decision. We also relatedly talk about the Scott Imes video collection. We have not heard back from the University of Iowa about the value of tapes we have. Matt suggests that this means they aren't interested. The tapes are currently in Corwin's house. It is definitely somewhere between 3 and 100 boxes. Some of them have been digitized, some haven't. Lydy wants a TODO item for herself: She will get some reponse from some professional archivist about this situation. == Conventions == * Decongestant Matt sent the board the final financial report. It made -$344.25. This was slightly under the goal of -$200. * Minicon 52 It needs an internal and external harassment policy. Ann and Lydy have proposed last year's external one with the first section under "Action" in the policy struck. Matt has prepared a draft internal policy based on Minicon 51's, but necessarily not identical. Lydy proposes, as Code of Conduct Committee Chair for Minicon 52, that the board adopt the internal policy that Matt has drafted. For the external policy, Lydy wants to ammend the "reporting" section, since she wants to provide a phone number and not route people through the reg desk. , as well as the external one proposed by Minicon 52 already. We ammend the section on reporting to make it an implementation detail. We have approved both policies for Minicon 52 as they appear below. * Minicon 53 Let's have it! Aaron reports that the GoH process has begun. We discuss how there is a need to recruit young people into running programming. The teens who are running the teen room now seem like people to keep in mind. * Minneapolis in 2073 Ran party at Windycon. Had bid pay for a dedicated party room for once. Also got a free upgrade to a corner suite because of the hotel screwing up our reservation! Cool for the party, but required buying some extra food to support a 3x bigger room. This took care of having too much money. Net loss $156.59 and negative half a Euro. Then made a bit of money at Smofcon. The fungible treasury now contains $256.20. As a reminder, Matt has promised not to hold more than $500 without opening a bid bank account. == Next meeting == 1pm, Jan 14, at Aaron and Emily's, providing that Scott can make that. == New TODO list == * (06-2016) Hershey will continue to nag Dean about going to the storage locker, updating his contact information with them, and give them the new desired list of authorized people: Joel Phillips, Patricia Zetelumen, Dean Gahlon, Jim Porter, Kelly James. * (06-2016) Scott will talk to Beyond Conventions about their total amount due and their payment plan. They owe us $1165 out of an original $1265. * (06-2016) Scott will move all our money from Ameriprise to our checking account. Next step: Hershey needs to retrieve the check, which should be there by Monday, from the PO box. * (2016-12) Aaron will make sure that Emily is up on the timing for nominating meetings. * (2016-12) Scott will do the 2016 taxes (assuming he's good with that). * (2016-12) Lydy will get some reponse from some professional archivist about the Scott Imes tapes. * (2016-12) Hershey will talk to Patricia about her interest in helping with inventory and related topics. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Minicon 52 External Harassment Policy (Draft 2016-12-07) Principles Minn-stf acknowledges that interpersonal relationships in social settings are complex. Not everyone likes everyone else, and not everyone agrees with everyone else. Disagreements, friction, and vigorous debate are expected. However, interactions that become hostile or coercive do not have any part in a healthy social environment and Mnstf commits to addressing problem behaviors. Harassment is difficult to define, and attempts at an exact definition are subject to rules-lawyering, so we won't attempt to do that. However, repeated unwelcome behaviors are mostly likely to be construed as harassment. If someone asks you not to touch them, not to talk to them, or not to refer to them in a way that they find objectionable, and you persist in doing so, you may be harassing them. Actions that are sufficiently egregious (assault, truly hateful language, and comparable actions) fall under this policy, even if only one occurrence has been noted. In the end, harassment is judged primarily by the person who feels harassed, and actions are more important than intent. Action If you tell someone to stop something you see as harassing behavior and they don't, you may tell us. If you don't feel comfortable telling someone to stop harassing behaviour, you may also tell us. We want to make sure everyone is heard so that together we can make Minicon a healthy, fun, enjoyable experience for everyone. Reporting We will publish a procedure for reporting violations of this code, whether or not action is desired. This information will be readily available to the membership of Minicon 52. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Minicon 52 Internal Harassment Policy (Draft 2016-12-07) Minicon 52 will collect and maintain records of reported harassment and incidents of intervention during the convention. Minicon 52 will also collect and maintain records of reported harassment that happens between concom members. Reports may be made to Minicon 52 after the convention is over. Following Minn-stf's PHITBBC+MYBOC policy, these records will be passed on to Minicon 53 con-chairs and the Code of Conduct Committee, the Mnstf Board, the fallcon, and any other Mnstf-sponsored events that the Board deems appropriate. Records will be kept in written form. Reasonable security will be exercised. Records are to be reviewed by the following parties: Chair of the Code of Conduct committee (C4), responders for the Code of Conduct Committee (C3s), the Minicon 52 con chair, and members of the Mnstf Board. Records of specific instances may be provided to the reporter of an incident, the target of the incident, and the subject of that report. Some discretion will apply if the reporter is different than the target of an incident. Responders are empowered to tell members to cut it the heck out if, in the judgement of the responder, said warning would be appropriate and helpful. Said warnings are to be documented. C4 and the chairs will track these warnings, with an eye to seeing patterns of bad behavior. Escalated responses, such as ejection or banning, will be based in part on these reports. Responders may choose, in some circumstances, to call the police. If this is done, we won't just drop the matter as if it were solved. We should still pursue our normal procedures, including considering what consequences the incident should have independent of legal action, such as a temporary or permanent ban. Non-repetitive, non-dangerous, legal behaviors which meet our definition of harassment will be addressed by warning the offending party that their behavior is considered harassment by the convention. These interactions will be reported on the Incident & Intervention Report Form, and filed in the Big Book of Harassment so that they can be tracked. Actions such as ejection or banning will be done on a case by case basis. The following are guidelines that we will use to determine such actions: For repeated cases of harassment which do not constitute an immediate danger to a member, are not in themselves illegal, and are not spectacularly egregious, we will tend to use a "three strikes and you're out" model. The first problematic instance gets a warning, the second gets a warning with a specific statement that if it happens again, the person will be ejected, and the third instance gets an ejection from the convention for that year. This model is only for the convention. This is not a multi-year model. This is not reporter-specific. The reports can be from three different people, or all from the same person. The decision to eject is to be made by the con-chair. In cases where a person is involved in physical harm to another person, the aggressor will almost certainly be ejected from the convention. The decision will be made by the con-chair. There would be very few circumstances where this would not be the reaction. While people shouting at each other is unpleasant, actual physical violence is a bright line. Threats of physical harm will be considered, and may also result in ejection if the con-chairs feel that the threats were credible. In the case that the subject of a report is a GoH, the responder will take the report as usual, and then contact the chair immediately. The responder is not authorized to talk directly to the GoH. It is suggested that the chair work with the guest liaison to resolve the issue. The C4 should also be notified immediately, and it is suggested that the C4 be involved in the decision-making process. Bans for future conventions will be considered as per Minn-stf's PHITBBC+MYBOC policy. Minicon 52 will not discuss, publicly, its disciplinary actions. Its processes and decisions will be transparent to the target of the problem behavior, the subject of the report, the members of C3, the present and future con-chairs, and the Mnstf Board. If the reporter is different than the target, information will be shared with them also, but depending on privacy concerns, there may be less transparency. Specifically, the target will be told about any investigations that are in process. They are entitled to see any reports generated by that investigation process. (Names of other reporters may be redacted, if said reporters so request.) They will be informed of the names of the people involved in making any decisions about their situation. This is a small community, and we are not aiming to have the people making the decisions have no connections with the reporter of the subject, but we will do our best to eliminate undue bias. (Lydy, for instance, is always recused if the subject is Louie Spooner or Ken Konkol.) The reporter will be asked if they think there is a significant conflict of interest. If the situation is escalated beyond a simple verbal warning, the subject may be given a copy of the report(s). The name of the reporter may be redacted if the reporter so requests. Reports generated by any investigation will also be provided, again with the same redaction if requested. The subject will be given the names of the people making the decisions, with all the caveats listed above. The subject will be asked if they feel there is a significant conflict of interest. Reporters who are not the target of a problem behavior will be kept informed of the status of their report, but privacy of the target will be considered in the release of information. We would very much like the reporters to feel that their reports are being taken seriously, but if they are not the target, they have fewer rights to information, and information release will be handled on a case-by-case basis, possibly in consultation with the target. Minicon 52 and/or the Board will give a yes or no response to anyone who asks about whether or not a specific person has been banned, and if so, the length of their ban. Minicon 52 will not discuss on-going investigations with anyone but the involved parties. Minicon 52 and Mnstf will not attempt to control how the reporter and the subject of the report discuss the issue in public. Minicon 52 and the Board will not publish a list of banned persons. Minicon 52 and the Board reserve the right to comment publicly if the Internet lands on our heads, but will not reveal any details that have not already been revealed elsewhere. In rare cases, Minicon 52 and the Board may dispute incorrect details. Minicon 52 will develop (and maintain!) procedures to support this policy. These procedures will be reviewed by the Board as appropriate. ------------------------------------------------------------------------