Minnstf board meeting, 4pm on Feb 25, 2017 at Scott's. Attending: Matt Strait, Hershey Harris, Aaron Vander Giessen, Scott Raun. Lydy cannot attend, as she took overtime by accident. == Approve previous minutes == Approved! == Review TODO list == * (2016-12) Lydy will get some response from some professional archivist about the Scott Imes tapes. (Note, we are using this as shorthand for "all the various videotapes that are minnstf stuff, some of which was shot by Scott Imes, others of which just passed through his hands.") Lydy says by e-mail "I think I need an actual inventory of what we have and it's general status before I can continue inquiries. I think that Geri Sullivan might have that, so I need to first contact her. Will try to do this weekend." Back to the TODO list. Scott will remind her that Jeff Schalles has an inventory. Matt also has the inventory from Jeff and will dig it up. * (2016-06) Scott will talk to Beyond Conventions about their total amount due and their payment plan. They owe us $1165 out of an original $1265. Scott pinged DD-B again yesterday. So this makes like six times in a row that Scott has gotten no response from DD-B. Back to the TODO list. We are starting to get annoyed. * (2016-12) Scott will do the taxes for fiscal 2016 by March 2017. Scott will get them done before the voting meeting. * (2017-01) Aaron will find out how to invest our money in Vanguard accounts, and he will get it done. Aaron will investigate how capital gains taxes on the Vanguard account apply to us as a 501(c)3. And about froo-froo liberal funds. Working on it. Matt handed over bank account information to Aaron. The signers on the main Minnstf checking are listed in the April 6, 2013 minutes. They are still the same: Carol Kennedy, Dean Gahlon, Richard Tatge, Irene Raun. Aaron will need a variety of information about each person who is going to be on the Vanguard account. Two people will officially do the setup ("organizational representatives"), and then there be a list of people authorized to make transactions. The second list need not, but can, include the first people. The "organizational representatives" will be Aaron Vander Giessen and Carol Kennedy. Only three people can be authorized to do things online with Vanguard. We think these should be Carol Kennedy, Aaron Vander Giessen, and Irene Raun. This is preliminary. We will review these lists again. Of course, all these people need to agree to be on all the lists and we need their signatures and stuff. Remains on the TODO list. * (2017-01) Scott will update Carol on the Vanguard plan and get her the ASCAP paperwork and Matt's recall check from the dehumidifier. All of these are done. She is also taking care of the account sign-up thing for "Give the to Max", the online giving event that got us $11 or some such last year. * (2017-01) Matt will negotiate with Joel about who is Quartermaster. Matt chatted with Joel and encouraged him to talk to Terry. Then Matt followed up by e-mail and Joel said he'd do something tomorrow (Feb 6). Matt poked him again on Feb 23 and hasn't gotten a response. For the moment, the board would like Matt to keep poking him. The next board should have a fresh serious discussion about this position. * (2017-01) Aaron will arrange for a tour of the GPS space. This happened. * (2016-06) 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. Dean e-mailed us on Sat 14 Jan 2017 that he had done the deed! Matt would like us to try to see if we can now get a main hall locker for the same price now that we have been there for 5 years or whatever. Hershey will liaise with Dean. == Review Recurring Task List == We reviewed it. No tasks that we weren't already handling were found. == Archivist == Matt has been working on consolidating the archives. As a reminder, it is all now in his apartment. He is working on de-duplicating between the publications that were already in his apartment and those that had been at Marian's, and putting everything in one linear order. Then weeding of things like every receipt from Minicon 23 can happen. It's temping to shovel all of the paper that isn't a publication straight into the recycling, but experience shows that these stacks often hide interesting things that should be kept. == Using GPS office == We were looking at the GPS office as a place to receive mail that cannot be sent to the PO box and for potential future storage of the archives if Matt can't keep them anymore. Aaron has gotten a draft agreement from them which seems to be the agreement they have Convergence Events, but with "Convergence Events" replaced with "BLANK". We read it over. One generally agreed-upon comment was that we'd want to rewrite it to be appropriate for us, since some references to 'the event' or 'the convention' clearly mean 'Convergence'. (If nothing else, we often hold two conventions in a year.) Discussion of whether we actually have a need/desire to move non-PO box mail away from Scott's house. Scott, Hershey and Matt don't see much of a need to move. As far as we can figure, Scott is about as permanent as the current GPS location. From the information we got on our tour, they are probably good for about 10 years, and we figure Scott is too. Aaron doesn't like using a private residence, on general principles, but nothing specific to Scott's situation. Who uses Scott's address for Minnstf: The MN Secretary of State. Looks like also the IRS. The SoS cannot use the PO box. The IRS has an option to use the PO Box, but it is clumsy. In fact, Scott receives almost no paper mail from either one, so it is mostly just a matter of what address people see when they look us up. If Scott were to become unable to deal with the SoS and IRS, one of the other ones of us could pick up the work. We don't need to worry about Scott not passing on a password on because the SoS (at least) associates activities with an individual who is associated with the corporation, not with a corporate account. The new person would set up a new account. On the issue of storing the archives: Matt will be almost certainly keeping the archives in his apartment for the next year and a half. After that, it's harder to say. So it sorta seems like we should revisit this in a year. Would we be interested in formalizing cooperation between our organizations even if we don't want a mailbox or storage space? We all think this is an idea worth thinking about. Scott says it might improve our image with people who are still mad about Minicon 34. And yes, there are still such people, although many fewer than before. We would also get priority/lower cost on renting their space. In return, we'd be giving them a promise that we'd let them advertise through us. We'd expect that this would cost us $50-$100/year, which would be ok even if we never actually rented their space. Matt's only concern is that he wouldn't want people to get the idea that we are a subsidiary of GPS. No one else cares about this concern and/or no one else is sure that it is a problem. Okey-dokey. We will all carefully read over the draft agreement and re-discuss this at our next meeting. == Conventions == * Minicon 52 Scott believes that there are no disasters occurring. Programming is not in the best possible state, but he thinks it is going to be ok. Alice has reported on her status. Things are happening. * Proposal for Decongestant 2 Lydy says by e-mail "I reviewed the Decongestant proposal, and I think it's probably fine." Matt's proposal says that it expects to lose $450, but hopes to only lose $200. It says the con will not need seed money. Scott quibbles with the definition of "seed money". How can you lose money and not need seed money? Matt says that money will be needed at the end when the books are closed, but not before. Scott questions whether it will be necessary for Minnstf to make several transactions at the end to cover the loss. He doesn't want that to happen. Ah, Matt says, that won't be necessary because he plans to use the Minicon bank account, so effectively Minicon 53 will be loaning Decongestant the money. Well, provided that the chairs of Minicon 53 are ok with this. The chair of Minicon 52 approved this scheme for Decongestant 1. Matt is treasurer of Minicons 52 and 53 as well, and he knows he can keep the books straight. (We all agree that if there were several treasurers involved, there should be one bank account each.) Matt will ask Emily and Kevin if it is OK to again use the Minicon checking account for Decongestant. All are happy with this. All approved. It's a thing! * Minicon 53 Contract negotiations are underway. The hotel presented Emily and Kevin with a contract that had some costs that were much higher than before, and also with a room block obligation of 400 instead of the previous 320. They are going to go some more rounds on this. We expect that it's going to come together. * Minicon 54 Emily and Kevin will be signing a two year contract, so it will include Minicon 54, even though no chairs are assigned for M54. (As per agreement with the board.) We should investigate potential alternative hotels. * Minneapolis in 2073 Had party. Success. Probably lost the amount of money that we were trying to move, but Matt hasn't done the books yet. PR9 is going to go out soon. == Next meeting == The new board will most likely meet briefly immediately after being elected on March 18. (It's up to them.) == TODO list == * (2016-12) Lydy will get some response from some professional archivist about the Scott Imes tapes. (Note, we are using this as shorthand for "all the various videotapes that are minnstf stuff, some of which was shot by Scott Imes, others of which just passed through his hands.") Matt and Scott will see about getting her the inventory. * (2016-06) Scott will talk to Beyond Conventions about their total amount due and their payment plan. They owe us $1165 out of an original $1265. * (2016-12) Scott will do the taxes for fiscal 2016 by March 2017. * (2017-01) Aaron will keep working on Vanguard. He will investigate how capital gains taxes on the Vanguard account apply to us as a 501(c)3. And about froo-froo liberal funds. * (2017-01) Matt will keep poking Joel about the Quartermaster. The new board should talk about this. * (2017-02) Hershey will see about getting Dean to ask about our locker location. * (2017-02) Matt will ask Emily about using the Minicon 53 account for Decongestant 2.