Minnstf board meeting, 3pm Saturday Dec 15 at at Scott and Irene Raun's. Attending board members: Matt Strait (recording), Hershey Harris, Anna Dudda, Scott Raun, Aaron Vander Giessen. Others attending: Irene Raun. Oreo the puppy. == Approve last meeting's minutes == Yes! == TODO == * (2017-12ff) Aaron will shepherd along Vanguard. * (2018-11) Matt will send US Bank an e-mail asking them to send Vanguard a letter saying that we really own our US Bank account. If that doesn't work, then he'll draft a paper letter. -- Matt found that sending an "e-mail" is possible, at least. Matt still has his questions. Aaron is checking his e-mail to see if he got the question questions. Yes, he did, and we'll get on it. * (2018-11) Matt will try to open $10k CD opened with US bank if we can get at least 2% APY. We'll then tell Carol it happened. -- looks like you can't do it online. Matt has asked Scott to ask Carol. Scott asked Carol to do it. Perhaps a follow-up would be good. * (2018-10) Hershey will make sure we're up to date on storage locker payments. Yes, we are! We did have one late payment, but they are not mad at us, and it didn't get anywhere close to being a problem. * (2018-10) We will all make informal inquiries about chairing Minicon 55. == Review recurring task list == Matt reviewed it, muttering about everything that doesn't apply now while the rest of the board looked on. In the New Year, we'll need to do the taxes. This is very simple. All we need to do is file a thing that says we grossed less than the minimum to have to file for real. We don't even have to report the number. It's about a 5 minute task. We reviewed our non-PO box address for things like the MN Secretary of State that won't use a PO box. It's Scott's house. We still like this. When Scott moves into his new house, it will become Scott's new house. == Dan G. == He was in the hospital. We asked Carol to send him a get-well/sympathy card/gift from the club, and she did. == Conventions == * Decongestant 3 Matt gives his report. We lost $983, when the proposal estimated that we'd lose $481. The difference is mostly that we had 63 members and Matt budgeted for 75. Matt's waiting for one check to be cashed and then will close the books and send in his final report to the board. * A fallcon in 2019 Matt intends to propose Decongestant 4. He is going to survey the Decongestant 1, 2, and 3 membership as to what dates they like. * Minicon 54 Website was updated with new information. PR1 is to go out soon. Emily bugged people for information and is compiling it. She and Ken are going to work on the database tonight for programming. The database is up and running and she gave Aaron a list of things to import. Hotel and GoH are in place. Aaron has contacted OffWorld about making t-shirts. Rick has reached out to our artist GoH for art we can use. We are likely to get art by January. So there will not be art ready for the postcard part of PR1. Matt suggests putting photos of the GoH on the website. * Minicon 55 We talked to some candidate chairs. We have maybes. Matt proposes asking them to come to a yes or no by the Minnstf meeting on Jan 19. We'd like that to be a pretty firm deadline, modulo a day or two. We'll then, if it's no, move on to the emergency backup chairs. This gives three full months to get M55 approved by the board, and get hotel and GoH in hand to advertise at M54. Matt asks, philosophically, how badly we want Minicon 55 to exist, if the candidate chairs and emergency backup chairs both don't want to do it. Anna asks if there's a financial concern for taking a year off. No, because the club spends about $4k/year and we have about $40k in savings. Scott says that he would say taking a year off is only ok if someone is enthusiastic about chairing the following year. Otherwise, that's probably the end of the con. We'd lose a lot of momentum if we took a year off, says Hershey. Matt asks how much momentum we really have. Some. If we had a programming head ready for M55, that would represent a significant amount. It is *possible* that this will come out of M54, but not clear yet. We discuss philosophy some more. Scott suggests getting club input at big Minnstf meetings like New Year's Eve and the Pool Party. These are good places to get discussions started and raise awareness, if not to have detailed discussions. Maybe not yet at New Year's Eve. * Minneapolis in 2073 PR10 e-mail still should go out. Matt is hoping to do it in the coming week. We'll probably run a party at Capricon. == Next meeting == 2pm, Clay and Hershey's, Sunday Jan 20. == New TODO list == * (2017-12ff) Aaron will shepherd along Vanguard. * (2018-11) Matt will send US Bank an e-mail (secure web form thing) asking them to send Vanguard a letter saying that we really own our US Bank account. * (2018-11) Scott will follow-up with Carol about opening a CD at US Bank while we wait for Vanguard.