Minnstf board meeting Wednesday Oct 16, 6:30pm, at Scott and Irene Raun's. == Approve last meeting's minutes == Approved! == Review TODO list == * (2019-06) Matt will track progress of Don and Sharla getting someone to do storage locker prep for Minicon. -- This was discussed in the Sept concom meeting, but no one has committed yet. Eric and maybe Aaron and maybe Clay will be at the Oct concom meeting this Sunday, so one of them can update Matt on what further discussion occurs. DONE: * (2019-09) Eric will let DD-B know that he has a $200 stipend for his big party. (See also below.) * (2019-09) Scott will get signatures on the new bylaws and hand off to Laura to go to meetings: And they've been displayed at at least Scott's and DD-B's parties (and they were also published in RUNE 91). == Review recurring task list == The rent on the PO box is due. It should get paid automatically. We got a notice telling us it is due on Oct 31. It's time to solicit bids for the next Minicon (Minicon 56). So we should ask Don and Sharla what they are thinking about doing a second year now that they have (a little) experience preparing for one. We'll ask them to think about it and tell us yes or no by our December board meeting. We want this schedule so that if they say "no", we have time to panic, i.e. solicit bids from others. Let's set our next two meeting dates now: == Next two (actually one) meeting(s) == 4pm on Dec 15 at Clay's. Turns out, November is hard to schedule and we don't see that we really need a meeting in November, so we'll skip that month. == Return of "Review recurring task list" == We assign Aaron to talk to Don and Sharla. It's time to get a report from the Quartermaster. Let's invite Emily to the Dec 15 board meeting. Aaron will do this. It's time to send bills for past due accounts. Matt will do that. == Storage locker woes == So management got our locker confused with another one, and put their lock on our locker. They also generated a threatening letter to us, so they must have mixed it up in their computer system and not just with the physical lock. Carol sorted it out. They agreed that we're fine, and we have gone to the locker several times (for Decongestant) since then, so it is really fine now. This is not yet a pattern of trouble, and we agree that companies get a pass on one occurrence like this each 7 years, or maybe 10 years, whatever. == Nice Space Public Meetings / Waterbury Meetings budget == Old business: We originally cut DD-B a check for only $75 for his big meeting. When the error was noted, Carol was notified and will issue him a check for $125 more. New business: We have talked a lot about meeting stipends for bigger meetings, but haven't been very clear about what the whole plan is. Matt proposed a set of guidelines for the president. We discussed for a while what would work well for President Sharon and the board, and settled on: * Up to 24 regular meetings with $75 refreshments stipend * New Year's Eve with $150 refreshments stipend * 1 Picnic at about $162 rental + $100 refreshments * Up to 3 Expensive Public Space Parties at $200 rental + $200 refreshments * Up to 1 Waterbury Party at $93 rental + $75 refreshments * Total about 24 meetings at about $2800. * Waterbury parties can be swapped for Expensive parties as long as total cost is roughly the same. * The board gives the president wide latitude to adjust as long as it doesn't cost a lot more. Matt will post on the website in the place that already has some information like this. == GPS agreement == We entered into this agreement in January 2018. Do we want to stay in it? Costs to us: * Provide GPS space for a programming event and an auction at Minicon. * Pay for two room nights for GPS to have a room party at Minicon (about $200). * Let them have a free ad in the Minicon program book (maybe $20 at cost, $100 by what we charge if that's a full page ad). * Pay $200 annually. We get: * A mailbox and the ability to receive large shipments. * Half the proceeds of the auction that they could have at Minicon. They've done this one year and not the other. They haven't sent us any money yet, so it's unclear how much money this might be. * Potentially storage space, but unclear how much or if it's free. * Use of film screening license. * Rental of their space at the "lowest tier rate", but unspecified what that is. Thought it was $93, but apparently Emily paid $183 for our November meeting. There are also a number of other potential benefits in cross-promotion, assistance in renting equipment, etc., but we haven't made any moves towards taking advantage of these. Is this worth $400-$500 annually? Or is this an arrangement where we meant to be supporting GPS and we shouldn't tally it just financially, say Eric and Aaron? Scott would like the current rate schedule so we know what "lowest tier rate" is before he makes a decision about whether to support them or not. Aaron finds it on their website. The big room is $37/h and $18/h for the big room. So it'd be something like $200 for a meeting at those rates. Aaron does not find the "lowest tier rate" on their site. == Rune == Matt made Rune 91 and mailed it out. We gave him a $100 budget. He'd like $55.29. Scott will ask Carol to cut him a check. == Conventions == * Minicon 54 Matt is still trying to extract the rest of Susan's receipts from her. * Minicon 55 Not much has happened financially yet. We sent the hotel a $600 deposit. There was a concom meeting. We don't yet have a storage locker prep person. We only have to fly one person. They're working on getting a PR out. The deadline for content submission was Sept 22, and since then we've heard nothing about it. Aaron will inquire of the PR status to the chairs. There is a new parties head. All M55 pre-reg checks have been deposited. * Decongestant 4 It happened. It was good. We had about 73 members. Matt hopes it was exactly 73. As far as we can tell, the hotel has not billed or charged us for either the consuite (sleeping rooms) or function rooms, although they have Clay's card on file. So he'll watch for that. Hershey will hopefully be talking to the hotel about next year too soon and can ask about this. Everything else about the budget happened about about as expected. People appeared to have a good time. * A fallcon in 2020 Matt and Isaac are planning to submit a bid for Decongestant 5 as co-chairs. Isaac's plan is to learn the ropes by shadowing Matt. It's a great plan. We're going to see if Columbus Day weekend is available. * Minneapolis in 2073 We're having a party at Windycon, Friday night. Maybe Saturday night too if people throw a lot of money at us. Adjourned! == New TODO list == * (2019-06) Matt will track progress of Don and Sharla getting someone to do storage locker prep for Minicon. -- This was discussed in the Sept concom meeting, but no one has committed yet. * (2019-10) Matt will send bills for past due accounts. * (2019-10) Matt will post our new meeting guidelines on the website and send them to Sharon. * (2019-10) Matt will find out about the GPS auction proceeds at Minicon 54. E-mail info@geekpartnership.org. * (2019-10) Aaron will talk to Don and Sharla about Minicon 56. * (2019-10) Aaron will invite Emily to our Dec 15 board meeting to make a quartermaster report. * (2019-10) Aaron will inquire of the M55 chairs as to the status of PR1. * (2019-10) Scott will ask Carol to cut Matt a check for Rune 91.