Minnstf board meeting Sunday Dec 15, 4pm, at Clay Harris's house. Attending board members: Matt Strait (recording), Scott Raun, Aaron Vander Giessen, Clay Harris. Absent board member: Eric Forste (he told us he couldn't make it) Others attending: none. == TODO list review == * (2019-10) Aaron will find out how much money we left on the table by not providing a volunteer for the GPS auction at M54. Aaron will keep trying. (Dang, we didn't get down to zero TODO items!) DONE: * (2019-10) Aaron will find out what the rate schedule is for the room we use at the Waterbury building. Here are the rates: +------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Rates | | | | |subject to | 107 Main Hall | 106A Classroom | 106 Living Room | |change | | | | |-----------+---------------------+------------------+-------------------| | |per |per |All |per |per |All |per |per |All | | |hour |hour |Day |hour |hour |Day |hour |hour |Day | | |<= 3 |3-10h |(10+) |<= 3 |3-10h |(10+)| <= 3 |3-10h|(10+)| |-----------+-----+--------+------+-----+------+-----+-------+-----+-----| |Partners |15 |13 |135 |12 |11 |108 |9 |7 |75 | |-----------+-----+--------+------+-----+------+-----+-------+-----+-----| |20h & Non | | | | | | | | | | |profit Geek|22 |20 |202 |18 |16 |162 |13 |11 |112 | |Orgs | | | | | | | | | | |-----------+-----+--------+------+-----+------+-----+-------+-----+-----| |All Others |37 |34 |337 |29 |27 |269 |18 |15 |150 | |-----------+-----+--------+------+-----+------+-----+-------+-----+-----| |-----------+---------------------+-----+------+-----+-------+-----+-----| | | Workshop | | | |$88.14 | | | |-----------+---------------------+-----+------+-----+-------+-----+-----| |GARAGE |Daily|Wkend/3 |7 days| | | | | | | | | |days | | | | | | | | |-----------+-----+--------+------+-----+------+-----+-------+-----+-----| |Partners |60 |150 |300 | | | | | | | |-----------+-----+--------+------+-----+------+-----+-------+-----+-----| |20h & Non | | | | | | | | | | |profit Geek|81 |203 |405 | | | | | | | |Orgs | | | | | | | | | | |-----------+-----+--------+------+-----+------+-----+-------+-----+-----| |All Others |120 |300 |600 | | | | | | | +------------------------------------------------------------------------+ * (2019-10) Aaron will invite Emily to our Dec 15 board meeting to make a quartermaster report -- Emily will come to the Dec meeting. Ok, but she isn't here. So he'll invite her to our next meeting. * (2019-10) Aaron will talk to Don and Sharla about Minicon 56 -- they say they are willing to run it and would like to start getting GoHs lined up. * (2019-10) Aaron will inquire of the M55 chairs as to the status of PR1. * (2019-10) Matt will find out about the GPS auction proceeds at Minicon 54. E-mail info@geekpartnership.org --- It was determined that since we didn't provide a volunteer, we don't get any money. * (2019-06) Matt will track progress of Don and Sharla getting someone to do storage locker prep for Minicon. -- Don has agreed to do it. Emily agrees that this is an acceptable, if not great, solution. * (2019-10) Scott will ask Carol to cut Matt a check for Rune 91. * (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. == Approve last meeting's minutes == Approved! == Review recurring task list == Things found: voting meeting needs to be scheduled for before the end of March. We don't think it's been scheduled yet, but it seems unlikely that Sharon and Laura will let that slide, especially because it's been at Sharon's house for umpty-ump years. And two nominating meetings need to be scheduled too. Presumably one will be the pool party. We expect to hear soon from the president when they are. We review that our address on file with the State of MN is Scott and Irene's house and that we would like to keep it that address for another year. We should send notices to concoms reminding them how voting member status works. Aaron will get that done for Minicon 55. == GPS agreement == We know all the numbers except for how much we'd get for the GPS auction, but a reasonable estimate would be $100-$200. Let's review what we get for paying them effectively $400-$500 (actual payment plus free room at Minicon): * A mailbox and the ability to receive large shipments. * Half the proceeds of the auction that they could have at Minicon. Maybe $100-$200. It would take about 16 volunteer hours to qualify for this. * Potentially storage space, but unclear how much or if it's free. Also, we don't really want any more storage space. * Use of film screening license, but probably given how Michael runs the Minicon film room, barely used. * A savings of about $65 each time we have a meeting in their building. * Use of art panels for Minicon. * Potential benefits in cross-promotion, assistance in renting equipment, etc., but we haven't made any moves towards taking advantage of these. Matt's unconvinced by that that we should continue the deal. Clay asks whether the justification for this is primarily financial or if it is primarily about keeping a social connection to GPS and other organizations. Aaron said that the goal was primarily to support GPS and their Waterbury space. Should we try to take advantage of the things in the final bullet point above before thinking about exiting the agreement? Scott points out that, if nothing else, we shouldn't drop it right *now* because Minicon is counting on the art show panels for this year. Would we like to try to do the more social things that are a potential of this agreement? Can we try to actually do the cross-promotion things? What about spurring on new events through the equipment rental opportunities. Not sure we can find any volunteers to take advantage of this. Aaron will talk to GPS folks and see what interests there are. We should at least send in our events to their calendar. Aaron will find out how much the GPS art show panels cost to rent if we didn't have the cooperative agreement. We will discuss again later. == Conventions == * Worst Convergence Ever This is Emily's brainchild. It's a camping weekend over July 4. We don't know if she's seeking club recognition of the event. We guess as long as Emily doesn't come to us, we don't need to do anything. We'd probably be happy for this to be an official Minnstf convention if Emily wanted. * Minicon 54 Matt got the rest of the receipts, and closed the books, and sent the board his final report. We made a profit of $3079. The target was $2900. * Minicon 55 PR1 went out by postcard, and then about three weeks later by e-mail (both to the whole mailing list). As of like a month ago, Clay reports, we had just about the same registrations numbers as this point last year. Still has no art show head. Panic? Not yet. Aaron will poke the chairs and see what they're thinking. We'd love it if we could have an art show head who was enthusiastic about building the art show, and not just grudgingly agree to sit there for the weekend... Aaron will also talk to the chairs about making the Minicon 55 website more appealing. At least add pictures of the GoH! But a bit more jazz in general. It's, like, the most boring thing ever. * Minicon 56 Ratify letting Don and Sharla to start inviting guests: E-mail approvals: Matt, Clay, Scott, Aaron, Eric. Ratified! We official install them as Minicon 56 chairs. Huzzah! We should come up with a profit target for them. We set a target for Minicon 55 in May 2019 for $3200. We don't think anything has changed about our annual finances since then. So, we set the same target now for Minicon 56. ===> The Minicon 56 profit target is $3200 <=== * Decongestant 4 Matt closed the books and sent a report to the board. We lost $689. That's similar to Matt's expected loss of $550 at the time of his proposal. We got about a dozen Arcana people, without with we would have lost lots of money. Clay still owes Matt a final registration report. * A fallcon in 2020 Matt and Isaac would like to run one and call it Decongestant 5. We don't know yet whether we'd be partnering with Arcana again. * A fallcon in 2021 Matt and Isaac would like to run one and call it Decongestant 6. Matt would really like to get Columbus Day weekend and to sign a contract now for it. The board approves getting a two year contract (or two one year contracts, or whatever). So let's just note that the board has created 3 cons in this meeting. The dates of Minicon 55 are known, because we already have a contract. The dates of Decongestants 5 and 6 are not yet know for sure. But hopefully we can get those nailed down before New Year's. * Minneapolis in 2073 We had a party at Windycon for two nights. It was nice. We came came close to breaking even, mostly because of Clay and Joe's rivalry to have the most money on the registration accounts. Matt is still thinking of putting out PR11 soonish, and maybe placing some ads in other cons' program books. == Next meeting == 2pm, Jan 18, 2020, at Clay's house, ahead of his birthday party/Minnstf meeting. == New TODO list == * (2019-10) Aaron will find out how much money we left on the table by not providing a volunteer for the GPS auction at M54. * (2019-10) Aaron will invite Emily to our next board meeting to make a quartermaster report. * (2019-12) Aaron will make sure that the Minicon 55 concom is reminded how voting member status works. * (2019-12) Aaron will find out about GPS cross-promotion possibilities. * (2019-12) Aaron will find out how much the GPS art show panels cost to rent if we didn't have the cooperative agreement. * (2019-12) Aaron will poke the Minicon 55 chairs about the status of getting an art show head. * (2019-12) Aaron will also talk to the chairs about making the Minicon 55 website more appealing. * (2019-12) Aaron will tell Don and Sharla that the Minicon 56 profit target is $3200.