Minnstf board meeting, Sept 21, 6pm, by videoconference. Attending board members: Matt Strait (recording), Linda Lounsbury, Scott Raun, Eric Forste, Aaron Vander Giessen. Others attending (for some of the time): Don Stremski, Sharla Stremski. == Approve last meeting's minutes == Approved! == Review TODO list == * (2020-07) Linda will continue working to buy a pile of books from Uncle Hugo's. Linda says that getting the books is the easy part, although she hasn't yet. Finding organizations that will take them, given how much is shut down for the pandemic, is the hard part. School libraries aren't accepting new materials, for instance. Should we put them in Little Free Libraries? Tepid response to that idea. Eric wonders about giving them to prison libraries. Linda can check into that. Scott suggests Harriet Tubman and People Serving People. Some discussion ensues about SF books geared for children under 12. Matt suggests that Linda acquires the books even if we're not sure where they are going yet so that we're ready. [Don and Sharla arrive.] * (2020-08) Aaron will talk to the Minicon hotel. He got from the hotel their view of what each stage of MN's pandemic plan would mean: Stage 3: we can't have it, since the limit on inside gatherings is 10 people. Stage 4: Very unlikely we have have it unless it was extremely small. The limit on *outside* events would be 250, with inside limits not defined, but presumably much less. The state has not yet defined how we get from stage 3 to stage 4, nor from stage 4 to 5, so it's very hard to guess what stage we'll be in over Easter. == Minicon 55 == [We take a break from the TODO list since the Minicon chairs are here.] Discussion with the chairs: It seems like we can't have Minicon in the spring, in all likelihood. But the hotel is still hoping we can have it, so they don't want to cancel our contract yet. We aren't feeling good about the probability of holding Minicon in 2021, but we don't think we can tell people it's canceled if we're still in a dance with the hotel. But we can tell our potential members that it looks bad to us. Can we have Minicon in the fall? We've done that before (Minicons 5 and 9). No voiced objections on principle, but since we don't know we could have it in fall 2021 either, we certainly don't want to be signing a risky contract for such a thing. Also, if the pandemic is winding down next summer, won't everyone be trying to schedule everything on top of everything else? Probably not, Matt opines, since it's not going to end suddenly. We all affirm again that the real problem is if the state guidelines are lifted just barely to the point where Minicon becomes legal, but *we* don't feel it is safe. Is there anything we can do now, or should we just wait another month? A progress report/announcement of some sort updating our members is probably all. Should we just draft a paragraph and put it on the website? It would be nice to push out something to past members as well. It would be nice to have both before Thanksgiving, says Scott. Matt says the website should be updated from the 2020 cancellation notice on the sooner side. That's a lot less work. When will we actually be able to make a call? Well, as long as it's not clear that the event will be illegal, it's going to be hard to agree with the hotel to cancel it. Last year, we were only about a month out when that became clear. We may be able to get a bit more lead time this year since everyone's more used to thinking about it. Hopefully in January, 2.5 to 3 months out? [Don and Sharla sign out.] == Back to the TODO list == * (2020-08) Matt will propose one of the new designs for the website to the board -- he has sent a proposal to the board, and so far four board members have agreed. Eric abstains, so we approve it 4-0-1. Matt will convert the site. * (2020-09) Matt will nudge Osce about pubbing the Einblatt -- see below. Done: * (2020-08) Matt will put all the bylaws amendments together -- draft emailed to the board, and mailed out for signing. Also see below. * (2020-07) Matt will see if Brother Joe found our stuff still in the storage locker -- Joe confirms he has seen our stuff and it is fine. * (2020-07) Matt will continue working to buy a pile of books from Dreamhaven. Matt got the books and delivered them to Linda. * (2020-08) Matt will ask Hershey if she's gotten the mail. After some encouragement, she did get it. It's at the Loring post office downtown. We can keep receiving mail there until further notice from USPS, and Hershey is ok picking it up there (it's right across from Brother Joe's apartment). They might build a new post office for us where the K-Mart disaster currently is. Or maybe not, they really don't know yet. * (2020-08) Matt will, as usual, announce the next board meeting to all our officers, and put this on his TODO list. == Review recurring task list == Nothing up this month. == Ratify selling two copies of Maturity == Matt (not for the first time) found four copies of Rune Press's Maturity, by Theodore Sturgeon, in the archives. The excess copies aren't doing us any good and can probably be sold for a few tens of dollars each, so Matt would like to sell them. Approved by e-mail by Matt, Aaron, Scott and Linda. Ratified! == Einblatt == Is the job description something like "Keep the Minnstf calendar, make it available to members somehow, and somehow push it out on a regular schedule to people who have subscribed to that"? That is, can Osce feel free to do it in a completely different way than Scott has? This comes up because Scott's approach has a bunch of Unix magic that Osce isn't comfortable with. Also, Matt says, he doesn't want the job to be "you have to do what the old people have been doing, just exactly like they did". Scott and Matt like this. Linda asks if we will continue publishing convention and publication listings. Matt says he thinks those are non-essential now that everything's on the web. Scott says the publication listings still come from Denny regularly, so that's not much work to copy into the Einblatt. This could go on the website instead of the Einblatt. Linda asks if any paper copies are going out anymore. No. An addendum to the job description proposed above: besides The calendar, also official club announcements. What about unofficial announcements from club members? Well, that's not really any additional work if you already have a list of official announcements. We all agree to this, except Linda, who abstains. Matt will communicate to Osce. If he switches away from the Dreamhost announce list, we should send out one last mail from the Dreamhost announce list saying it's switching, so people can change their whitelists and whatever. What's the deal with the Minnstf Google Calendar? DD-B and Sharon have access? We should offer Osce access to that. Hmmmm... but Sharon directly posts Minnstf meetings to that calendar and we don't want to break that system. We ponder at length. Ok, revised version: We will say that the Google Calendar is the authoritative source, and that the President will continue putting meetings on the calendar as she has been doing. The Einblatt editor will put all other events on the calendar, and be responsible for keeping the list of announcements, and doing a periodic push to subscribers (probably via e-mail, but however he wants) with the calendar and announcement list. == Conventions == * Minicon 55 (2021) (Also see above.) We should make sure to talk to the chairs by December or so, but it is not essential before then. * Decongestant 5 (2020) Successfully canceled. The hotel was cool about it. Since it will clearly not be allowed under MN's rules, there wasn't anything to argue about. * Decongestant 5 (2021) Matt thinks it's 75% probable that it can happen. We think it's ok to go and get a contract now. * Minneapolis in 2073 No news. If there were cons to have room parties at, there might be some news! == Bylaws == The new bylaws are making the postal rounds. Four of the five of us have signed it. Scott will get it last. After signing it, he'll make a scan and send the original back to Matt for the archives. How do we make it official? As per the *old* bylaws, it needs to be in "single publication in Rune, in Einblatt, or after being posted for a two-month period in a prominent place at Society meetings." It's not clear what the last one means for virtual meetings (that's why we fixed the language for the new bylaws), but we'll post it in the Discord announcement channel during meetings. And it should go out in the next Einblatt if that makes sense. We would like to schedule a discussion of "bylaws we changed during the pandemic" at our next physical meeting. == Next meeting == Nov 12, 6pm, on Jitsi. == New TODO list == * (2020-07) Linda will continue working to buy a pile of books from Uncle Hugo's and figuring out where we can donate them. * (2020-09) Scott will dig out 'whoever's essay on "why aren't these people cancelling their events?"' * (2020-09) Matt will convert the website to the new look. * (2020-09) Matt will communicate with Osce on the Einblatt. * (2020-09) Matt will announce our next meeting to our officers. * (2020-09) Scott will sign the bylaws, make a scan and send the original back to Matt for the archives. * (2020-09) Matt will post the new bylaws. >> Perpetually recurring items for next time * Approve last meeting's minutes * Review TODO list * Review recurring task list * Conventions * Next meeting