MnStf board meeting, Thursday July 13, 6pm, by videoconference. Attending board members: Matt Strait (recording), Scott Raun, Linda Lounsbury, Isaac Schneider, David Dyer-Bennet. Attending other: Jim Porter, quartermaster. == Approve previous meeting's minutes == Approved! == Ratifications == Making the meeting stipend increase retroactive to Jan 1, 2023. Ratified! == Review TODO list == * (2021-06) Scott will correspond with ASCAP to tell them we had no events 2020-2021. No progress. Linda agrees for this item to be reassigned to her. * (2023-06) Scott will let Carol know that the meeting stipend has increased, retroactive to Jan 1, 2023. -- Done, and both Linda and Isaac have gotten checks. Done: * (2023-04) Scott will ask Carol for an annual treasurer's report so we know what the overall state of our finances is -- below. * (2023-06) Matt will bug Jim Porter for a quartermaster report -- bugged, and he did come. * (2023-06) Scott will renew mnstf.org and minicon.org -- done June 29. * (2023-04) Scott will ask Carol for confirmation that the latest several bank statements has been balanced -- She reports balanced through April 30; we have just under $1900 in main checking. * (2023-06) Matt will remind concoms how voting member status works. * (2023-06) Matt will update the covid policy on the website. * (2023-06) Matt will write down the new stipend policy, post on the web and tell Sharon. * (2023-06) Matt will update the officer list to make DD-B the webmaster. * (2023-06) Matt will tell Laurel to let mnstf.net lapse and thanks. == Review recurring task list == * Get a report from the quartermaster (done: see above and below) * Send bills for past due accounts -- Matt will do this. * Discuss covid policy and affirmatively either keep, modify, or end the policy. On this, President Sharon thinks we set the wastewater threshold too low, and that we should "pick a threshold that means something instead of focusing on tiny data spikes at the bottom of the hill. Just look at the graph. What did it look like last time there really was a spike in COVID cases?" By this Kahn Rule, perhaps a better threshold would be 100M instead of our current 25M. She further opines that we should drop the parts of the policy that require vaccination because the data says that vaccination doesn't prevent transmission. Keep, raise threshold, throw whole thing away? Linda would like to keep the policy, but doesn't know what threshold is right. DD-B doesn't want to throw it away, not sure otherwise. Scott would not want to throw it away, not sure otherwise. Isaac thinks we might as well keep it the same. Matt moves that we just keep it the same and revisit in three months. All agree. And everyone will take the time to try to develop more opinions. == Financials == * Change check-mailing policy? Switch to automatic payments for storage locker? Carol was concerned that checks may be stolen in the mail and wanted to know if we could do automatic payments instead. We're not convinced that mail theft is a major hazards. Our priority is making sure that the payments get made reliably. So no change in our policy for whether or not checks can be mailed (i.e. they can still be mailed), but we authorize her to make automatic payments or whatever other method she'd like to use to make sure that the storage locker gets paid regularly. Scott will tell her. * Report on 2022 actual income and expenses from Carol Kennedy: Storage facility 1822.00 PO box 364.00 RUNE 336.31 Domain reg. 35.92 Cheer 127.47 GPS annual 200.00 Grant to Zorg Prod. 1000.00 Books for donation 1222.61 N95 masks 168.05 Air filters 712.44 Bank fees 60.00 Meeting venues 456.31 Meeting stipends 450.00 Picnic stipends 299.00 TOTAL 7254.11 Amazon donations 47.67 Plus, Matt notes, Minicon 55 returned $2961.40, making our total income, it would seem, $3009.07. And we must have made money on our Vanguard investments; we need to ask Aaron for that. Matt further notes that Decongestant 5 lost $1344.42, but that this goes on the 2023 books. Minicon 56 will return exactly $0 (also on the 2023 books, for what it's worth). Scott notes that the 2022 expenses are just about $4000 with book donations and one-time expenses removed. The profit target for Minicon 57 is $4700 (as per Aug 9, 2022 minutes). So if 2024 goes as planned, we'll have a small surplus, before book donations and any one-time expenses. == Book donations == * Budget? Can we do it at all? We talk through the financials above. We had two bad years because of covid and inflation, but we project that next year will be a normal year, approximately breaking even before one-time expenses. Matt moves that we set the budget for $1300. That's what we budgeted before. It will pay for a few less books because of inflation, probably, although we don't specifically know that books have gotten more expensive. But we should be a little on the conservative side until we see that Minicon can actually make its profit target post-covid. All agree. Linda is authorized to start buying books. == Officer reports == * Quartermaster (Jim Porter) The only Minnstf owned property not in the storage locker that Jim knew about was some A/V equipment that Phoenix has. Matt also has two saddle staplers, a paper cutter and some party supplies. Isaac has some party supplies. Jim will poll the club to learn of more of non-locker property. Jim hasn't been to the locker recently. He's thinking of going after Confelicity. Matt suggests going before Confelicity so that we're sure that the stuff Confelicity wants is there. Isaac is going to the locker soon to drop party supplies off. So that will be a check-in to make sure things there are fine. Matt suggests that we check in on the locker at least every three months, because the locker managers sometimes decide we haven't paid even though we have, and they don't give us notice, they just put their lock on our locker. Jim goes past the locker on a regular basis, so he can do regular checks. Jim can probably get around to doing an inventory. Not sure when he'll have time, but he can do that on some Saturday or Sunday when he's free. We only need a coarsely-grained inventory, like a few-word description of each bin, not a list of every item in each bin. * Einblatt, and also general discussion and assignments for disseminating meeting information to Facebook, Twitter, LiveJournal, Dreamwidth, natter, minicon-concom, Discord, etc. Isaac is going to write an Einblatt tomorrow, and will send it out as soon as it is written. Is meeting information going out in an organized way to all those social media and e-mail things, or is it just kinda happening sometimes when it happens? Scott says that maybe they all happen, but maybe it is somewhat sporadic. If Sharon doesn't post it to Discord, then probably none of the rest of it happens. What if people used an automated reminder from the Google Calendar instead? Hmmm, we say, we're not sure how to make it reliable. Ok, Matt nominates that Aaron be the social media head for Minnstf to remind people of meetings. All approve. Matt will ask Aaron. * Rune, archivist, FANPA, etc. Jeanne Mealy is going to do Rune #93 as a guest editor. Archivist has no report this month. FANPA has no report this month. DD-B has been webmastering. He has upgraded the wiki and our PHP version. This may or may not have exempted us from paying Dreamhost $5/month for using an old PHP version. == Conventions == * Minicon 56 Three outstanding checks. * CONFelicity 10 members so far. That's from the Minicon Ducky Box. Folks should register. * Minicon 57 Concom meeting schedule has gone out. Things are proceeding apace. Checks still not cashed from the Ducky Box, but Clay is working on it (that's how we know how many Confelicity members there are). * Minneapolis in 2073 Two night party at Nasfic next weekend! == Next meeting == 7pm on Aug 17, on Jitsi. == Review new TODO list == * (2021-06/2023-07) Linda will correspond with ASCAP to tell them we had no events 2020-2021. * (2023-04) Scott will ask Carol for confirmation that the latest several bank statements has been balanced, i.e. after the April 30 one: the May 31 and June 30 ones. * (2023-07) Matt will send bills for past due accounts. *(2023-07) Scott will tell Carol what we said about paying the storage locker. * (2023-07) Matt will ask Aaron to be the social media head for making sure that meeting announcements go out to all the places, which doesn't mean that he has to do all of it himself, but just to make sure that it all happens, e.g. by making sure Scott does some of it. * (2023-07) Matt will ask Aaron what our investment income in 2022 was.