Minnstif board meeting, Thursday Aug 17, 7pm, by videoconference. Attending board members: Matt Strait (recording), Linda Lounsbury, David Dyer-Bennet, Scott Raun, Isaac Schneider Attending other: Evelyn. == Ratifications == Previously approved by e-mail: * Transferring $3000 from Vanguard to checking. Ratified. * Previous meeting's minutes. Ratified. == Review TODO list == * (2021-06/2023-07) Linda will correspond with ASCAP to tell them we had no events 2020-2021. Linda has written a letter explaining that we didn't have events in 2020 or 2021 (virtual or in-person). She's also going to send in a payment for 2022 and 2023, both of which they have billed us for. Those are a sum of $286. * (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. As of July 30, she told Scott that the books balanced as of June 30. We should have gotten the July 30 statement by now, so this goes back on Scott's TODO list. * (2023-07) Scott will tell Carol what we said about paying the storage locker. Done. * (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. Aaron has said that he's happy to keep doing what he's been doing, but seems to be resisting taking on a department head title. We wanted posting on social media to become more structured and reliable. Possibly we have achieved this by poking him about this, which seems to have prompted him to talk to Sharon. Sharon puts meetings on the Google Calendar, announces them in person, posts on natter, posts on Discord, forwards to Aaron, and then Aaron also posts to Discord, Twitter and Facebook. So we guess that what we wanted to accomplish has been accomplished, but without making a new officer. Magenta originally voiced the concern we are following up on here. Scott will check with her that she now sees meeting announcements. See also below discussion about Einblatt. DONE: * (2023-07) Matt will send bills for past due accounts. * (2023-07) Matt will ask Aaron what our investment income in 2022 was -- Aaron reports that it was $643, with a year-end balance of $28,930. This was a yield of 2.27%, which included both gains and a big drop in September. In in 2023, the value had gone up by $3276 by June 30, which is 11.3% for the first 6 months and 22.6% annually. == Review recurring task list == Nothing was up this month. == Financials == * Now that we know that our investment income was $643 last year and has been $3276 this year so far, does that change anything? Not too much. We'd like to leave the Minicon 57 profit target as is, but will feel better about things if we don't quite make the target. == Book donations == Linda's waiting to hear when the schools want them delivered. The second batch for Como High School will come from 50/50 Uncle Hugo's/Dreamhaven. The previous batch was from Dreamhaven. Dreamhaven gives us a discount, but we'd like to spread it around. == Officer reports == * Einblatt -- which we have now defined as whatever means Isaac uses to try to contact people who manage not to hear of our events via any of the other means we use. Isaac is writing an Einblatt right now, to be sent as an e-mail. It is mostly a copy of the Google Calendar, but in an e-mail. This is similar to what Osce did, but with less flavor text. Isaac wonders whether this can be automated, to just send the next week of events in an e-mail to the Einblatt list, if there are any events in the upcoming week. Isaac may look into that. Whether this is easy to do with Dreamhost's "announcement lists" is the main question, since they expect you to type into a web form. It could be semi-automated if a thing generated an e-mail to Isaac, who checked it over and pasted it manually into the box if it was sensible. * Rune: Matt reports that as far as he knows, Jeanne Mealy is still working on Rune. * Archivist: Matt has done a bit of archival work, but has mostly been swamped with other things. * FANPA: DD-B reports that he's put several hundred more photos up, including ones from Reinconation 3 and some others that Matt didn't type fast enough to record. He's working on Terry and Denny's photos, which come from negatives. We now have more than 10,000 photos on the website. * Correspondence secretary: Linda confirms that Hershey (also correspondence secretary) gets the con registration mail, and Linda gets all the rest. * Membership secretary: Scott is current with all his data entry. * Webmaster: DD-B says he has three things to report: 1) It looks to him that we all agree that we ought to put some officer e-mail addresses up on the website. He's going to work on that. 2) Dreamhost took away "remap subdirectory", which means we'll have to structure the Minicon pages differently in so far as how access to the files for editing works. He and Clay are going to have to do some experiments so that the Minicon 58 page works. They'll probably do that in the lull after Confelicity, long before Minicon 57. 3) PHP versions. He needs to double check where we are on the semi-mandatory upgrades, and if there's any reason that we need the old version, which would cost us a support fee. == Conventions == * Diversicon 31??? Several of us went to Diversicon 30 and observed that they look like they could use some additional support if Diversicon is going to continue (although they are taking money for memberships for Diversicon 31). Matt asked Diversicon chair Scott Lohman if they would like to become a Mnstf con, supposing the Mnstf board agreed with that. Then we'd provide a volunteer pool and financial backing, (more) cross promotion, and so forth. Scott said that he would consider it and ask the other members of the Diversicon leadership what they thought. So what does the board think? The board asks: Who would pay for it? Matt: It should pay for itself, in principle. Board: Would we have to put up seed money? Matt: Quite possibly. Board: What potential of loss is there? Matt: We don't know what their hotel contract looks like, but it is about the size of Decongestant or Confelicity, and the way those contracts work is that we simply rent the rooms for a fixed price, so the worst case is that no one pays for a membership, but we have to pay the hotel that number; this is pretty low-risk, if it is how they do it. Also, they fly in a GoH, so one GoH's expenses are also a risk. Board: What have they gained or lost in the past? Matt: We think it has been a money loser, backed up by Eric, but we don't know officially, and of course don't have any numbers. Board: We would want some details on their financials, and what the proposed arrangement would be. We are willing to consider this, if they should happen to come to us. To be clear, they have not requested this at this time, so this is all hypothetical until and unless they do. * NASFiC bid for 2027?? Matt: currently the only Worldcon bid known for 2027 is Tel Aviv. His idea is to have an Easter NASFiC, which is also Minicon 60. Could it be in the same hotel we're in? It would be tight, because we are already using all the rooms. There is space for more people, but since people expect an exhibits space for NASFiC, that would either have to be on the Lower Atrium, or we'd have to use the Park ballroom for it, and then where would the ceremonies and large panels go? And there are zero other rooms for any other kind of activity. So we could to back to the RadishTree, but then we'd have to get serious about looking into the RadishTree again. We would at least need to run Minicon 59 there to practice using that space again. So far we have not gotten very far at investigating the RadishTree, although we do have an open line of communication and took one tour. DD-B: "Doesn't sound insanely stupid" Linda: Would this be a 3000-person Minicon like what we used to have, which was impossible to handle? Scott: But if it's only one year, it wouldn't burn us out. Matt: also the additional members would be Worldcon-types, not drunk-student-types. Scott: Maybe having the NASFiC would unify Mpls fandom. The board is willing to consider this, should it become a serious proposal. Of course, for all we know, there will be no NASFiC in 2027, and this won't become clear for some time. * Minicon 56 Still have two checks outstanding. Otherwise, there's nothing else left to do. Matt has sent the offender another reminder. We are still under the 6 month mark required by the bylaws. * CONFelicity Everything is fine, but as usual, almost no one has registered yet, which tends to panic the chair, even though they'll all register on the last day before the deadline. So register! * Minicon 57 Everything is fine. All department heads are filled. The programming department could definitely use more people (who will work on it in general, not in a limited way). Tangentially, Scott wonders if the board would like to have a programming item at Minicon where we do a Q+A from the audience. Maybe this would be an opportunity to figure out how to get announcements out to people who manage to miss all of the ways we send out announcements, for Minnstf meetings and such. This would be a commitment for the newly elected board. Yes, we're willing to make this commitment. * Minneapolis in 2073 At Pemmi-con, we ended up running the consuite as a MPLS in 2073 party three nights. We netted $349.61. We got 38 new members at 12 upgrades. Many of those were at the Blogger ($20.73) level. The bid is now back in the black. == Next meeting == Sept 28, 7pm, on Jitsi. == Review new TODO list == * (2023-08) Scott will ask Carol for confirmation that the latest bank statement, July 31, has been balanced. * (2023-08) Scott will check with Magenta that she now sees meeting announcements. * (2021-06/2023-07) Linda will send ASCAP that letter and check.