Michael Houghton Sat Dec 9 13:39:23 PST 2017 Subject: December meeting minutes with nominations ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Howdy! TSFS Meeting 9 December 2017 at Jo's house and hangout 1410 Jo Hogan, Margaret Hogan, Sam Hogan, Michael Houghton, Josh Kronengold, Steve Aines, Mark Drexler, Lisa Padol Next meeting in January for officer elections: Sunday, 21 January, Panera, 2pm. Charles resigned as music coordinator, replaced by Bambi-Rigsbee Smith. Trevor resigned as game room coordinator, replaced by Mike Brown, aka pyris. Other staff positions should be stable. Jo will double check with Rowan in a couple of weeks about being con chair or at least co-chair at the con. Haley may be interested in handling Code of Conduct events at the Con. Can we get some people formally trained in taking reports? Explore. Victoria offered to be volunteer coordinator. Need a dealer's room coordinator. Sam picked it up on the fly last year. Steve will know by end of January whether he will continue as hotel liaison. Recommendations for next year: Chesapeake 6 for readings. Small round table with pitcher of water at head of theater seating. Electric kettle for hot water for musicians (or in music area) to make tea on demand. Hotel held up their end reasonably well. Issue with people loading out at side door blocking access for scooters and such. Need to remind people not to do that. Hotel did not raise concerns with us over drones in lobby. We told the people to take it outside. Let's be clear that no ad hoc flying objects inside. Item for code of conduct. More later. One of our guests reported several problems with a couple of different people. One was a potential stalker from her past engaging in "right up to the edge" conduct. Identified to Sam near end of convention. At least one other person who remain unidentified making inappropriate comments. And one of our guests making comments that could be disparaging of mental health issues. Describing his style of music as "if you want to hang yourself, come listen to my music". This is not OK, and the guest needs to be counseled. Overnight staff member minding con suite was engaging in verbal trolling. The culprit is a repeat offender. He should not be allowed to mind the con suite in the future. Much happiness about pronoun ribbons, quiet room. Ada Palmer's speech ran over by half an hour. What do we do? Steve made a judgement call to let her keep going based on circumstances. Maybe we do it differently next year. If it is to be limited to an hour, make sure it is so noted on the schedule. Think on this. Minor complaint: hotel flying Maryland flag upside down and didn't seem to get it. But it was not in our space nor our actual concern. Some complaints about disruptive audience members. Jo will email the principal offender with a warning. Art show: few comments about its absence. Art GoH thrilled with sales. What we did worked for her. Will we have an art show next year? There is interest. Do we have the people resources to put in the 100 hours needed to make it happen. Jo would like to have one. We need maybe to find someone beyond /amque and family. Ellen Vardanoff seems interested. Having an art show takes a relative ton of volunteer resources. Get Ellen and /amque in the same conversation. Possibly Shane. Go forward. The volunteer app did help prospective volunteers decide to show up and help. We did have a good crop of volunteers, including some on Thursday. Dr. G reported in email: My report about the video side of program AV: Everything went fine. My 5000 lumen projector is bright enough that the lights in GS2 could stay on, which was good since they couldn't un-gang them from GS1. We could probably use a slightly bigger screen than my 50" square, but that's the biggest that will fit in my car. I have a 70" if someone wants to pick it up here before the con next year and return it after. The 5000 lumen projector has both HDMI and VGA inputs, I brought suitable cables and adapters and we had no problem connecting to any of the computers the presenters brought with them. Not my thing, but the presenters appreciated having the sound system in the room but really would have liked more than one mic for panels with multiple participants. There were no problems recording the concerts. I have not had a chance to review and edit the recordings yet. The video game room purchased one of my Proxima X350 projectors, which they were successfully using, so they will no longer need support from me. ---end Dr. G report Not the Clams were really happy with the space they were put in. It met their desires more or less perfectly. Maybe we need to be aware of not overfilling the room. Chesapeake was a bit chilly. Greenspring 2 was cold all weekend for no known reason. Dulaney Valley was cool Saturday morning, but it got better. Steve offers to bring space heater(s) next year for use as needed. Attendance about 380. Including comps. We need to work out a better comp policy. It's kind of ad hoc. Staff and volunteers comped at a certain level of activity. Three hours of programming should suffice for comping. Or case by case. Staff comped in advance; volunteers in arrears. Unicon comped SFWA members. Not necessarily what we want to do. We comped Steve. Our bylaws specify that staff do pay, but also that volunteers get comped in arrears based on level of effort. Sam proposes a subcommittee to put together a coherent policy on this. Code of Conduct needs a look: needs more clarity. It ostensibly bars a vendor from selling live blades, for example. Good? Bad? Also some grey areas that need less ambiguity. Thus, propose that a subcommittee to examine this. Video Gaming: went well. Small this year. Mostly 4-5 people, but good traffic. Mario Kart had 11 participants.Will Timonium be in good repair next year? Ridgley is easier to use -- outlets better arranged. Sunday morning talk over tea went well. One child was needing more adult attention without a parent attending. Crossing the line into baby-sitting is Not OK. Nominations: Michael Houghton for Vice President Sam Hogan for Treasurer Jo Hogan for President All seconded. Margaret Hogan as Trustee Seconded. Still need a Corresponding Secretary. At least a body to hold the position. Bueller? If you would like to hold this low-impact job, please sing out. Treasurer: Accounts total $16460.42. Less than $200 still to be paid out. Looks like a slight loss for this year, but not of great concern. Fred Blonder suggested something silly that Margaret sees turning into a monthly Ask Chessie thing. Sort of an AMA thing. Send sample questions to Margaret. Something for the web site. Moved and seconded and approved. 1638 respectfully submitted, Herveus ------------------------------------------------------------------------