Board of Directors Meeting
September 24, 2006
ATTENDING: (Board members) Arthur Aldridge, Steve Criss, Karyn Hoffert, John Lorentz (OSFCI Secretary), Aaron Nabil, Andrew Nisbet III, Linda Pilcher (OSFCI President), Patty Wells, John Williamson (OSFCI Treasurer); Sam Justice (OSFCI Attorney), James Fiscus (Clayton & Endeavour Funds), Ruth Sachter (Potlatch Chair), Mary Olsen(OryCon Chair); Mark Burns. (Marc Wells, OryCon 28 Treasurer, also attended part of the meeting.)
Aaron Curtis informed the Board before the meeting that he would not be able to attend, and that Aaron Nabil had his proxy.
The meeting started at 7:35PM, T-Mobile Time.
I. Minutes of Previous Meeting
The minutes from the last meeting were accepted as presented. The Secretary apologized for how late they were distributed–administering the Hugos took up all available time during the month of August.
II. Treasurer’s Report (John Williamson)
John W: Not much has happened since last time. We’ve had about $11,000 for the last couple of months–the only expenses have been moving the OSFCI material to the new storage facility. $10K of that $11K came from last year’s OryCon. The OryCon 27 books still need to be closed. John W. will meet with Marc Wells to get this wrapped up, as Marc is too tied up with work to get this done by himself. (Taxes are due on October 15th, and this is dependent on closing OryCon 27.) Linda and Andrew volunteered to help.
The Treasurer’s report was accepted.
III. Reports on Sponsored Activities
A. Funds and Awards
The Funds and Awards were tackled first, moving the Petrey Fund to the end, to allow Jim Fiscus to present his reports before he needed to leave.
1. Clayton Memorial Medical Fund
See attached report. There have been no requests for aid since the last meeting, and no Board changes. There is still approximately $7,000 in the account. There is still no pressure to distribute money, as the Fund had a lot of activity in prior years.
2. Endeavour Award
See attached report. They brought in a bit of money from selling the nominated books to Powell’s, giving them about $1,400 in the account. They should receive a matching fund grant of about $250 soon.
Patty mentioned that Gene Armstrong (vice-chair of OryCon 27) stated at the last OryCon 28 meeting that some of the Ory 27 surplus was supposed to go to the Endeavour Fund. He (Gene) was told to contact the Board to arrange this (technically, it’s long past the deadline for the OryCon 27 committee to allocate any of the surplus).
Mary: OryCon 28 GOH Michael DeMerritt is going to be auctioning off some of his memorabilia at the convention, with part of the proceeds going to the Endeavour fund. (That will be part of the Art Show auction.) Jim: We may also slip in the Miyazaki figurines (donated last year by Ursula K. Le Guin), with a fairly high minimum bid. It might be arranged to display these in the Art Show to give them exposure before the auction. They might just be displayed this year to publicize them, before auctioning them off next year.
3. Susan C. Petrey Clarion Scholarship Fund
Sam: Why do we need a charter for the Petrey fund? Andrew: This is to help protect the fund from financial attacks on OSFCI, especially when it looked like OSFCI was a lot broker than it turned out to be (thanks to the OryCon 27 surplus); all this fund is is an OSFCI checkbook that we’ve given Debbie (Cross) and Paul (Wrigley) to use for the Petrey Fund. There was no charter, no stated goal or purpose. So it seems that this fund should be at least as organized as the other funds. Sam: Unless they are organized as a separate non-profit entity, the money in any of these funds are subject to creditors.
John L: One of the real questions on this comes about because the vast majority of the money the Fund has raised has been donated to Oregon Community Funds, in return for a small portion being given back to Petrey each year. It’s Paul and Debbie’s opinion that, because they no longer own this money, that it’s not subject to any creditor claims. Maybe we can discuss this the next meeting, when both they and Sam are in attendance.
There ensued much discussion. Jim felt that there was not nearly the oversight over this fund that we had over the other funds, because there were only two administrators. John L disagreed, saying that the only difference was the number of people running the fund (two in the case of the Petrey Fund, six overseeing the Endeavour, seven overseeing the Clayton)–the actual aspects of the Board’s oversight were just the same.
The rest of the discussion was tabled until when Sam and the Petrey folks are at the same meeting to discuss this. Meanwhile, Sam will investigate how independent the funds are that have be transferred to Oregon Community Funds.
Next year is the 25th anniversary of the Susan Petrey Fund. We want to do something at next year’s OryCon to celebrate this. Several ideas were tossed around–we’ll discuss this with Debbie & Paul, but it was decided that we will allot at least some money for OSFCI for this purpose.
B. Conventions and Bids
1. OryCon 28 (2006)
Mary: The convention doing OK so far. Patty: Hotel room pickup is right on track. Mary: Memberships seem somewhat low, compared to last year. (During the following week, we were able to do a better comparison to last year, and OryCon 28 is actually running a little ahead of OryCon 27.) Online registration has been turned on sometime in the last 24 hours. (It actually wasn’t working correctly until sometime the next day.)
2. Potlatch 16 (2007)
Ruth: We have online registration working for Potlatch. (John L was able to get it turned on during the Worldcon, thanks to work that David Levine did right before Worldcon.) Linda: The first progress report will be ready soon. Ruth: We still need an auction coordinator. John L: We did receive the $1,000 pass-along funds from last year’s Potlatch–ideally, we will also pass along the same $1,000 (maybe more) to next year’s Potlatch). Ruth: We should be receiving an “all Potlatch” mailing list from Jane Hawkins that we can use to send information out on Potlatch 16.
3. Gamestorm 9 (2007)
We still need to have a management agreement signed. (Both GameStorm and the Secretary meant to have it at this meeting, but it didn’t happen.) Aaron will get a draft ready. The revamped web site should be online again very soon. The Aarons are going to another gaming convention in November to promote GameStorm.
GameStorm 9 will be opening a completely new bank account for that event, despite some Board objections. The Treasurer said that it (another bank account) would not cause problems for his books. Does Potlatch have its own account? Yes–it’s the same account that was used for Smofcon, since it was opened as “OSFCI” (the bank mistakenly left off the “Smofcon” part of the name).
4. OryCon 29 (2007)
Hotel: Patty and Linda when to a customer appreciation event at the Marriott last week. Another group has approached the Marriott about our dates next week. We’re pencilled for those dates–the hotel would like us to sign a contract for 2007 now, rather than right after this year’s OryCon. (We have a new sales rep there–the previous one moved to Argentina.) It was decided that we’d sign a letter of intent right now, with the actual contract details worked out after we get through this year’s OryCon.
John: Normally, by now, we’d have a chair in place. It would seem that, if we do sign this letter of intent now and the Board goes ahead with deciding who to invite as our GOH, than the Board should be prepared for the possibility that the Board ends up running the convention as an executive committee, if indeed no one comes forward that we can approve as chair. (Similar to OryCon 10.) Patty: We need to get more people trained to run OryCon–not just as chair, but for treasury, hotel, and other aspects. We either haven’t done enough outreach, or there just aren’t enough people to do this forever.
Andrew: We can approve the GOH and the hotel now. The Board approved signing with the hotel.
Andrew: Is there anyone who has been a recipient of a Susan Petrey scholarship who has succeeded well enough to be the GOH for OryCon 29? (No one came to mind.) There was some discussion of possible GOHs for Ory 29.
GOH Priority List:
- George RR Martin
- Robert Charles Wilson
- Connie Willis
- Peter Beagle
John L: One thing we need to keep in mind is that there is now a long gap between the December Board meeting and the next one in May (actually, the next one is in March). If we don’t have a chair by the end of the December meeting, we may need to consider having a special meeting to approve a chair rather than waiting until the next regular meeting.
(Patty: “To be able to chair a convention you have to have the patience of a saint, and not kill anybody.” John L: “But you have to make them think you can.”)
IV. Other Continuing Business
A. Subcommittee Reports
Hotels
Patty: We already had most of the hotel report. We do want to mention that the Sheraton (home of GameStorm this coming year) still likes us enough that they gave us a free suite for the OryCon program brainstorming weekend.
Coordination of the Charitable Funds
This report was delayed until next meeting, as Jim has already left this meeting and Debbie & Paul aren’t here.
Data Transmission Committee
Aaron N: A couple of OryCon meetings back, he discovered that Ilia had been carrying a copy of the who OSFCI (OryCon and GameStorm) around with her on a memory stick. This should not be allowed. Andrew: We don’t have a firm enough organization to work up rules that both protect the data and allow the needed usage. Whatever we decide could be ignored by whoever runs next year’s registration.
Sam: Whatever privacy policy we might decide on should be implemented by us first before it’s ever announced to the public.
Aaron N proposed an interim policy to track who has copies of the database, and keep logs of when and how copies are passed on to other people. We should also ask people to destroy their copies of the database when we’ve determined they don’t need it anymore. (There was much discussion on how the current database is setup.)
Sam: We need a written policy that data is kept only on a need-to-know basis, and written logs are kept of all copies. Andrew proposed that Aaron put together a form to log this database, and he send a copy of it to the registrars for GameStorm, OryCon and Potlatch. Sam: One person should be responsible at each convention for the security of the database, and that this person be mentioned in the management agreement for that event. John L: The form of the database should also be changed so that a copy of the database should not include all the data for all the events. Patty also mentioned that the programming database that Schaber put together also needs a lot of fixing.
Andrew: We also need a description of how the data moves around. Linda will contact Ilia and ask her to remove the data from the memory stick (as well as any other out-of-date copies she might have). John L. will put together a chart show how the data moves around.
V. New Business
A. Possible Banning of “Zachary Smith” from OSFCI Events.
There was some discussion on what to do with “Zachary Smith”, who had posted messages on the OryCon mailing list to find people to fraudulently purchase child memberships for his adult (over-12) children. Andrew proposed banning him from the convention. The problem is that no one on the Board knows who this person is, and so could not recognize him in a crowd.
This evolved into a discussion on how to handle children in general. We want to have the committee folks in general to be instructed to watch out for attendees with child badges who look to be too old for them. We do want to have child badges that are perceptibly different (different color) from the adult badges. As for “Mr. Smith”, he was informed (via the same e-mail address he used previously) that his possible banishment from Ory 28 would be a topic at this meeting. The Board did vote to ban him from Ory 28, if he can be identified.
B. The Future of OryCon
John L: There’s something that we should seriously consider: If we can’t find someone to take on the core jobs for OryCon 29 (and it ends up being the Board running it), that we should announce that OryCon 30 will be the final OryCon and plan accordingly. We’ve had too many people handling far more of the OryCon 28 duties that they should have had to take on this year, because of a lack of competent people working on the committee.
There was much discussion on what would be acceptable to continue on the convention, and what is needed to make sure that OryCon survives…even after the meeting was adjourned.
In the midst of this discussion, Andrew moved that the meeting be adjourned. The motion passed…and the discussion continued for another seven minutes. Karyn: Do we want to try to continuing with a smaller OryCon? That was tried several years ago (in 1984) and it caused a lot more problems that it fixed. Ruth: Maybe the lack of CON, as a proving ground to give people experience before taking on OryCon jobs, is part of the problem we’re seeing now. Andrew: We should try discussing things with Kumoricon, to see if there’s something we could do to make OryCon also attractive to them, maybe an anime GOH?
At this point, it was finally decided that it’s been long enough since we adjourned the meeting and we finally quit for the evening.
The Clayton Memorial Medical Fund Award
Report to the OSFCI Board
September 24, 2006
Requests for Aid:
We have received no requests for aid since our report in July.
Funds Available:
The Fund has about $7,000.00 in the bank.
Board of Trustees
No changes
Board of Trustees, September 24, 2006
Committee Members | First Appointed | Term Expires |
---|---|---|
James Fiscus, Chairman | October 1996 | Novermber 2008 |
Page Fuller, Treasurer | October 1996 | Novermber 2008 |
Karyn Hoffert, OSFCI Rep. | July 2005 | November 2007 |
Geri Jeter | November 2002 | November 2007 |
Ruth Sachter | November 2002 | November 2007 |
Marc Wells | November 2003 | November 2007 |
Submitted,
James W. Fiscus
Chairman, Clayton Board of Trustees
The Endeavour Award
Report to the OSFCI Board
September 24, 2006
Fund Raising:
We sold used books to Powell’s Books, bringing in $244.00, giving us just over $1,400.00 in the bank. We still expect to receive a employer’s matching donation of $250, which will give us about $1,650.00. The funds actually in the bank will cover the Award grant and plaque for this year.
Committee News:
There have been no changes to the committee. However, we are soon interviewing a woman who may be able to take over a fair portion of the administrative duties of the Award.
2006 Finalists and Judges:
To repeat our the information, our finalists are:
- Anywhere But Here, by Jerry Oltion, Tor (Hardcover)
- Counting Heads, by David Marusek, Tor (Hardcover)
- Destroyer, by C.J. Cherryh, DAW Books (Hardcover)
- Fledgling: A Novel, by Octavia E. Butler, Seven Stories Press (Hardcover)
- Quantico, by Greg Bear, Harper Collins UK (Hardcover)
Our judges are writers Lawrence Watt-Evans, Elizabeth Moon, and James D. Macdonald.
Endeavour Committee, September 24, 2006
Committee Members | First Appointed | Term Expires |
---|---|---|
James Fiscus, Chairman | October 1996 | November 2008 |
Page Fuller | October 1996 | November 2008 |
Marilyn J. Holt | September 2000 | November 2008 |
Sara Mueller | October 2003 | November 2007 |
Alan Rosenthal | January 2006 | November 2009 |
Sheila Simonson | October 1996 | November 2007 |
Shawn Wall, Treasurer | November 2005 | November 2007 |
Submitted,
James W. Fiscus
Chairman, Endeavour Award