Mentor is the corporate newsletter of Arisia, Inc.
Time: October 14, 1997 at 7:38 pm
Location: 4th Floor, Wheatley Hall, Umass Boston.
In Attendance: Drea Brandford, Amy Chused, Joel Herda, Jeff Jordan, Ben Levy, Pat McCormack, Elka Tovah Menkes, Skip Morris, Brendan Quinn, Paul Selkirk, Rachel Silverman, Ailsa Murphy (red shirt), Kathy Cunningham (non-member), Donna Dube (non-member)
Proxies
Dave Cantor to Skip Morris
Corrections to the August Minutes
The August issue of
Mentor should have been number 75, not number 74.
President's Report
Getting things organized has been
slower than anticipated because we had to beat records out of some people. Most
committees are filled except the Awards committee. Thanks to everyone for all
the work they've done, especially Cris Shuldiner. I would like to get to the
point where meetings are shorter and more collegial, with less backbiting.
Vice President's Report
Florida was hot. I have
received several grant requests. The Grant committee has not met yet to consider
them. I am putting together a letter to solicit grant requests, and expect to
have a draft ready by the end of next week. The grant to SCUM has not gone out
yet, but we will cut the check as soon as we finish the paperwork to get
signature power.
Treasurer's Report
I have been unable to get the
records from Marshall; I will visit him at work next week.
I have called all the banks we know about. We have 3 accounts with BankBoston: a con account, a corporate checking account, and a corporate savings account. We have 2 accounts with WestBank: the credit card merchant account, and a 1992 con account.
Clerk's Report
I sent out the first email edition of
Mentor, and people seemed to like it. (At least, no one seemed to hate it.)
Since it is a long document, it was suggested that I add a table of contents at
the top (although everyone should be familiar with the boilerplate style by
now).
Everyone is reminded to sign in. Dues are $22 at the beginning of the meeting, $20 at the end.
Arisia 1997
Tim turned over a not-quite-complete set
of information at the September meeting. I can't quite close the books, as I'm
waiting for the last set of bank statements, and I'm waiting for Joel to send me
a breakout of the master bill so that I can charge catering to the proper
departments. We have $4600 in the con account, with no outstanding charges
except the bank charges and maybe one GoH expense (a van rental by the AGoH).
One outstanding problem is the missing Pepsi trays. Jeremy Brown has half, but the other half are missing. Pepsi wants them back, or $100 to replace them.
We know of comped guest rooms that should be reimbursed to the con: one shared by Jeff Jordan and Pat McCormack, one used by Joel Herda, and one used by Marshall Ellis. [Jeff suggests to all future con chairs that they not put people in comped rooms without clearing it with them first.]
The bottom line seems to indicate that we made $18,000, but that's bullshit. I expect the bottom line to settle to about $11-12,000.
The biggest problem with the books is a file with $2,200 in undeposited income. We are asking the businesses (PageNet and the Park Plaza parking garage) to re-cut checks. The rest is slightly thornier: a $225 check for purchased art, $115 in bounced checks, $65 cash, and $925 in Arisia '97 registrations.
MOVED to attempt to recover monies from the Park Plaza and PageNet. Motion PASSED. (The treasurer suggests just depositing the checks, and seeing what happens.)
MOVED out of a committee of the whole to attempt to recover the $225 art show check. Motion PASSED. It was left to the Pat and Skip's discretion whether to offer a discount.
MOVED out of a committee of the whole to eat the registrations. It appears that most of them were pre-registrations, so they would be almost a year old by now. FRIENDLY AMENDMENT to make no attempt to recover the money; to return the checks to their owners, with a letter of apology and explanation; to have the treasurer investigate how many of the individuals may have issued replacement checks at the convention, and to send them a separate letter of apology. Motion PASSED.
Arisia 1998 (Drea Brandford reporting for Programming)
There is a concom meeting on Sunday October 19 at 2 pm, at the Westin (not at
MIT as previously announced).
We have invited 250 previous guests, plus a number of SFWA members who have not been guests before. So far, we've gotten 35 responses from the previous guests, 25 of them yes. We've had 7-10 responses from the SFWA list, all of them no. (But the fact that they responded allows us to continue to use their addresses; we bought a one-time use of the SFWA list.)
Arisia 1998 Treasury
I was authorized to budget
$10,000 in the red. The preliminary budget, based on input from all
departments, is actually $20,000 over. Any further cuts will require policy
decisions, and should be put to the membership. [Clerk's note: a
preliminary budget was presented at the meeting. However, it was substantially
revised at a subsequent Division Heads meeting, and that version is attached to
this issue of Mentor.]
The Art Show has 56 panels and 10 tables that they can sell.
MOVED to set Art Show fees at $26 for a full panel, $13 for a half panel, $7 for a quarter panel, $13 for a half table, and a $15 fee for accepting mail-in art. Motion PASSED.
Arisia 1999
Not present.
Audit Fund
This function has been subsumed into the
Records Task Force, which has nothing to report.
Long Range Planning Committee
The president intends
to leave this committee unstaffed. He feels it is not generally useful, and
ideally should be a research committee. He intends to appoint ad-hoc committees
to deal with single issues as they come up.
Corporate Inventory Control (Jeff Jordan reporting)
We appear to still have a CIC officer, despite the fact that he is not currently
a corporate member; he may not have realized taht he should have paid dues in
September.
We have received a request from UNIT-USA to borrow some art show panels for United FanCon, October 31 - November 2.
MOVED to authorize Ken Elwell to coordinate this loan. Motion PASSED.
Corporate Sales
Not present.
Corporate System Administrator
Not present.
Old Business
New Business
Announcements
Meeting Adjourned.
The following report was apparently submitted to the Eboard in July, but no formal action was taken. It represents a majority (although not unanimous) view of the Long Range Planning Committee.
After careful consideration of the Internet access issue, the LRP committee has come to several conclusions and recommendations.
When we first started to consider this problem, we determined that any solution we proposed needed to address the following issues:
1) Bandwidth
2) Maintainability
3) Access (physical access to the server if needed)
4) Cost
We looked at several solutions to housing our server, and decided that of the available solutions, co-location met our needs the best.
Therefore it is:
MOVED to direct the President to approach several companies (at his discretion) and ask them to donate a co-location package to Arisia, in return for a letter of thanks, and an acknowledgement of their donation for their tax records.
The goal is to have 2 machines located in 2 machine rooms with at least a 56kbps full time connection to the net which we (Arisia) would administrate over the net, and which they (the companies who own the machine room) would provide basic hardware maintenance for, in return for a tax deduction.
The other issue we had to address was one of redundancy, i.e. what happens if the sysadmin were to move away or be hit by a bus?
Therefore after much consideration we would like to recommend that the responsibilities previously assigned to the Corporate SysAdmin be split up as follows, into a special committee appointed as stated below.
The Committee would be made up of:
Corporate SysAdmin
This person would be responsible
for the upkeep and maintenance of the servers OS's, mail accounts, and
information servers (Web Servers, Mailing Lists, etc.) They will also serve as
chairman of the committee, and it will be their responsibility to report on the
status of all the members of the committee to the Corporation.
Appointed
by: The Corporate President
Assistant SysAdmin
This person will back up and
assist the Corporate SysAdmin in maintenance tasks, and serve as asst. chair of
the committee.
Appointed by: The Corporate President
Corp. Webmaster
This person will be responsible for
providing content relating to Arisia Incorporated, including (but not limited
to) Bylaws, Meeting Announcements, Policies.
Appointed by: The Corporate
President
Convention Webmaster
There will be one of these
appointed from each sitting Convention Committee, they will be responsible for
any information related to the convention for which they have been appointed.
(This person need not be a corporate member).
Appointed by: The Convention
Chairman.
It is important to note that the multiple positions may be held by a single person, with the single exception of the SysAdmin and Assistant SysAdmin, which cannot both be held by the same person (although each could also hold one or more Webmaster positions, if they're crazy enough to try).
It is important to note, that these positions can operate completely independently, although the Corp Sysadmin will be responsible for ensuring that a bare minimum of information about each current convention is available.
The root password will be held by the Corp. SysAdmin, The Asst. SysAdmin, and the Corp. President, and these three names, along with the remainder of the executive board should also be given to the companies at which the servers are physically located, as persons who should be allowed physical access to the server if needed (although it should require at least 2 of them present to be allowed to remove the server.)
By request of the President, the Arisia 1998 Conchair submits the following staff list to the corporation for approval.
Yes, Rachel Silverman/Green Room is listed twice. She has two masters, so to speak, and so shows up twice.
President: Jeff Jordan
Vice-President: Brendan Quinn
Treasurer: Skip Morris
Clerk: Paul Selkirk
Arisia '97 Conchair: Pat McCormack
Arisia '98 Conchair: Glen R. Goodwin
Arisia '98 Treasurer: Pat McCormack
Arisia '99 Conchair: Cris Shuldiner
Budget Committee: Skip Morris, Pat McCormack
Awards Committee: vacant
Grant Committee: Brendan Quinn, Drea Brandford, Elka Tovah Menkes
Corporate Sales Officer: Marshal Ellis
Corporate Inventory Control Officer: Ken Elwell
Corporate Systems Administrator: Cris Shuldiner
Arisia Audit Fund: Ben Levy
Records Task Force: Ben Levy, Ailsa Murphy, Kyle Hollingsworth
Survey Committee: Ben Levy, Matthew Saroff, Skip Morris, Diane Rosenberg
Arisia, Mentor of Arisia, and the Arisia Lens are service marks of Arisia, Incorporated. All material copyright 1997, Arisia, Incorporated. All rights reserved.