Board meeting Minutes/9 May 2016

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Prior:
25 Apr 2016 		Board meeting Minutes Next:
23 May 2016


Minutes approved: 23 May 2016


  • NOTICE to those on the line: All present agree to a temporary recording of this call to be be deleted no later than when the minutes are approved. Please speak up if you disagree with this and we will discuss it after roll call.
Unspecified
Move your name to Present or Apologies prior to the meeting!
Present
(Subject to verification) John Boris, Ski Kacoroski (chair), Steve VanDevender, Matt Disney,George Beech,Paul English, Thomas Uphill, Atom Powers
Apologies
Guests
Warner Moore
Opened
9:01 PM Eastern Time
Closed
10:18 PM Eastern Time

Warner Moore on Conferences

Warner has agreed to talk with us about conferences as he runs several successful conferences. Warner explained to the Board how Ohio Linux Fest was developed and has progressed. In his ventures the attendees cover the cost of the attendees and the sponsors cover the lions share of the costs for the conference. He tries to incorporate ample time for attendees to view and converse with the sponsors. He reviewed both CasITconf and LOPSA-East websites and saw them different but did see where we could start over. In planning such an event the areas where you can cut costs are:

  • Food
  • Wifi
  • Venue

When he first started they did not provide food. They also only provided Wifi for the instructors, presenters and Sponsors but that is a negotiable item.

Warner did recognize that both conferences are small compared to Ohio Linux Fest. Warner's reccomendations were:

  • Start small. Maybe one day or two if it proves feasible
  • Limit risk by making the costs as lean as possible
  • When negotiating the venue negotiate a reasonable cancellation policy to limit the impact. The Hotels are out to sell rooms so looking for other venues that have the room space. With 150 as the possible number of attendees companies might have the meeting space that will work.
  • When speaking to vendors you have to be able to work with them and be flexible. The sponsors would be used to handle the other extras. If you only have table space then structure your sponsor fees accordingly.
  • Although obvious you need to market the event and get to the possible sponsors.

Consent Agenda

Action Items

Standing Reports

Treasurer's report (Disney, Kacoroski)

  • Balance info
    • BoA Account: $55,467.74
    • PayPal Account: $8,464.58
    • TDBank: $2,001.53
    • Total: $65,933.85
      • +/- from last report: $689.15
      • LOPSA Balance: $52,963.23
      • CasITConf Balance: $12,970.62


  • Summary of expenditures since last report:
    • Minimal expenditures due to bank account transition (reimbursement due to Disney)
  • Summary of income since last report:
    • Membership dues
  • Notes:
    • LOPSA East check to Hyatt Regency New Brunswick has been issued (but not cleared in accounts yet).
    • We have a new Wells Fargo bank account. I will put info on it in the wiki and coordinate the addition of the board members we will select for account access as specified in new business later this meeting.
    • We have a new debit card.
    • Because I put certain charges on my personal CC during transition, there will be latent operational charges for this month.
    • Currently approx $28K in liabilities not reflected in current balance.
  • Top priorities
    • CasITConf accounts payable (instructors, LOPSA balance)
    • CasITConf accounts receivable (billing of student attendees)
    • Transition bank accounts
      • Update paypal billing
      • Confirm Peer 1 info with George
    • 2014 990
    • Assuming HootSuite charges
    • Finances committee charter
    • Locals financial management
    • Disney reimbursement for bank account transitional charges

Membership report (VanDevender, Bilancio)

  • Total active members: 687 (previous report: 690, change: -3)
  • Paying: 450 (7 new in last 30 days)
  • Non-paying: 237 (22 new in last 30 days)

Paying members include Individual, Charter, Founding, and Lifetime memberships. Non-paying members include Student and Complimentary memberships.

Committee reports

Conferences/Events/Chapters activities report (Powers)

Conferences

George asked the Conference committee to draw up a Policy that covers Conferences and sets the guidelines a Local needs to follow to hold a conference and have LOPSA back it.

LOPSA-NJ

There was a question about the continuance of LOPSA-NJ. William sent out a message on April 27 saying he would be stepping away and asked for anyone who was going to step up to run the chapter. Thomas mentioned he knew of a person that may step up to run it.

Locals Configuration (Boris)

I have done some searching and although I have not found any concrete policy or requirements whenever a chapter or affiliate to a main organization (I mainly searched in the Fraternity circles) they consistently mention Officers (ex. President, Vice-President, Treasurer etc.) they also mention By-Laws or constitution. So I don;t think we will be out of line that we require a formal organization for the Locals Chapters. It could be set to a minimum of President, Vice President and Secretary/Treasurer. It could possibly as lean as President and Vice President with the duties shared between the two.

(George) Would it be helpful to have Sara give a presentation on her organizations structure? They are a sorority, but we have a lot in common as far as size and structure.

Board asked George to set up with Sara if she could attend a Board meeting to discuss this.

Lisa'16 (Uphill)

Yerkes Award

We need to get working on this (Ski)

We will need to find a company to create the award and possibly contact William for the name of the company he used and use them.

Education (Kacoroski, Boris)

Speakers Bureau (Powers, English)

  • Hope to have an intake form this week

Marketing/Communications (LOPSAgram, #lopsa-live, etc) (English, Uphill)

  • Last chance on the LOPSAgram. Will have:
    • Elections stuff from Warner
    • Appeal for list of Sysadmin Higher Ed institutions
    • Anything about LOPSA-East?

Technical Services Report (Beech, VanDevender)

No report

Mentorship Report (Boris, Beech)

(George) Monitoring, and keeping things afloat - need to actually write the call for help. Was focused on LOPSA-EAST Stuff

Recognition (Uphill, Disney)

Sysadmin Day

Thomas has not heard back from the owners of Sysadminday.org. He will put together a list of contest ideas so we can go out to the vendors for prizes.

Leadership Committee (Warner, Kacoroski)

Use of a Mail Handling Service (Boris)

Below is what was a topic on 24 Feb 2014

As the organization starts to get more mature we have to start looking at having certain services handled by a constant. Even though we are a Volunteer organization, run by Volunteers that only goes so far. This past year I know of two issues where checks were lost. These checks were never cashed so it is an issue for the Post Office. But it brought up the idea of having a Mail Handling Service. This is the initial step to that end. It starts the conversation. No one hates spending money like me but there comes a time when you have to pay for something to have it always there. I loaded a Proposal from Regus (www.regus.com) to Google Docs and sent it to everyone in email. The cost of this service would be $69 a month plus the cost of shipping our mail to a designated person plus 20% of that postage to cover the materials for repackaging the mail into one package. The frequency is based on our preference but at a minimum it would be once a week. We should start looking at this type of service as it will be easier going forward as the board changes over the years. This will not cure losing any mail but it will ease the burden of board members getting to the Post Office during business hours, while on vacation or on travel for business.

A discussion followed on pros and cons and different ways to handle this issue. Matt Simmons will contact USENIX to see if they can provide us this service. As an outcome John was tasked to go research this service and come back to the board with proposals.

The Board tasked John to start the process of setting up the Regus account

Open Board Position... (Ski)

We have two options. We can appoint someone to fill it for the rest of the time or add it to the election slate.

LOPSA-East Cleanup Tasks (Ski)

We still have a few tasks that need to be completed to close out LOPSA-East:

  • Letter to Members
    • (George) Sent today - 5/9
    • (George) 38% open rate, a few response, mostly positive. Either people don't care or are oddly quiet.
  • Refunds
  • Stuff in William's House
    • John Boris has contacted William about setting up a time to get the inventory
  • Contacts for awards, etc.
  • Business Cards
    • John Boris has a local Company, as we all probably do.
    • (George) I suggest Moo.com we've used them for years at Stack - and they are virtual so anyone can manage it. They do all sorts of printing, not just business cards and have a 15% discount for 501(c)3's. A pack of 50 basic business cards starts at ~25$
  • Check for status of refunds to attendees

LOPSA-East Reboot (Boris)

On May 2nd I attended a conference in Lancaster Pa. at the Lancaster-Lebanon Intermediate Unit IU-13 www.iu13.org. The conference center is ideal for what we do albeit there is no hotel on site. Here is the contact Information for the center:

Lancaster-Lebanon Intermediate Unit 13

Business Services 1020 New Holland Avenue Lancaster, PA 17601

Tim Evans, Conference Center Manager tim_evans@iu13.org
Phone(717) 606-1673
Fax(717) 606-1961

Costs are:

  • Weekdays are $4,842 per day
  • Weekends are $8,550 per day

Price includes

  • Wifi
  • podium av equipment and projection systems
  • 10 Rooms

Food would be separate. Payment terms are 50% deposit before the event and the balance billed after the event.

Nearest Hotel is Cork Factory Hotel http://www.corkfactoryhotel.com/

Community Manager... (Ski)

At a local conference, I talked with the organizer and he told me about the person who did all the 'back office' work to get the conference running. She has submitted her resume for consideration for our position. Advantages are she has the background, a really good reference, and she is in a 4 year program to get a system admin degree. Possible disadvantage is that she will finish up her degree in a year or so. I plan to meet with her this week to find out more.

Adding new users to Wells Fargo bank account (Disney)

Motion (Matt Disney) to add Ski Kacoroski, Atom Powers, and Steve VanDevender as authorized users to the Wells Fargo bank account.

Seconded by John.

Motion passed unanimously.

William's unexpired Term

The Board decided to wait until after the election to deal with this.

Notes/announcements

Adjournment

 John Motioned for Adjournment
 George Seconded
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