1. Call to Order
Chair, Nathan Wakefield, called the meeting to order at: 7:34 pm EDT
2. Roll: Nathan Wakefield, Louie Skaradek, Ian Michael Loughlin, Noel Yee, Marvin Ong, Shivella Schwab, Scott Cain, Mike Sullivan, Afton Benson, Erin Stephens, Martin Frost, Dan Holzman
Present: Nathan Wakefield, Louie Skaradek, Ian Michael Loughlin, Noel Yee, Scott ,Cain, Mike Sullivan, Martin Frost, Dan Holzman, Shivella Schwab
Absent: Marvin Ong, Afton Benson, Erin Stephens
3. Approval of Agenda
Motion: Scott Cain
Second by: Louie Skaradek
Discussion: none
Vote: approved
4. Approval of Minutes:
Business Board Meeting March 27th, 2017.
Motion: Louie Skaradek
Second: Scott Cain
Discussion: none
Vote: approved
5. Reports (Please keep verbal reports to 5 min or less except for festival and future festival discussion)
Financial Report (Afton Benson)
Discussion: none
Final 2016 Festival Report (Jim Maxwell)
Discussion: still waiting for the report, should have by next meeting. Nathan will followup.
2017 Festival Report (Dan Holzman)
Discussion
T-Shirt design should be done in a few weeks. Design is cool with glow-in-the-dark on the back. Festival logo will be on the back. Artist is making the design in exchange for displaying some of his work at the festival
There is a water skiing group that will help us promote & sell tickets to the general public.
Sam Malcom & Tony Steinback will be doing a library show nearby (paid for by the library) to help promote the festival
Zing has agreed to donate 400 toys (Each attendee should get an illuminated Thumb Chuck)
Farmer’s market has agreed to host the buskers competition (saturday 9a-11a) (another good promo op)
Jonathan Alvarez, Marvin Ong, won’t be able to make it
We still need to iron out the award presentations
Lauren Kaseman wants to nominate Jack Kalvan for the IJA Extraordinary Service Award but awards are closed already.
Do we want to have a raffle? Not really
Dan plans to attend some flow festivals and begin onsite promo in may
Flow out to dinner – there will be an ap (Courtesy of Go! Cedar Rapids) that will list restaurants with specials, etc. and will encourage jugglers to go out into the city
Workshops – Matt Hall is in charge and most is planned already. In the next week or two we will be reaching out to workshop leaders. Amron is coming to america and bringing 100 magnets for a “Magnetize your club” workshop. He has also donated a set of magnetic clubs to be a prize.
Future Festival Planning (Mike Sullivan)
2019 / Fort Wayne: I have received clean contracts from both hotels (Courtyard by Marriott Fort Wayne Downtown at Grand Wayne and Hilton Fort Wayne at Grand Wayne), and the Grand Wayne Convention Center, which are all ready to sign with very favorable terms.
It took a lot of pushing, haggling, back-and-forth, and more than a fair amount of effort to get both hotels to work together to give us very nice room rates ($109/night at Hilton, $124/night at Courtyard with free breakfast and free garage parking) in a room block size we can work with. In total, we are committing to selling 80% of 1,000 room/nights, which is very doable for us (we sold 897 in El Paso in 2016 with record low attendance, and have already sold 950 room/nights this year for Cedar Rapids).
The Grand Wayne Convention Center contract is very clean and with a very reasonable all-in rate of just $11,250 for all our needs all week long. We will essentially have all of this beautiful center for the week.
I am waiting on the contract from the Embassy Theater, which is a linchpin of this whole deal. I had a very positive conference call with their team on April 7, and expected to have a contract back by now. I wrote them on Thursday of last week asking for a status update, no reply. I will follow-up tomorrow.
I want to wait until we see the Embassy contract before we sign ANY of the other contracts, since without favorable terms for at least one night’s show at the Embassy, we can’t have a viable festival. I am not particularly concerned about this, but there’s no downside to waiting. On the other hand, if we DID sign other contracts, and then found out the Embassy won’t work with us, we’d be liable for liquidated damages at both hotels and the Center.
I expect to have everything in hand and ready to sign by the end of this month.
2020 / El Paso: I received an initial proposal from El Paso for us to return in 2020. Most of the terms were good or the same as our 2016 deal, but several items needed to be addressed.
My main concern is that the Camino Real Hotel (during our visit last year), is now the Hotel del Norte, and is about to get a $75-million upfit and remodel, and will then be re-flagged as a full-service Marriott, and brought up to Marriott worldwide standards. That is excellent news, and will help downtown El Paso tremendously, but it also means the days of $89/night room rates, single through quad, with a $10/room/night rebate to the IJA are over.
So I pressed them hard on working with the new owners to get the rate down as low as possible for us, and then spreading more IJA rooms out to the other new hotels in downtown: the brand-new Courtyard, which is across the street from the Doubletree we used last year, and will be open this fall; as well as the DoubleTree and HI Express, both of which we used before. They know we are focused on lodging affordability, so they are getting new quotes from all the properties for a revised proposal.
On the Center/Plaza Theatre side, I told them we would be happy to sign up again with the same terms as we had in 2016, and they will try to make that work. Their offer of guaranteeing another huge grant, like we received rather unexpectedly in 2016, is also being written into the offer.
If all of those promises pan out into a written offer, I will urge the Board to move ahead with planning a return to El Paso in 2020.
Discussion:
Martin in the next newsletter should put a call to anyone interested in being the 2018 festival director. Deadline to apply (soft) May 16th. Noel has offered his name to be thrown into the hat for festival director
IJA Membership Email Campaign (Scott Cain)
Discussion: 22 members renewed. Overall successful. Some people replied saying they aren’t renewing because lack of printed material
eJuggle Report (Scott Seltzer)
Discussion:
Membership (Marilyn Sullivan)
Discussion: none
Marketing (Erin Stephens)
Discussion: Erin is absent. Ian has offered to help Dan
IRC (Erin Stephens)
Discussion: none
6. Motions for Consideration
A. Motion to accept the 12/31/2016 Profit & Loss Statement.
12/31/2016 Profit & Loss Statement
Motion: Scott
Second: Louie
Discussion: none
Outcome: approved
B. Motion to accept the 12/31/2016 Balance Sheet.
12/31/2016 Balance Sheet
Motion: Noel
Second: Shivella
Discussion: none
Outcome: approved
7. Varia:
Award of Special Recognition – It’s too late for this year but he will be considered for next year.
IJA Postcards
5×7 Design
Change wording to “Rendering Assistance to fellow jugglers since 1947”
Consolidate the bullet points to be easier on the eyes/ make each bullet on it’s own separate line.
Remove juggling archive
Access to the membership roster
Photo credit to be added
Colors are good, some want to see the logo in a blue
Should have revisions done by this weekend
Board Nominations
We have 3 openings coming up. (Marvin, Noel, & Shivella). Shivella is up in the air, Noel is a maybe. Everyone should email their nominations in. IJANominations@juggle.org deadline is may 15th
8. Set May Meetings
Next Vision Planning Meeting – May 8th, 2017 at 7:30 pm ET
Next Business Board Meeting – May 22nd, 2017 at 7:30 pm ET.
9. Adjournment
Motion to adjourn: Ian
Discussion: None
Voting: approved
Meeting adjourned at 8:53 pm ET.