Board Meeting – January 20th, 2015

  1. Call to Order

Chair, Nathan Wakefield, called the meeting to order at: 6.39 pm EDT – Check

  1. Roll

Present: Nathan Wakefield,  Louie Skaradek, Noel Yee,  Mike Sullivan

Just enough present for the Quorum ⅓ of those able to vote.

Kyle Johnson has joined as well. – Making it a DefiniteQuorum.

Martin Frost – present.

 

Absent: Jared Davis, Veronique Provencher, Afton Benson, Lucho Fernandez, Warren Hammond, Erin Stephens

  1. Approval of Agenda

Motion: Louie

Second by: Noel

Discussion: None

Vote: None Oppose – Approved

  1. Approval of Minutes:

December 23rd, 2014

Motion: Noel

Second: Louie

Discussion:  None

Vote:  None Oppose – Approved

  1. Reports (Please keep verbal reports to 5 min or less except for festival and future festival discussion)

 

Future Festival Planning (Mike Sullivan)

Discussion:

Discussion of comp values – 25 or 40 rooms booked we get comped nights. To be used for guests and teachers VIP etc.

 

The $99 night broken down is a great price in for a group of jugglers and even a single. The hotel price of $99 is a good price range for our clients and membership. Having had other festivals in the past being in the $114 range kept people away. The $99 is a good price.

 

Springfield is very eager to have our Festival in their town. They have a solid proposal and the best amongst the cities that are proposing to us.

 

Highly recommended to say yes to this from Mike who has a great perspective on the proposals and first hand knowledge.

 

Good that it gets the IJA back to the general ‘Quebec’ area.

 

Should maybe have the other board members discuss and overview before we make the ‘final yes’ Vote on Mike going forward with this now.

 

MIT and Pennsylvania are close to Springfield to pull them in. Good juggling groups to pull from .

 

End of Discussion… let’s do this North East Thang.

 

AMS Report (Mike Sullivan)

Discussion:

Sample data imports look good, membership types, administrative area and the first design review. Thursday get a last consultant talk before possibly going live. Flesh out and content pages. Trying to be moved over by April 1st for this. Can use it for membership and back end in the next few weeks. The pace is going along well – ramping up. Next month have something to look at and up and running.

Veronique needs a ‘clean design’ for the contract. A solid communication with her about what that is and how that looks – keep dialog open with her and the AMS people – keep reaching towards those goals.

Board should work with Vero on the total pricing and comps and memberships and the final prices for the whole event. Get all that done by February 21st it would be great to move that along.

We need to update that website.

Board needs to have answers on who has to be a member and who would not need to be a member for this festival.

 

2015 IJA Festival Report (Veronique Provencer)

Discussion:

The IJA needs to start the ramp up for promoting the festival. Maybe Kyle get together with the Turbo 418 team to start the way to promote the festival. Check Vero’s plan some and see what she has going. Dove tail with that.

 

YJA Report (Ellen Winters)

Discussion:

Things are moving along. Get the name changed up to the YJA.

 

Marketing (Kyle Johnson)

Discussion:
Soft push and focus on the promotion of the festival in Quebec City. Now is when we should start this ball rolling.

Financial Report (Afton Benson)
Discussion:

eJuggle Report (Scott Seltzer)

Discussion:
Sitting well – right in the middle of numbers – about 150 pieces of content and 5-10 videos. Where can we get some worldy view content. The other side of the pond – European world – how can we get more content from them. A possible long term contact if not our current contact Ryan – where to next, if not him, maybe he knows someone else in his juggling circle.

Getting some great tricks of the month people to start to contribute. Yuki & Ken? in upper east… Journey Through Rhythm. Reach out for some videos from the community.

 

Membership (Marilyn Sullivan)

Discussion:  none

 

IRC (Erin Stephens)

Discussion: none

 

  1. Motions for Consideration
  2. Motion to approve the 2015 IJA Operating Budget.

Motion: Kyle

Second: Noel

Discussion: The Budget was crossed over from 2014 and made it just fine.

Vote: None Oppose – Approved – Motion Passes

 

  1. Motion to approve the 2014 Festival Profit and Loss Statement.

Motion: Louie

Second: Noel

Discussion: Well done by Noel. And Nathan Agrees. Looks good the Festival covered itself well. It took al

Vote:  None Oppose – Approved – Motion Passes

 

  1.  Motion to authorize Mike Sullivan to move on making the contract negotiations for the Springfield Site for the 2017 Festival.

Motion: Nathan

Second: Noel

Discussion: Spoken about above under the ‘report’ section.

Springfield is very excited about it happening. The Mayor himself was excited to be bringing us in. 🙂

Vote:  None Oppose – Approved – Motion Passes

 

  1. Varia:
  2. Anonymous Donors

Discussion:
iiWii donation situation – money is going into an 1) Account, the 2) Festival (fun fund) and the 3) YJA. The fun fund was discontinued in after 2013. Now unaMed wants to bring back the fun fund, with a price matching system. Trying to avoid having a committee on that to keep it loose. But there is a feeling that a few long term people should be involved. Possible unaMed contribution for more prize money. First place is getting more and the ratios are different. iiWii recently wanted to possibly fund toward the festival again this year. Avoid a lump up of the Fun Funds – give 2 accounts to fund two different endeavors at the Festival this year. Try to satisfy the donors and give them what they want to make things happen – what is the ‘all win’ scenario? Patience and Pressure. Like a Reed in a Stream. Strong and Flexible.

 

  1. 2015 Marketing

Discussion:

Goals for 2015. 1) SOCIAL MEDIA MOVES: Facebook – we got some likes, what are the additional social media’s? Can reddit be used for the with our voice. Juggling Edge website with a forum. Small talk section. IJA news on the small talk section – how can we grow our ‘social media’ platforms. We do have an IJA reddit account, use it for our moves there.

Move some tricks of the month by us onto these media. Have a hunk of media we can promote. A captain and delegating it out to a few other people. ‘Drop Everything’ is something we can promote. Get some featured content up there on those social media outlet. Reach out to some people in our ranks about what social media they use and how to leverage their connections and skills to promote our material.

 

Sponsored posts on Facebook to expand the reach of the IJA. How do we reach new people? Where do we go to inform people about the IJA. Can we get set up a  quarterly allotment of $ to be used for paid advertising. Some promotions: The Festivals, eJuggle, Membership Drive. Late March / Early April another sponsored post.

 

2) Affiliates program re – invigorate – Jim Maxwell.

 

  1. Forms/Policy Implementation

Discussion:

Formal Forms? Can this be filled out and used to make it more pro and together and easier to use and keep track of and have check boxes. Instead of having email and stuff sent. Use a google docs for this situation. Pay for registration through the website, have to have a way to make that work with the google doc online form. Must keep in mind we need the ‘paid’ confirmation number to be entered into the form.

 

Music policy form kerfuffle – just a little negative feedback. A user very unhappy about the new music policy. Making a routine that was now unusable because of the new music policy. Did not mention the details, but the empathy and sympathy is there. Need someone to help in judging the forms and checking the data.  Do we delay the implementation for a year?

Is there a way to go back on it? Does the board want to change it? There are a couple / few people upset by the policy. Incubate and possible straw pole vote. To be thought about a little more – but needs to be done soon so it is in place for the 2015 festival. Need to get a little more feedback on this.

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Discuss the levels of membership and registration levels in the next couple weeks to get that squared away.

 

  1. Set February Meeting

Next Vision Planning Meeting – February 10th at 6:30 ET  

Next Board Meeting – February 24 at 6:30pm ET.

  1. Adjournment

Motion to adjourn: Kyle

Discuss: None

Voting: All Passed – Moved to Adjourn.

Meeting adjourned at 8:04 pm ET.