1. Call to Order
Chair, Nathan Wakefield, called the meeting to order at: 7:36 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, Louie, Ian, Marvin, Shivella, Scott, Mike, Afton, Erin, Dan
Absent: Noel, (Martin)
3. Approval of Agenda
Motion: Ian
Second by: Scott
Discussion: Nil
Vote: Unanimously Approved
4. Approval of Minutes:
Business Board Meeting April 24th, 2017.
Motion: Shivella
Second: Marvin
Discussion: Nil
Vote: Unanimously Approved
5. Reports (Please keep verbal reports to 5 min or less except for festival and future festival discussion)
Financial Report (Afton Benson)
Discussion: 990 from Dennis. Board has seen. Extensions for festival. Got Viveca’s airline flights taken care of. Afton has a fair amount of contracts back, performers need to fill out W9s. Some contracts need to be signed.
2017 Festival Report (Dan Holzman)
Discussion: There was a wedding coming in as a conflict. That got canceled, should free up a bunch of room and we won’t have to move the history room. Good response and interest – history…
The three extra shows have confirmed. Promotion of shows and being paid. $500 from venues.
More performers to confirm for the buskers… (the lady who is working with the busker event is really into it)
[Enter Martin]
Fire and danger stuff at the buskers show
Pat McGuire and Thom Wall – possible for cascade of stars.
Renadge (Tom) – new props – Rio Javey(sp) – maybe a special workshop – Diabolo Stuff
Flow toys and LED props.
6 teams and 6 juniors – more individuals – looking good and will be an entertaining show.
AV quote – going over it with Mike. Came in good and within our budget.
Shirt design – put it out for feedback. A good grasp on it and will be a nice shirt. Got money from the fun fund to make Glowing shirts. Logo, Slogan, Locations – will pass by board for a final.
Friday and Saturday Renegade. (2 nights)
Workshops are looking great. – Philip Johnson – possibly coming in. Schedule coming at some point? Yes 70-80% is filled in. 2 or 3 at most going on at the same time. Building the schedule – pillars/headliners first, then outreach, then open call to others – eNewsletter at the end of the month —
DEADLINE for last eNewsletter before fest reg deadline: May 31st – ACTION ITEM
A lot of things to promote – individual prop competition.
Magnet clubs, balls… props are rewards. Last eNewsletter before the fest.
Under budget so far, but lagging behind in attendance – we could use another 30 or so to register. ACTION ITEM – PUSH FOR ATTENDANCE
ACTION ITEM – Need imagery and and write ups of performers for promotion.
ACTION ITEM – Send information to Martin about the events and promotion items, Call to workshop hosts.
Future Festival Planning (Mike Sullivan):
Sorry for the late report! There is lots going on at the Future Festival desk these days.
Fort Wayne 2019
I think we are ready to move ahead and sign contracts with Fort Wayne for 2019.
After receiving an initial proposal from the Embassy Theatre that was $27,000 over the high end of what our budget can handle, I had a tense couple of days worrying about our prospects in Fort Wayne altogether. Although I had expressed our budget needs to the Embassy folks twice (once in person during the site visit, and once on the phone after we decided to move ahead), they wound up sending me — after a month’s delay — a contract that came in at $46,255!
After getting that, I was in a near-panic, as I knew we could not go ahead with Fort Wayne with those kinds of numbers, and I knew our only other theatre option would likely be even higher cost, if it was available at all.
Thankfully, the proposal and cost estimate the Embassy sent me was the wrong version. They had inadvertently sent me an old version of their documents, which didn’t account for their revisions to meet our budget needs.
The new version, which I believe will work for our needs, shows a 77% discount on the theatre rental, and zeros out $7,485.72 in fees for production instruments, resulting in a deduction from our projected expense for the week of $20,550.
When combined with the very reasonable week’s rental contract for the Grand Wayne Convention Center of just $12k for the week, all-in, and two excellent hotel properties adjacent to both the Center and the Embassy, I recommend that we sign and return the contracts for the Hilton, Courtyard, Center and joggling facility (Turnstone), while we await a final contract from the Embassy. All of these documents have been uploaded to the Fort Wayne 2020 folder in GDrive.
As a reminder, our week in Fort Wayne is set for June 24-30, 2019 to coincide with their very large and successful BuskerFest event which also goes on during the weekend of our festival week — a perfect tie-in with our shows and other festival events.
Discussion:
!!Cheers all around!!!
Negotiated $65,000 in discounts with the venues.
Getting the last of it, all the contracts are in the G drive – looking good, clean short contract. Hope to move on this over the next board meeting. Gotta wait another week? Going to wait for last contract – the embassy. Have a quote – they will make it work with the embassy. Review? End of the week next week – check it out – review, wait, all at once then.
ACTION ITEM – get the final embassy contract.
ACTION ITEM – have the contracts all in Nathan’s name.
El Paso 2020
El Paso went back to the drawing board for our 2020 festival and came through with a very compelling set of offers that I recommend we accept. Their revised offer has been uploaded to the 2020 Festival – El Paso, TX folder in GDrive.
Here are the outlines of their offer:
An in-writing offer of up to $23,800 in city grant money, pro rata, based on a 900 room-night pickup during the week. We picked up 897 room-nights in 2016, so this is very doable. Asd you recall, we received a grant about this size from El Paso last year, but only learned about it a few weeks before our festival. Knowing that this funding is in-place and assured well before we start planning the festival will virtually assure a good-sized profit for El Paso 2020.
DoubleTree Hotel – one of our three 2016 hotel properties – renewing their same rate offer of $95.00/night.
Holiday Inn Express – another one of our three 2016 hotels – coming back at just $102/night single through quad with free hot breakfast for all registered guests and free parking.
Hotel Paseo del Norte – this was the Camino Real hotel when we were there last July, and it will soon be a flagship Marriott hotel, and is now starting a $75-million upgrade and re-fit to meet Marriott flag standards — at $119/night single through quad. IJA would also receive a $10/room/night cash rebate for all rooms sold, in addition to a 1:40 comp rate, two free suites for 7 nights, and 3 club-level Junior Suite room upgrades for VIPs.
A new Courtyard Hotel, which was under construction during our visit and is across the street from the DoubleTree Hotel, will be open next summer and is offering us a $120/night rate.
Rental, labor, staging, rigging and A/V quotes as per our actual usage from 2016 quoted at $44,462 all-in for the week (Center and Plaza Theatre), less the $23,800 city funding grant, brings the whole week into a very reasonable budget range for us.
(adding TBD on last contract in el paso – gotta watch it on those items…
[Enter Enrico Rastelli]
… pro rata offer – going to get grant money, just in proportion to the rooms rented.
As a reminder, there is a lot going on in downtown El Paso now, all of which will be done and waiting for us when we return:
Brand-new $97-million downtown streetcar light rail circulator mass transit line that runs right past the Center and in front of the newly-reflagged Marriott (Camino Real/Paseo del Norte), connecting all downtown venues with each other.
Over 5,000 new residential units coming online before 2019, and with them, more restaurants and retail.
Additions to San Jacinto Park.
Additional BRIO BRT (bus rapid transit) lines in downtown.
A new Aloft hotel property coming to downtown before 2020.
Excellent airlift into ELP via all five major US airlines, with over 40 daily flights on mainline jets to 11 world hub airports.
I recommend that the Board authorize me to move ahead with contract negotiations for El Paso 2020 with these terms, and any additional concessions I can extract from them for our return visit.
Discussion:
Cover letter in writing – can’t pull back the funding (grant money) (sponsorship) – it will be part of the contract. (Up to 23,000- could be $100 – they could easily back out of it.) Plain meaning and intention – “up to” – should say “no more than”.
Question: Cost of flights was expensive -> is there a way around that?
Fringe festivals – get discounts with different airlines, call the airline. Mexican Jugglers – could not afford to come, visa and peso to dollar issues. That won’t change. How can you get more people to attend.
Winston Salem: increase or decrease? Down each year…
Are there any other strong options for 2020? Nope, it is easier to repeat a city. We don’t have a whole lot of cities that meet our requirements.
2020… broaden appeal – offer more attractions possibly – how do we attract a new and different and more audience – the appeal of the event won’t draw the people. What are you offering – should be the biggest part of the draw? Not the location? – we get the hard core people (like us) what is the ideal place for a festival?
Rochester MN? Expensive to fly… hotels more expensive.
Hard to find the action for booking our events.
We will make a motion to vote on it.
eJuggle Report (Scott Seltzer)
Discussion: Nil
Membership (Marilyn Sullivan)
Discussion: none
Marketing (Erin Stephens)
Discussion: Sharing really helps boost the marketing. Very time consuming for Erin. Thank you.
IRC (Erin Stephens)
Discussion: Growing. Where else can we build too? Ecuador and Mexico deadlines coming up.
World Juggling Day (Erin Stephens)
Discussion: Tshirts on sale. A lot of international sales – had to figure out international shipping. Had a call with shopify (Erin). Through Paypal only right now. Would like to change it to paypal (Paypal uses credit cards too). Can use a credit card without having a paypal account. Would not have to pay a 2% fee to shopify with credit card???
Registration is open – newsletter coming up —
Everybody get the energy up and head towards building the hype for WJD. Share and Promote.
ACTION ITEM – Promote WJD.
YJA (Galen Harp)
Discussion:
6. Motions for Consideration
A. Motion to extend the board nomination deadline until May 29th, 2017.
Motion: Scott
Second: Shivella
Discussion: Nil
Outcome: Unanimously Approved
B. Motion to approve the Awesomeness Fund Selections from the 2017 Awesomeness Fund Committee.
Awesomeness Fund Committee Selections
Motion: Shivella
Second: Scott
Discussion: How much is the total budget? $3100 given to the fund committee.
Outcome: Unanimously Approved
C. Motion to approve the first IRC Oceania to be held in September at the Melbourne Juggling Festival – including a $300 contribution from the IJA. PROPOSAL
Motion: Shivella
Second: Scott
Discussion: Nil
Outcome: Unanimously Approved
D. Motion to approve the first IRC Far East to be held in August in coordination with the Mini Mobile Circus for Children in Kabul, Afghanistan – including a $300 contribution from IJA. PROPOSAL
Motion: Shivella
Second: Louie
Discussion: Interesting one… One teacher – numbers – training for national championship. New concept of creation of routines. Have taken donations for them – have worked with them before. Erin may be going out. !!! Amazing !!!
Outcome: Unanimously Approved
F. Motion to proceed with Lockton Affinity as the IJA’s new Liability Insurance provider.
Summary
Proposal
Motion: Shivella
Second: Louie
Discussion: Links need to be changed…
Outcome: Unanimously Approved
G. Motion to proceed with contracting for El Paso 2020 as the Festival Location with the removal of the words “up to” from the contract per previous discussion.
Motion: Nathan
Second: Scott
Discussion: Overall feel? Work with city and airlines – we can make this a little more inviting and bring more people in. Bring in the flow community too.. Like Dan said – increase our audience and offering. It was a mellow festival – everyone was good to work with. We learned a lot – good for the same team to repeat a venue as well. So maybe reach out to Jim Maxwell for help and passing on knowledge. El Paso went very smooth. Only thing that was off was attendance. ACTION ITEM here – get people that loved the last El Paso – have them promote the next one in 2020.
Outcome: Unanimously Approved
7. Varia:
Juggle live on Lybrary.com! Entire issues are online $60 and $45 if you are a member. Getting all this tied up and setup. It is going well and all on track- the digitization went well.
IJA Archives: David has many IJA archives. We have a rich history of the IJA – where do we start to store and manage all of this? Huge warehouse and a huge undertaking//// – actually – one room – 10 by 10 by 7 area – props and costumes and pictures – got 5-10% of the stuff covered in a weekend. Will we ever own a museum? Can we move it to Davids? One person a week coming by to see it. 13,000 photographs of juggling. We need to think about moving these items from Vegas to the museum?
Imported an email list to Facebook of current and all members. To use in advertising and target to members.
Four Years Out… (first time we have this going)
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Springfield, Massachusetts
Fort Wayne, Indiana
El Paso, Texas
8. Set June Meetings
Next Vision Planning Meeting – June 5th, 2017 at 7:30 ET
Next Business Board Meeting – June19th, 2017 at 7:30 ET.
9. Executive Session
Motion: Ian
Second: Shivella
Discussion: Erin and Martin brought in.
Vote: Unanimously Approved
10. Exit Executive Session 10:30pm
Motion: Nathan
Second: Scott
Vote: Approved
11. Adjournment
Motion to adjourn: Scott??
Discussion: Nil
Voting: Unanimously Approved
Meeting adjourned at 10:32 pm ET.