1. Call to Order
Chair, Mike Moore, called the meeting to order at: 8:03 pm EST
2. Roll:
Present: Mike Sullivan, Afton Benson, Scott Steiskal, Matan Presberg, Sofia Noethe, Erin Stephens, Galen Harp, Martin Frost, Mike Moore, Amy Wieliczka
Absent: Exuro Piechocki, Eric Shibuya
Recorder: Matan Presberg
3. Approval of Agenda
Motion: Sofia Noethe
Second by: Scott Steiskal
Discussion:
Mike Moore: Mike Sullivan, should there be a motion about Green Bay? It appears that way based on the FFSR. Yes! And Evansville, too! Mts
-should motions have to be added by Saturday to give time for people to review? Generally, yes, but we can add motions for Green Bay and Evansville, and donor review tonight.
[Amy Wieliczka joins 8:10pm EST]
Vote: passes unanimously
4. Approval of Minutes:
Business Board Meeting (LINK) (Dec 17th, 2019)
Motion: Matan Presberg
Second: Sofia Noethe
Discussion:
Vote: passes unanimously
5. Reports
Please keep verbal reports to 5 min or less except for festival discussion.
2020 Festival Report (Noel Yee) –
Discussion:
-74 paid tickets so far!
-finalizing details on some exciting performers
-brunch approved
-existence of Youth Showcase pending Youth Championships applications (re: last year). More information on this at next month’s update.
-for now will not mentioning or advertising a Youth Showcase.
–more discussion on Youth Showcase, pros and cons of having one, what would be necessary to make it happen–
Financial Report (Afton Benson)
Discussion:
-good year overall, successful financial festival year, nothing sticks out in a negative way
Future Festivals Site Report (Mike Sullivan)
- Final contracts for Green Bay 2024 are ready for IJA signature. The contract package is in the G Drive for this month’s Board meeting for final review. Everything is as we presented earlier, so pending Board approval tonight, I will send the contracts to Chair Mike Moore for his signature, then on to the suppliers in Green Bay for countersignature.
- The contract for Meyer has items listed for renting their “Backstage” venue for Renegade, which we have struck out in the contract. We can sign this struck-out copy, or ask them for a revised copy without any mention of the Backstage space, but either version would be legally binding.
- Craig and I have agreed to share the Future Festival Site Coordinator duties until further notice. The job is too big for one person. We have also agreed on titles for each of us: “Future Festival Site Coordinator” for Craig, and “Senior Future Festival Site Coordinator” for Mike.
- Craig and I are recommending we move ahead with Evansville, IN for 2025. Our Site Visit Summary & Recommendation is in the G Drive for this month’s Board meeting.
- The proposal from the DoubleTree shows a $119/night room rate, but I have had oral confirmation from the hotel rep that we will get it to our target $109 rate in the final contract. We’re asking the Board tonight to authorize Craig and I to move ahead to final negotiations and contracts from Evansville that we can sign for 2025, conditioned on the $109/night rate from the hotel.
- UPDATE, 4:30pm ET Tuesday: Doubletree Hotel Evansville has come back with a revised proposal for 800 room/nights at the $109 target rate. That is good, but means we will need to get about 150 room/nights at the nearby Hyatt Place hotel, which will be fine but not ideal. The DoubleTree’s updated proposal has also been added to the G Drive folder for this month’s meeting, and swapped into the full site report document as well. We still recommend moving forward with the offer from Evansville, splitting our group into a main and an overflow hotel, as we have done for this year in El Paso and most other cities past and future.
Discussion:
Mike Moore: What are the financial ramifications of having 2 future fest coordinators?
Mike Sullivan: Should be minimal to none, and notes that he has donated small costs he has incurred while on the job, but Craig might expense those. One or the other would go on trips, not both.
MM: Is Craig normally available for these board meetings?
MS: Generally, yes, but is busy and had a last minute conflict today.
eJuggle Report (Scott Seltzer)
-no report or discussion
Membership (Marilyn Sullivan)
Membership Data
Discussion:
Marketing Report (Erin Stephens/Matan Presberg)
*report added 1/21
Discussion:
-IJA group on FB bringing in jugglers who haven’t been in the online scene before (jugglers who find out about IJA through IRCs specifically)
IRC Report (Erin Stephens)
*report added 1/21
Discussion:
YJA Report (Galen Harp)
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LeyZjvaedqCCwCa12jpMUkil5SbhUJ9L-GimBdzMUuo/edit?usp=sharing
Discussion:
6. Motions for Consideration
A: Motion to approve the 2020 IJA Festival Budget
Author : Afton Benson
Motion : Matan Presberg
Second : Scott Stieskal
Discussion :
Mike Moore: How did pre-reg go compared to the estimates?
Afton: sold out of adult early bird, opened the adult pre-reg early as a result. Online reg starts March 3rd or when adult pre-reg sells out.
Vote :
In favour:
Oppose :
Abstain :
Result : passes unanimously
B: Motion to approve holding the IRC North America 2020 at the Portland Juggling Festival on September 26 in Portland, Oregon, USA. See Proposal
Author : Erin Stephens
Motion : Exuro Piechocki
Second : Sofia Noethe
Discussion :
Exuro: How are we planning to advertise this being the first IRC North America?
Erin: Same as other regions (using our Social Media), Portland will help, plus word of mouth.
Afton: In the realm of fairness, should wait to talk to potential competitors for the official announcement.
Mike: when do applications for competitors close?
Erin: ~1.5 months before festival
Mike: so we can recruit at IJA festival?
Erin: Yes.
Vote :
In favour:
Oppose :
Abstain :
Result : passes unanimously
C: Motion to approve the 2020 Operating Budget.
(Note: motion added Monday evening)
Author : Mike Moore
Motion : Scott Stieskal
Second : Exuro Piechocki
Discussion :
Mike Moore: cells in orange changed within the past few hours
Exuro: festival video editing was reduced, why was that?
Mike M: Based on existing contracts.
Mike Sullivan asks again about adding a budget line item of $1,000/year for Future Festival Site operations, as discussed during the December, 2019 business meeting.
Vote :
In favour:
Oppose :
Abstain :
Result : passes unanimously
D: Motion to approve the contracts offered by Green Bay for our festival in 2024
Author : Mike Sullivan
Motion : Sofia Noethe
Second : Matan Presberg
Discussion :
Afton: would appreciate an updated contract for signing (as opposed to with strikethrough).
Afton: Not seeing staffing for Box Office or Security mentioned in the contracts. Will those be unexpected costs? Same for gym space. Can we get restrictions (how many staffers, when, where) and current rates (with the recognition they may change)?
Mike Sullivan: This is covered in the written proposal, but is not in the contract, will go back to discuss with Green Bay.
Martin: Contract says they will hold contract until 1/30/2020. Does that mean they’re expecting it to be approved by 1/30?
Mike Sullivan: Yes technically, but we still have time to make changes and approve by 1/30, but they will move that date if necessary given our requested changes.
As noted above, Green Bay has presented us with final contracts ready for signature.
Vote :
In favour:
Oppose : Matan Presberg, Exuro Piechocki, Sofia Noethe, Amy Wieliczka, Mike Moore, Scott Stieskal
Abstain :
Result :
E: Motion to authorize the Future Festival Site team to proceed with final negotiations with suppliers in Evansville that would be favorable to IJA for our festival in July, 2025.
Author : Mike Sullivan
Motion : Sofia Noethe
Second : Matan Presberg
Discussion :
Exuro: IJA Festivals are concentrated geographically, would like to see some diversity in where they’re held.
Mike Sullivan: Appreciate the sentiment, very difficult to do with our current economics.
Mike Sullivan: Will talk and listen to anyone, have discussed with every city with commercial airport in the past. Future fest team is looking for cities on one of the coasts, but haven’t found one.
Scott: What kind of price difference exists?
Mike Sullivan: Example, hotels in Berkeley, CA start at $250 a night and are booked solid in the summer. Portland, OR also way too expensive. Etc. Nearly got a deal with Albany, NY but hotels downtown unwilling to lower to our rates.
Afton: Have we gotten concrete proposals from these more expensive cities that the board could review?
Mike Sullivan: Absolutely! Has his whole record going back many years. Happy to send rejected proposals to the board.
Scott Stieskal: Noticing that flights are pretty reasonable from some major cities (doing preliminary searches for flights)
Mike Sullivan: Surrounded by many Southwest service cities, which probably helps with the airline prices.
As noted above, Evansville has presented us with a very solid package that, with some minor adjustments, would be very favorable for our festival in 2025. Approval of this motion authorizes Mike and Craig to work to obtain final contracts favorable to IJA, which would be separately approved at a future Board meeting.
Vote :
In favour:
Oppose :
Abstain :
Result : passes unanimously
F: Motion to authorize Mike Sullivan to work with the anonymous donor to implement IJA’s move to G Suite for productivity, storage and collaboration SaaS on a pre-paid 3-year (or 5-year, if possible) plan.
Author : Mike Sullivan
Motion : Exuro Piechocki
Second : Amy Wieliczka
Discussion :
Exuro: Is this a new anonymous donor?
Mike Sullivan: Yes, a personal friend who approached him on his own.
Afton: G-Suite basic is free for non-profits.
https://www.google.com/nonprofits/offerings/apps-for-nonprofits/
Martin: how much does this cost if the donor drops?
Mike Sullivan: google’s prices will probably be lower then, but right now at reasonable usage <$1500 a year. If donor goes away, easy to drop to free for nonprofits tier.
Amy Wieliczka: Pro has more storage than basic (5TB to 30GB).
Martin: How many users for nonprofits?
Amy: At least 15, not sure upper limit.
Matan: We may have to ask David Landowne to learn a new interface to manage email addresses
Amy: We could keep email forwarding with David if preferable
Afton: could we come up with questions to ask that will help us make this decision for the Google contact to ask (or for us to find out)
Vote :
In favour: Exuro Piechocki
Oppose : Matan Presberg, Sofia Noethe, Scott Steiskal, Mike Moore
Abstain : Amy Wieliczka
Result :
7. Varia:
MIKE SULLIVAN: I have been in contact with an anonymous donor who wants to support the IJA by way of a generous donation which would fund 3 to 5 years of service to move IJA’s collaboration and documentation to Google’s G Suite “Business” level online office, cloud storage, conferencing, messaging, calendaring and priority support services.
Currently, IJA is keeping mission-critical documents in an unpaid, personal G Drive account “conummatek9dogsrawesome” account. As an unpaid, free personal account, all of IJA’s mission-critical documents are at risk of shutdown and deletion by Google with no recourse. In addition, it’s just obviously unprofessional.
Moving to a paid G Suite paid service on the Google Cloud Platform would give IJA many benefits:
- @juggle.org email addresses for all IJA volunteers and staff, running on the GMail service.
- Unlimited cloud storage for all IJA business documents.
- Unlimited video and audio conferencing.
- Shared calendaring for all IJA staff and volunteers.
- Search across all G Suite services with Google Cloud Search.
- 24/7 priority support by phone, email and chat.
The donor is in negotiations with Google for this deal and would like to get Board approval for the move before moving ahead. A PDF outlining the features in G Suite Business is in the G Drive folder for this month’s meeting.
8. Confirm Next Meeting
Next meetings will take place on…
for the next vision meeting February 4th
for the next business meeting February 18th
9. Adjournment
Motion to adjourn : Sofia Noethe
Discussion : None
Voting : Passes unanimously