Business Board Meeting June 18th, 2019

1. Call to Order

Chair, Exuro Piechocki, called the meeting to order at: 5:07 pm PST

2. Roll:

Present: Erin, Afton, Eric, David, Mike Sullivan, Galen Harp, Sofia, Mike Moore, Matan, Ian Michael, Exuro at 5:25

Absent: Yuki Ueda

Recorder: Eric Shibuya

3. Approval of Agenda

Motion: Sofia

Second by: Ian

Discussion:

Vote: Motion passes unanimously

4. Approval of Minutes:

Business Board Meeting (5/21/19)

Motion: Ian

Second: Sofia

Discussion:

Vote: Motion passes unanimously

5. Reports

Please keep verbal reports to 5 min or less except for festival discussion.

2019 Festival Report (David Cain)

Discussion: Things pretty much ready to go. Finalizing some coordination with the theatre for stage championships. $800 over in housing expense, $1200 over in mic fees, but under in various areas. Waiting to hear from Fire Marshall for one act in Cascade of Stars. (Afton: this is not covered by our insurance) David: will cancel fire part of that show. Local newspaper has published an article about the festival.

[Exuro enters the call]

Financial Report (Afton Benson)

Discussion: See 2018 P&L report (Motion E below)

Future Festival Site Report (Mike Sullivan)

As you recall, I submitted my site visit report for South Bend, Indiana in February and it was discussed on the February board meeting.

Since then, I held a “webinar” through the National Association of Sports Commissions which resulted in a good number of additional potential destinations expressing interest in our event. I have spent the last three months running all those to ground, culminating last week with a site visit to Jacksonville, FL, the only city passing my initial qualifications and further discussions before the visit.

The visit to Jacksonville confirmed my initial fears about the destination: it would just be too, too, too insufferably, inhumanly, miserably hot in mid-July for our people to deal with, and I speak as someone who has lived in Texas and Florida for 29 years and is used to the heat and humidity.

The problem is our host hotel (and meeting space), the Hyatt Regency, is a minimum of 3-4 blocks from the food and drink areas in downtown, making for a 6-8 block walk two to three times a day in broiling heat without an inch of shade and no breeze to speak of on the streets. Couple that with almost daily mid-afternoon cloudbursts, and it would be like sending our jugglers into a jungle rainforest — without shade — for a week, and no one would enjoy it.

Added to all that, the beautiful Florida Theatre, the proposed site of our formal shows and competitions, came in at 2x our budget, even after I played the “we’re just poor itinerant jugglers trying to make our way in a mean world” card and begging for their lowest rates.

So, JAX is out, and South Bend is still our best option for 2023. They have presented us with an offer good enough to sign today, but if the Board approves moving ahead with South Bend for 2023, I will of course press them for even better rates and more concessions that they have already promised.

I’d like to ask the Board to approve South Bend for our 76th Annual festival, to be held July 17-23, 2023.

The site visit report is posted here for your review.

Discussion:

A couple questions from Mike (Moore):

1 – Is there a ballpark price difference between renting the Discovery Ballroom vs the Convention Hall? How much does carpeting tend to cost? – Mike, this is something we will need to hammer out with the Center if we proceed. Show carpeting is not cheap — it could be as much as $10k to cover the whole Hall. I think we might want a mix of the two rooms, as the Discovery is not large enough for all our gym needs. Mr. King, the Center manager, is very willing to work with us and we can count on them doing whatever works best for us to secure the deal. Also, Visit South Bend has said they want to be VERY supportive of any special needs we may have to bring us in. MS

2 – Are we able to occupy the atrium for long periods of time? This might mitigate the problem with the smaller Ballroom? Mike – Mr. King advised that they are not likely to have any other clients in-house during our week. If so, they would likely be small meetings or a wedding or two, and would not inhibit our uses. We can of course write into the contract the use of the atrium. MS

3 – Are we likely able to decide between the Discovery Ballroom and Convention Hall after seeing our pre-reg numbers? Mike – We came in above average for pre-reg this year, but many of them were comps (78!). Actual paid pre-reg is closer to our long-run norms. I do think we will need to carefully work out the gym space needs, but between the two rooms, I think we have more than we will need in space and flexibility. MS

eJuggle Report (Scott Seltzer)

Discussion:

Membership (Marilyn Sullivan)
Membership Data

Discussion:

Marketing Report (Erin Stephens/Matan Presberg)

Discussion:

IRC Report (Erin Stephens)

Discussion:

YJA Report (Galen Harp)

Discussion: Building packet to send to schools looking to start their own juggling club.

WJD Report (Josie Marks-McQuade)

WJD was such a success!! We had so many videos pouring in from all over the world across IG and FB! SO.MUCH.ARTWORK from around the world (check the highlights on @ijajugglers IG), The Portland event was great! THANK YOU SOCIAL MEDIA TEAM for hyping the event worldwide!

WJD recap video is accepting submissions via we.transfer until 6/26 wjd2019@juggle.org

T-shirts were pretty rough this year – big BIG thank you to everyone who supported me in that process. Design wasn’t the best, and we only sold 16 shirts but due to my fault and lack of support with our third-party apps we’re at a slight deficit We will likely not do t-shirts next year and replace them with something simpler that still reps the IJA and WJD community pride.

Discussion :