1. Call to Order
Chair, Ross Berenson, called the meeting to order at: 6:04 pm Eastern
2. Roll:
Present: Afton Benson, Ross Berenson, Benjamin Domask-Ruh, Jake Darrow, Mike Sullivan, Luther Bangart, Martin Frost, Sofia Noethe, Noel Yee
Absent: Asylnne Howes, Niels Dunker
Recorder: Luther
3. Approval of Agenda
Motion: Noel
Second by: Benjamin
Discussion:
Vote: Passes unanimously
4. Approval of Minutes:
Business Board Meeting (link)
Motion: Benjamin
Second: Ross
Discussion:
Vote: Passes unanimously
5. Reports
Please keep verbal reports to 5 min or less except for festival discussion.
2024 Festival Report (Afton Benson & Noel Yee)
Discussion:
Afton and Noel going on a site visit in Green Bay in 4 days. Jake is also checking out locations. Main mission is to see where certain programs will go, check out the theater and technical needs, check out the library for Planting the Juggling Seed. Found out that Wisconsin libraries will distribute posters / promotional materials, Afton will get some to the libraries at Madfest. Going to see about some collaboration with the local skate park, perhaps a juggling / skating workshop with Teton Juggler. Looking into the Green Bay busking festival dates to see if they’ll align with the IJA for a potential busking competition.
IJA fliers – juggling is spelled wrong, Ross – could the pixelated image be a compression issue?
Afton is planning to get a Facebook event created soon.
‘Smile’ group based out of Canada reached out to Benjamin, interested to come to IJA, youth championships.
Discussion of the possible Renegade location that Jake has scouted out.
Eric Shibuya agreed to lead the Awards Committee.
Newsletter – working on translations – Spanish, French, hopefully in Japanese.
Financial Report (Afton Benson)
Discussion:
Afton: Still looking through the entire year of sales and a system for this that is less confusing.
MMCC e-mail we received about continuing the IJA as a fiscal sponsor for their work. Afton – we had ended this relationship as we’re not set up fiscally in such a way to be sure that our resources are going to the places that they’re supposed to.
They reached out to us recently about restarting this, Afton is going to e-mail them to let them know that it’s not possible.
Sofia left the call at 6:20pm ET.
Planning to move things over to Quickbooks online to become more efficient at categorization for registration, budgeting, etc.
Future Festival Site Report (Mike Sullivan)
Discussion:
Mike: We concluded all the contracts for 2026 and 2027. Signed and in the Google Drive. The only loose deal is the Embassy Theater for 2026 that raised their rates. There are a couple of theaters within walking distance and we hope something will work out there or, if the Embassy changes their mind.
We do have a hold on space in half of the gym that we could commit to as an absolute last resort.
Again, we talked at the Annual Meeting at the IJA this year about what we want the festival to look like in 2028. Ross – I started a task for this. Mike – Jake and I will need to have an idea of this by next year and we’re prepared for whatever the board comes up with.
Ross – we have board members that are interested in working on this, and are gathering questions for a Future Festival Survey that will help us decide where we’re steering the ship.
Afton – sent the convention center at the Portland festival our RFP, seemed possible and perhaps affordable, but they require 800 rooms booked per night for the festival.
Mike – our group usually books 1000 – 1200 room nights for the festival, currently.
Afton – U of M communication.
Mike – we haven’t received a lot of inquiries from cities about the future festival.
eJuggle Report (Scott Seltzer)
Discussion:
Ross: We ran into a photo licensing issue with a couple of photos, but it turns out its a photo licensing troll law firm, it doesn’t seem to be a real issue but we have to decide how to respond.
Ross reached out to Scott Seltzer who contacted the authors of the articles with mentioned issues, and they have the proof of public domain for these images.
One image was also on the general IJA website, not just the eJuggle report.
Membership (Marilyn Sullivan)
Membership Data
Discussion:
Ross – down by 2 members.
Martin – what is happening with YM. Ross – we’re switching focus – to be able to handle ecommerce and membership management, searching for a designer who can design a new IJA website and Ross would develop it. Over the next 1-2 years.
Martin – this happened before and we were able to change some parameters on the site. Ross – this issue is beyond just changing the parameters to handle these spikes / plugin issues. Can share some screenshots of stats from the website / RAM usage / crashes.
Marketing Report (Matan Presberg)
Discussion:
Ross – I haven’t heard anything from Matan.
IRC Report (Erin Stephens)
Discussion:
Nothing to report.
YJA Report (Benjamin Domask-Ruh)
Discussion:
Benjamin – sent off what is possibly the last digital order of YJA badges, currently working towards the badge book.
Afton – we’ve been reaching out to some notable jugglers to help update the badge requirements for different props.
OpsO Report (Ross Berenson)
Discussion:
Ross – in progress – future festival survey stuff, thinking that a good due date for questions is November 1st. We’ll get it onto a google form and schedule a date to get it out (2 or 3 weeks)?
Benjamin – it’s both quantitative and qualitative data we’re looking for, so as we design the survey its helpful to really think about what we want to know.
Ross – we’ll work on this through Clickup and the Board members assigned, also Mike and Jake / others can send in questions, and we can review them at the next vision meeting.
Afton – I’m working with someone who works with survey and data collection – if you’re sending in a question that might not be clear exactly what it’s going for, try to clarify and let us know the context so we don’t end up with double questions and have a clear and clean survey.
6. Motions for Consideration
- Approve 2024 Festival Budget (Approved via Email)
- Author: Afton Benson and Noel Yee
- Motion: Benjamin
- Second: Luther
- Discussion: Those who voted in Favor: Benjamin Domask-Ruh, Sofia Noethe, Niels Duinker, Luther Bangert.
- Vote: Passes unanimously.
- Approve Scott Steiskal as WJD Coordinator
- Author: Afton Benson
- Motion: Benjamin
- Second: Ross
- Discussion: Ross – he’s done this work in the past and done a great job.
- Vote: Passes unanimously.
7. Varia:
Afton: If award winners can’t attend the festival, will it bother people if we can’t do video acceptances during the festival / shows?
Mike: We didn’t have this until a few years ago, we should do our best to have the awardees at the festival, if they can’t make it then we should have someone who knows them well accept in their stead.
Afton: We get a lot of feedback about the video awards taking too long during the shows.
Martin: If they’re there they can accept the plaque and speak on stage, if not we can mention them.
Ross: Often we have to pay for a projector and union person just to do the video awards.
Noel: Maybe some awards can have videos.
8. Confirm Next Meeting
Next meetings will take place on…
Monday November 6th at 6 pm Eastern for the next vision meeting.
Monday November 20th at 6 pm Eastern for the next business meeting.
7:18pm
9. Adjournment
Meeting adjourned at 7:18 pm Eastern.