1. Call to Order
Chair, Benjamin Domask-Ruh, called the meeting to order at: 6:02 pm Eastern
2. Roll:
Present: Jonathan Perry, Afton Benson, Thayer Slichter, Jake Darrow, Chris Jost, Michael Karas, Sofia Noethe, Noel Yee, Kaylin Meyers
Absent: Biz Olbrisch
Recorder: Michael Karas
3. Approval of Agenda
Motion: Sofia
Second by: Jonathan
Discussion:
Vote: Passes unanimously
4. Approval of Minutes:
Business Board Meeting (Business Meeting Agenda – 9/18/2025 )
Motion: Sofia
Second: Kaylin
Discussion:
Vote: Jonathan abstains (wasn’t there)
Passes
5. Reports
Please keep verbal reports to 5 min or less except for festival discussion.
2026 Festival Report (Noel Yee)
Discussion: Discussion of various rooms, including the “historical room” at 2026.
When might a busking festival occur. Thanks to Kaylin for getting footage of the location.
Registration chugging along nicely. Better than last year so far. Excited about the art deco aesthetic of the festival design. Big year for data collection for the handbook Noel is compiling.
Excited to get the core team better known by everybody. Discussion of performer visa challenges, similar to always.
Martin Frost Joined at 6:13 PM ET
Financial Report (Afton Benson)
Discussion:
Gabe joined at 6:15pm
Discussion of last festival’s profit, focus on larger attendance next year to better cover operating costs. Board should do everything possible to help advertise 2026. Quickbooks set-up. Discussion of relocation of PO Box and scanning service. Investment account paperwork
re-signed and fixed. Budget approval will happen in Nov. or Dec.
Giving Tuesday Board Update & Request
Giving Tuesday is December 2nd. It’s the one time a year that the IJA directly asks for money. Last year we beat $3K. Let’s do even better this year. Share your story and ask folks for support. Donate, become a member. Many corporations do donation matches. Bigger grant organizations like to see 100% participation by the Board of Directors.
Discussion of phone number field on donation form. Can we remove phone number on donor form? Since it’s not needed. Will look into it on YM system. Please please put the donate link on the Giving Tuesday ask posts.
Future Festival Site Report (Jake Darrow)
Discussion: Lots of places at SMCC were lacking one KEY thing out of the 7. Filtered it down to 15 possible cities. Question about whether we keep a list of cities that are perfect *other* than the hotel prices. For example, Wilmington, NC a great site…but way too expensive.
Question about whether every couple of years, we could consider a city that doesn’t have a fancy theater but simply a convention built-up stage.
SMMC Update…Generic
Jake had a phone call with Memphis, TN Last Friday. Sounds promising. Negatives being a lack of restaurants close to CC / Hotel…most of the chunk are at the 15 min walk mark. They are preparing a proposal this week.
Nick and Mike had a call with Syracuse, NY this past Tuesday. Again, things are proceeding. Nick is also planning a short site visit (In same hometown) for Huntsville, AL
Continuing contact since SMMC with Albuquerque, NM; Corpus Christi, TX; Augusta, GA.; Berkeley, CA.
We declined further dealings with: Ann Arbor, MIchigan (no AC); Tulsa, OK (too spread out); Ontario, CA; Fort Smith, AR, and Rogers, AR; Rockledge, MD; Pittsburgh, PA (Would book us two years out…), Gettysburg, PA; Eau Claire, WI…They will NOT work for us.
Mike and I are traveling to Albany, NY Nov. 2-4/5 …Our best choice for 2029.
Benjamin & Afton went to Rochester, MN for a site visit Oct. 5-7. Also for 2029.
eJuggle Report (Eric Shibuya)
Discussion: eJuggle continues to move forward. David, Esteban, and Jorge (Tricks of the Month) continue to be our mainstays, along with our podcasts. We got a new 441 on how the IJA festival is planned. Juggling interviews with Xavier has a good episode with Mark Williams, and one upcoming with Sara Noelle.
Via Thom Wall, I have a forthcoming article by Steve Ward on Salma Braatz. Thom also mentioned a project from the IJA to purchase a headstone for Salma’s gravesite that was started up some time in the 80’s. That’s up for the Board.
Thom also mentioned curating posts from eJuggle for 2027 (the IJA’s 80th and eJuggle’s 15th anniversary) for a print edition collection. Costs for this would have to be investigated. Initial thoughts are that the editorial team would be interested in the project, though there may be some questions of authorial rights (IJA does own all eJuggle content, but there have been some arrangements with authors for them to take their stuff and use themselves) that might have to be cleared up.
My recent post on FB regarding readership and engagement highlights a few things I’ve suspected regarding eJuggle.
- Many do not know the difference between the Newsletter and eJuggle
- Most do not connect eJuggle with any of the podcasts or Tricks of the Month. There is a note on each of the podcasts and TOTM that it’s sponsored via eJuggle/IJA, but it’s clear that’s not resonating with the audience. I’m only marginally concerned about this. Though I’d like engagement from these posts to go through eJuggle, I fully recognize that the audience is usually going straight to Youtube or via whatever podcast app they are using.
- Most people do not just “go” to the eJuggle website. Engagement happens via shared FB and other social media posts. I have no idea how to remedy this; this seems to be a reality of the internet. I don’t think there’s anything that can get any juggler in the internet age to say “oh, I need to check eJuggle this week.”
- My post led to a discussion with Erin Stephens. She noted that what got the most engagement were IG stories and posts, as long as they included the URL (This is a dilemma for the Marketing Team, as Kaylin has been trying to highlight a bunch of things in a single post. But if the link is what is driving readership to go to eJuggle, then a post mentioning a bunch of articles/videos isn’t going to get much engagement).
- Given some very unscientific feedback, it seems most people are in fact engaging with eJuggle via their phones. The fancy layout stuff that some of us have been doing for the articles may be counterproductive for this. While we may not like the “text-picture-text” layout, it is the one that works for both big screens and phones. Given this point and #3, while website design is important, and I do want to make sure the eJuggle splash page catches attention, the return on investment/effort is likely minimal.
- Afton: Ross – I’m assuming the new website will be a lot more mobile friendly and with the options you’re creating most eJuggle layouts will work well on mobile or desktop yes?
Afton: IJA potential Copyright issue. We have once again received an email notifying the organization that we are using photo(s) that we may not own. I’ve contacted Vlad, the attorney who assisted us with the claim that was further along. He suggested writing Picrights and stating that “they have not provided proof of true and correct copy of copyright certificate registration nor any proof of authorship or ownership of the alleger. Without proof of registration and ownership there is no infringement.”
So I’ll get something typed up to send. The article is down at the moment. From what we can tell trying to sort out who owns a news photo, or if anyone does is quite challenging any suggestions on how to do this so we can help support eJuggle on verifying ownership would be great!
To Eric: Super Kudos!!!! Doing such great work 😀
Membership (Marilyn Sullivan)
Membership Data
Discussion: 1215 members! Woo hoo!
Marketing Report (Lisa Ellipse)IJA social media requests
In person marketing content collection went well. Raw and edited videos have been shared on the google drive & to festival marketing team.
Stacey & Kaylin did a check in on Stacey’s virtual workshop idea. Hoping to have a general action plan here by the end of the week. The idea of it being an IJA festival promotion & early registration boost has been shared with the festival team. However, this is still being discussed. Kaylin personal note: think this may be a good World Juggling Day event as well.
Discussion:
Afton: Marketing Team please note I’ve added very specific requests regarding Giving Tuesday.
Jost – Ideas for World Juggling Day (extra raffle (Kloc, Benson)) Open Stage where ticket sales can help support the IJA.
IRC Report (Erin Stephens)
Discussion: We just finished a very successful IRC in Colombia – 19 preliminary entries, 12 finalists with 10 who were able to travel to the event in the end, amazing promotion and professionalism of the hosting festival, and an excellent skill level. There is an impressive IRC team growing in Colombia – with excitement and vision and willingness to work to grow the IRC program in new and unique ways. The IRC was broadcast live with over 1,100 people tuning in at some point during the competition.
There are two final upcoming IRC in 2025. The first will be held in Chile on October 24. There were 17 entries with 12 finalists. The final IRC of the year will be in Mexico on November 7 – with 12 entries and 10 finalists. Both will be streamed live on the IJA Instagram account.
The promotion of the first IRC of 2026 in Nicaragua, will start soon. There are various other festivals that have been approaching me about hosting an IRC in 2026 – including in Argentina, South Africa, New Zealand, Brazil – as well as Ecuador, Colombia and Chile. Fundraising and finding local resources will need to be a focus for the end of the year and moving forward.
My time availability is one of the biggest challenges right now in continuing to grow the program. Organizing one IRC is super time consuming. I almost went nutty having three back to back at the end of this year. I had a brainstorming session with Matan and we discussed the need of developing a strong organizational team moving forward. There is now a team of 8 people who have been trained, are mid training, or will begin training soon to be part of the IRC team in the Latin American regions where the IRC are currently the most popular. On top of this, I am hoping to recruit some key core team members to assist with the overall organization – an administrative assistant, a marketing assistant, and a South American coordinator. Matan has expressed interest in potentially stepping into an administrative role, and Esteban Velez of Colombia is interested in being a South American coordinator. With Lisa, the IJA Marketing Director, I have discussed the idea of approaching a specific marketing team representative that could work directly with me in the IRC marketing planning and implementation.
There were various issues that arose this year that have led to the realization that we need to add a few new rule lines that will address specific issues with now having IRC in various countries in the same region. Next month I will propose these rule changes to the board for approval – 1. Competitors can only compete in one act per IRC and 2. Competitors can only compete in one IRC in their region per year. These change suggestions have been discussed by the IRC team members and we feel they are important amendments for clarity moving forward.
Discussion: Discussion of bottomless pits. 🙂 Discussion of where the best place is to view upcoming IRC events.
YJA Report (Benjamin Domask-Ruh)
Discussion: Two badge books sold! (One to Belgium which was tricky to ship). Headache with UPS but have figured out easier ways to ship in the future. More updates soon.
OpsO Report (Ross Berenson)
Discussion: Instead of Google Workspace, what can we call it? Martin suggests “Goose”.
- Website design was handed off. Development in progress.
- Board / ejuggle discussion continues, meeting will be scheduled soon
Afton: Google Workspace layout and group structuring is going well, it’s a lot of information so it’s taking time to ensure we’ve got all our bases covered.
6. Motions for Consideration
- Motion to approve the 2025 IJA Festival P&L
Motion:Jonathan
Second:Noel
Discussion:
Vote: Noel abstains
Passes
7. Varia:
Discussion: Serious Play is getting close to a final cut. Discussion of who would like to join the “Fine and Final Cuts” review team. Some members volunteered their time.
Serious Play Film:
Email from Kate “We wanted to give you a heads up about our timeline, as we have been deep in the edit for the last several months, and are looking towards festival submissions. It’s customary to submit to festivals with a rough cut, so we will be doing that for a couple of the earlier deadlines. Based on whether or not we get into those festivals, we anticipate developing the fine and final cuts between November 2025 and February 2026.
As outlined in our agreement, you are entitled to:
“IJA shall have the right to meaningful consultation with respect to the final cut of the Picture.
- Review Fine Cuts & Final Cuts
- Including two rounds of feedback to address notes
- 2 weeks of review time for each round of feedback”
We just wanted to tell you now in order to give time selecting who will be part of the feedback session.”
Championship Music
Afton: Someone reached out about obtaining the copyright music for Championships. ASCAP and BMI cover the original song, but they want to use a cover of the song. I cannot find any information about who holds the copyright for the cover and they couldn’t either. So I told them to reach out to the artist directly, if they give them permission in writing then it is likely fine. The artist has done soundtracks and what not so it’s highly likely they’ll have their own rights to the original song and the one they made.
Discussion: The Board agrees that the competitor should be fine with that permission.
8. Confirm Next Meeting
Next meetings will take place on…
November 6 for the next vision meeting at 6:00pm ET
November 20 for the next business meeting 6:00pm ET
9. Adjournment
Meeting adjourned at 7:11 pm Eastern.