1. Call to Order
6:05pm ET Sept 18, 2023
2. Roll:
Present: Ross Berenson, Noel Yee, Aslynne Howes, Niels Duinker, Don Lewis, Martin Frost, Scott Slesnick, Afton Benson, Exuro Piechocki
Absent: Luther Bangert, Sofia Noethe, Benjamin Domask-Ruh
Recorder: Aslynne
3. Approval of Agenda
Motion: Aslynne
Second by: Niels
Discussion:
Vote: Approved unanimously
4. Approval of Minutes:
Business Board Meeting (LINK)
Motion: Aslynne
Second: Noel
Discussion:
Vote: Approved unanimously
5. Reports
Please keep verbal reports to 5 min or less except for festival discussion.
2023 Festival Report (Exuro Piechocki)
Discussion: Still waiting for final financials, but went great, assuming it went well though. Estimated 600 unique attendees, which is pretty good. Highlights: layout of convention centre – main gym space, ball room, theatre, and park, and great hall were good about getting between places. Would go back, but the staff and manager were tough to deal with, did not respond much in advance. Doubletree manager has been called the worst manager we’ve worked with. AV for Century Centre wasn’t great either, had some issues, but was contracted by the venue. Courtyard hotel, school and library were great to deal with. Flying to Chicago and then by train to South Bend seemed to be common and went well. Fire and flo were pretty good, but had to close fire earlier than expected.
Follow up meetings with organizers were available, and are available on the Google Drive. 2169 emails related to the festival. Lack of SOP made it more difficult, notes have been added to the drive. Workshops were a challenge due to the large amount of work required. Did not expect the last minute-ness of the workshops at the IJA festivals. Lots of positive feedback, some negative feedback regarding show performers.
Ross: what were the managers required for?
Exuro: tables, chairs, relocating a power supply.
Afton: Cedar Rapids managers were texting daily and were very responsive. Iowa managers were not responsive, and missed the meeting to discuss.
Niels left the call at 6:21pm.
Exuro: we were told banners could be removed, but on site, we were unable to actually remove the banners due to lack of personnel. We have submitted a review to Visit South Bend as part of the grant contract. Not much on-site work was required at the time.
Scott: if managers are a problem, we could put it into the contract and possibly have penalties if managers are unavailable within a reasonable amount of time.
Afton: this is a new issue, but could be a good idea
Exuro: still waiting to be paid
Afton: we will finalize payment once financials are finished
2024 Festival Report (Afton Benson & Noel Yee)
Discussion:
Noel: Been meeting weekly/bi-weekly, discussed big picture items, site visit planned and will include Afton, Noel, Ross, Andrienne, Jake Darrow. Budget is on the agenda.
Afton: met with tourism and there’s a marketing matching grant. They should be coming up with ideas on how to apply that.
Noel: In contact with Jason re: marketing materials, mostly prepping site visit
Afton: Will have more information about the Green Bay grant. Vendors had some confusion about how bundles work, make it clearer exactly what is included and what is not included (like only vending). We should look at limiting # vendors/table.
Ross: vendor packages have changed over the years, maybe we can make it more consistent.
Afton: difficult to monitor
Ross: 8-9 performers have been contacted, but won’t hear much until January because summer contracts are lucrative.
Scott: We used to have vendors required to purchase a fest package as a loop hole to get into the festival cheaper. We should maybe have vendor packages on a case-by-case basis.
Financial Report (Afton Benson)
Discussion:
Afton: Hoping to get numbers this week for the quarter and festival
Future Festival Site Report (Mike Sullivan)
Discussion:
Martin: Do we need a motion to make Jake Darrow part of the future fest team?
Afton: We didn’t for Craig originally, once we solidified everything, we did vote. Jake is approved to shadow at the moment, for at least a year.
eJuggle Report (Scott Seltzer)
Discussion:
Ross: Waiting for Matan to respond re: additional marketing for eJuggle.
Martin: How about adding bits of ejuggle to the newsletter? Or maybe a featured article.
Don: Had an RSS feed which had summaries, making it easier to include.
Ross: We still have a RSS feed but RSS is not really utilized much anymore.
Afton: Social media might be better right now due to the difference in audience size and because non-members can access the content as well.
Martin: What would people think about short article summaries and ability to link to the full articles.
Ross: some newsletters link to the webpage to allow people to move between the newsletter and the article to increase website traffic
Martin: Maybe we should have Scott require a 1-2 sentence summary of new articles, then we could include the summaries in the eNewsletter along with the links.
Scott: could use AI to create the summaries
Ross: will reach out to Scott about the feasibility of summaries being included from the content creators
Scott: unable to access members-only content
Martin: email me
Membership (Marilyn Sullivan)
Membership Data
Discussion:
Marketing Report (Matan Presberg)
Discussion:
IRC Report (Erin Stephens)
Discussion:
YJA Report (Benjamin Domask-Ruh)
Discussion:
OpsO Report (Ross Berenson)
Discussion: Lots of items in progress.
2023 festival survey is out, submissions are closing October 7.
Working on overall future festival survey for wants/future planning.
Martin: Should we prod for survey responses?
Afton: We’ve received a large number of responses, and not all members received the survey
Martin: I can send out to the pertinent members instead
Afton/Ross: yes, please
6. Motions for Consideration
- 2024 Festival Budget (Link)
- Afton Benson and Noel Yee
- Motion: Aslynne
- Second: Ross
- Discussion:
Aslynne: Move to table the motion.
Noel: Second
Discussion: N/A
Vote: Motion to table the motion passes. Afton will email everyone.
- Vote: tabled
7. Varia:
- Scott: talked about a former member.
8. Confirm Next Meeting
Next meetings will take place on…
for the next vision meeting
Oct 2 @ 6pm ET
for the next business meeting
Oct 16 @ 6pm ET
9. Adjournment
Meeting adjourned at 7:39pm ET