Oregon Science Fiction Conventions
(OSFCI)

Annual General Meeting Meeting
Doubletree Portland Hotel
February 6, 2012


ATTENDING: Arthur Aldridge, Beverly Block, Christina Booth, Car Bostick, Jason Bostick, Curtis Chen, Jenn Contreras-Perez, Debbie Cross, Aaron Curtis (OSFCI President), Sam Justice (OSFCI Attorney), Rick Lindsley (OSFCI Treasurer), John Lorentz (OSFCI Secretary), Brigid Nelson, Andrew Nisbet III, Tracy Penner, Devlin Perez, D. Stephen Raymond, Lea Rush, Ruth Sachter, Scott Sanford, DeeAnn Sole, Debra Stansbury, Marc Wells, Patty Wells, and Paul Wrigley.

Proxies (held by): Rodney Barnes (Beverly Block), Michael Birkes (Christina Booth), Antonia Cabal (Debra Stansbury), Jim Fiscus (Andrew Nisbet), Page Fuller (Andrew Nisbet), Marilyn Holt (Andrew Nisbet), Geri Jeter (Andrew Nisbet), David Levine (John Lorentz), Tammy Lindsley (Rick Lindsley), Angel May (Beverly Block), Michael Monical (Beverly Block), Daniel Reitman (John Lorentz), Sheila Simonson (Andrew Nisbet), and Shawn Wall (Andrew Nisbet).

OSFCI membership was accepted by: Christina Booth, Car Bostick, Curtis Chen, Jenn Contreras-Perez, Angel May, Michael Monical and DeeAnn Sole.

The meeting called to order by OSFCI President Aaron Curtis, at 7:44PM Aaron Cell Phone time. (Aaron was running late.)


I. Minutes of Previous Meeting

The minutes as distributed were approved unanimously.


II. Treasurer's Report (Rick Lindsley)

Copies of the report was distributed (see below). This year, over the course of the year, we gained money again.There's been very little change since the last OSFCI Board meeting, although OryCon 33 did pay their overhead fee.

Paul moved that the treasurer's report be accepted. This passed unanimously.


III. President's Report (Aaron Curtis)

Last year, I was able to say a lot of great things about how we were getting our house in order, and this year that is still true. But I don't have great news on how we're improving over last year. 2011 was an extra-busy time for the fannish community in Portland because of the Worldcon (Renovation). It gained Portland fandom a lot of prestige and I would like to thank Patty for heading that particular bit of insanity. But on the flip side, we had lots of busy people, and I think our conventions suffered a little bit from that.

At this point, Patty Wells (who was chair of Renovation) presented a donation from Renovation to the Susan C. Petrey Clarion Scholarship Fund in the amount of $20,000.

Aaron continued his report:
We have a lot of talent, and a lot of up-and-coming people who have been working hard. If you (OSFCI members in general) haven't been involved in either GameStorm or OryCon, please try to help out. Recruiting new people and helping them become better organizers is a constant job, because there is a constant drain of people-they move away or gafiate, or because of many other reasons. I suggest that 2012 would be a good year to focus on recruiting new people and developing the people we have in order to improve all the conventions.


IV. Election of Board of Directors

John listed all the proxies that were submitted, and the people who have accepted invitations to join OSFCI.

We currently have 77 voting members of OSFCI, with 39 represented (either present at the meeting or having submitted proxies).

The people that cannot be nominated (because they're already on the Board for another year) are: Beverly, Andrew, Stephen and Marc. People whose terms are expiring with this meeting are: Arthur, Aaron, Rick, Tammy (who does not wish to be re-elected), John and Debra. It takes 20 votes to be elected to the Board.

Tracy: A question. If Arthur is not re-elected to the Board, will she have a new Board liaison? (Yes)

Andrew suggested that we elect five members to full two-year terms, and recommend that the Board to appoint one to a one-year term, so that we're back to a five/five split. This motion was seconded and approved.

The following people were nominated for the five available slots:

After a short break (while the votes were being counted), Paul reported the results of the Board election. Aaron Curtis, Rick Lindsley, John Lorentz, Devlin Perez and Lea Rush were elected to two-years terms on the Board, with Arthur Aldridge coming in sixth (also appearing on more than 50% of the ballots).


V. John Andrews Memorial Worldcon Scholarship (Beverly Block)

Word was sent out about the grant to the OryCon and GameStorm general lists (and in the AGM mailing), and so far there have been no applications for this year's scholarship. It's not known if people just don't go to Worldcons, or they don't know that they don't need to have been on concoms for the last five years in order to qualify–we just want people who are involved with the conventions in some way. It was suggested that we put it out to the writers and the artists in the community.

The scholarship brings with it a membership to the convention and a $500 stipend to help cover travel and other expenses. Last year it went to Ellen Klowner, who had a wonderful time.

Debra: The fact that it's on Labor Day Weekend this year (and next year) cuts down on the ability to go (since Kumoricon is that weekend). Andrew: I would not be in favor of expanding it to artists and writers, since the goal was to support our fan group.

Work will continue to find someone for this year's grant. (We can always resell the membership if no one is found.)


VI. New Business
A. Changing the Board meeting schedule

There was a proposal (circulated in the meeting announcement packet) to change the schedule for the Board of Directors meetings. It would add two new Board meetings each year, and rearrange them to even out the gaps between the meetings.

The current schedule:

The proposed new meeting schedule: Discussion: Andrew said that we're treating the current four meetings as a ceiling, whereas it's actually the floor. The Board could add additional special meetings as desired, so that items don't have to be continually moved to the next regular meeting because there's no time. Aaron: In practice, we haven't had that many special meetings. It's only been when the backlog grows too large that we've gone to the extra effort of scheduling a special meeting. It's actually more effective to deal with items at regular meetings. Paul: in the original bylaws, there were no scheduled Board meetings and we had many special meetings (nearly one a week at one point). Debbie: This doesn't preclude the Board from scheduling additional special meetings? That is correct.

Beverly: I've been on the Board for five years now, and in that time we've only had one special meeting. One reason for this change is that under the old schedule, there's a long gap between the Board meeting in December and the next regular Board meeting in April. It would be helpful to have a Board meeting between the AGM and GameStorm. Andrew: I don't think that adding more meetings will allow us to adjourn vaguely on time. Work will expand to fill all time allotted for it. By scheduling regular meetings rather than having meetings for specific topics, we'll just end up with six or seven meetings lasting until 11PM. John: OSFCI used to have bimonthly Board meetings and they regularly ended at 9:30 to 10PM. (And we're certainly not good at deciding stuff by e-mail.) Rick agreed that we do need a meeting before GameStorm, and that regular meetings are more efficient than a series of special meetings.

Aaron: When I was first elected to the Board, there were constant tweeks to the meeting schedule in order to try to find the right balance. Most of those years, someone would say "I don't know why we need to change the Bylaws. They seem fine now". The response would be that they're not as good as they could be. And then at one point, we stopped changing the schedule because it was fine. But now it's not meeting our needs.

The motion passed 39-0.


VI. Adjournment

The meeting was adjourned at 8:30PM, Aaron Cell Phone Time.

Oregon Science Fiction Conventions, Inc.

Treasurer's Report 2/6/12

Treasurer's Report 2/6/12

1. Current Status

Preliminary report from the O33 treasurer is that O33 will be about break-even.

The Petrey Fund and the Clayton Fund are in different funds and their totals are not included below. All other OSFCI accounts below are at a single bank to which I have easy access.

Current (as of 2/4/12) account status:
AcctBalanceChange from 12/5 report
Orycon Odd$14110(-$16107)
OSCFI checking$9919(-$181)
Endeavour$5395(+$16)
GS Even$7569(+$2643)
Merchant$568($0)
GS Odd$1010( $0)
OryCon Even$6359(+$5332)
Campbell$288($0)
OSFCI savings$19415($0)
Westercon Bid$0($0)

2. Old Business

- none -

3. New Business

- none -