SFS Board Meeting Minutes 2009-10-06 In attendance: John Ullman, Fred Maslan, Bruce Baker, Ralph Kosche, Valerie Cohen, Marni Rachmiel, Adam Carlson August meeting had no quorum, so there were no minutes. - Financial committee report Main account has ~$120k Accounts stable Operating account balance ~$6k Spoke with Sandy in preparation for talking to CPA, concert committees books are now in better alignment with main SFS reporting requirements. Meeting scheduled with CPA. Treasurer's report accepted - Concert committee "Pre-season" concert - Thursday night, non-standard venue, was well received with an audience of about 95. Valerie did a great job producing first two shows, close to each other, both big, and both successful. We started the PNA concert season with an overflow audience for Peggy Seeger. Valerie worked with Calum Mckinnon to make a successful mid-week concert.(95 people!) We don't know what the lack of Lunch WithFolks radio station will have on publicity for our lesser known artists. We'll soon start working on making a sound cabinet on stage to house the sound equipment that is just for SFS. (After having volunteers threaten to make it for 5 years, we will be paying to have it done.) Our full concert schedule is in this week's Ballard News Tribune. Thanks to Sandy for working on the best people to send our schedules to. We are setting up concerts for the January-May times. Our meeting is Monday so you can ask Valerie or Marni for any more updated info. - Dance Finances remain consistent Booking is mostly set for rest of season Luther Black asked to call on Nov 13 to support the Folklife fundraising weekend (A night for Folklife) Bruce suggested putting something in the flyer about it - we'll have a note about it in our calendar item for that date. - Song circle Attendance up - Green festival Nothing to report. They haven't settled on a date yet. (This is somewhat disturbing.) Rainy camp Set to go on New Year's weekend. NYC - Marni Registration is open Gearing up Camp is getting older and more expensive. Not an issue yet. URL is bashonvashon.com - Folklife Committee Bruce will work with Devon to make a plan Talking to Pushcara nee Sally Ashford about setting up a songleading workshop or hands on workshops like there used to be in the Mercer rooms, from the perspective of promoting peace activism. Use rooms without sound Hard to get volunteers to staff a table all through Folklife. Lots of people renew at Folklife. Want a place that's pleasant to hang out, near a supportive venue. Table location, publicity about table location and staffing. Tie table to SFS events (both in location and time) - Archive Commitees John Ross collection was a great move. Phil & Vivian are interested in organization again, John's been talking to them about various activities. Fred Maslan was approached by Fredrick Lehrman from Nomad University at the Memorial who wanted access to some of the materials in the collection. He wants English street songs and ballads by A.L. Lloyd. Need a cataloging system. Need a better storage location in the long run. Should reconnect with PNA to see if attic space is still available. (Action item for Bruce.) Karen's "basement" is a pretty good interim space. It can have a separate entrance with some way of people getting access. Existing cataloging software is poorly suited to the task. Want to use standard cataloging formats, etc. John made connections in DC who could help us learn how to do this, especially if we want to put things in the library of Congress. Might be able to get help and/or grants from Library of Congress, National Endowment for the Arts, etc. Discussed digitizing and making available electroncally. For audio, ad least, fair use statutes don't allow you to put the full content online, only 30 seconds. Libraries have more leeway to distribute content. (Can we become a "library"? What legal hurdles are there. John seemed to think that if we acted like a library, then we were one.) Another option is to use a web radio model. (Though there are royalties issues, etc.) Folk alliance people have some insight into that, Marni will talk to them. Administrative Committee Reports - Publications committee Do we want to go back to 12 issues a year? Need more notice leading up to skipped August issue. Something in previous 2 or 3 issues saying that August and July are combined. Having a better online calendar would alleviate issues. We agreed that we didn't really have enough information to make a decision. Bruce will look into defining a set of criteria that will be enough to justify not having an August flyer. (E.g. Having an easy way to post and read calendar updates on the website.) If we can achieve that functionality by March, then we'll skip the Aug. flyer, otherwise we'll keep it. - Membership committee Marni has talked to Adam and Valerie. - Digital communications committee About 1/2 to 2/3 of minutes since 2006 are now on website, cleaned up. Next step is to get paper minutes to fill the gap. Recommendation is to convert the website to some sort of content management system that can be managed in a distributed fashion. (That is, people could easily be granted permissions to post articles and maintain sections.) Richard Gillman would like to step down from a lot of his website management, but this step is necessary before doing that. Primary need is a volunteer to do that conversion. Adam spoke to Richard about this and he doesn't have the time to make the conversion. Farwest could be a good resource for this Marni and Adam will craft request to Farwest Online management of the membership database may or may not be part of that, and would require some help from Larry to set up. - Phone lines November - Adam December - Marni New business - Next meeting We volunteered Karen in her absence Note to self: Talk to Valerie/Marni about cabinet plans