2018/19 Term 3 Week 2 Exec Meeting Minutes

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Avatar for finnbar Finnbar ( finnbar )

Posted 4 years, 11 months ago

You can view the full PowerPoint meeting minutes on Google Slides
This meeting was conducted on 1/5/19 at 1300-1400 in B2.03

As a friendly reminder, any member can attend our exec meetings! If you'd like to be there to discuss a certain point or would like your concerns discussed, simply talk to a member of exec - they will let you know where the meeting is or will bring your thoughts forward.

Introduction

Exec Present

Finnbar (Secretary)
Callum (President)
Thomas (Web Admin)
Jon Bell (RPGs)
Jon Cheah (Wargames)
Benjamin (Treasurer)
Josh (Boardgames)
Jakub (LARP)
Daniel (Draft)
Luke (Comms)
Anakin (Assistant RPG)
Nigel (Holiday / RLT Contact)
Ares (Graphic Design)

Exec Absent

Tim (Quartermaster, with a broken shoulder)
Alisdair (CCGs Rep, waiting on an Amazon parcel)

Orders Of Business

  1. RLT board games
  2. Warhammer tourney guy
  3. Discussion on sponsorship packages/levels.
  4. Local game store (LGS) stuff.
  5. What's Thomas Been Up To This Holiday? (Web Admin Update)
  6. Formatting of subscribable calendars.
  7. The Great British Badge-Off, also including hoodies and statuettes.
  8. RPG intro paragraphs on site (and FAQs).
  9. Discussion of training if time.

Content

Reminders and Updates

  1. Society documents: Memorandum is done, exec sheet is done and definitely handed in, constitution and risk assessment are in progress.
  2. Socs awards: The deadline is 3rd May, so we need to get on with this. If you want to do an individual application, go for it!
    3, SU page / website description?: I finally finished writing it! (Thanks for your help Ares.)
  3. Megagame: is now definitely on the 21st, exec were already planning to be there, and we have a room so all is good.
  4. Laserquest: no progress, but will likely be Week 9 Tuesday (as discounts are on Tuesdays and week 10 is bad for CompSoc).
  5. B2.02 cupboards?: no progress, but Callum and Nigel will meet to discuss this. (After meeting update: this happened.)

1. RLT Board Games

Info

  • This was organised on Discord - it's running 11th May (Saturday Week 3) from 3-9pm.
  • We're getting paid £50 for this.
  • The advertising has been done (Nigel emailed 600 people, so I expect his sent box is quite angry at him) - posters were made and the event was mentioned at kitchen meetings. Apparently last year only 20-30 people turned up but the advertising was bad, so we could be expecting more - but the MSB rooms around the room we've got are mostly free so we can borrow furniture if needed.
  • There maybe should be a discussion in future about how much we charge for societies borrowing our stuff. (This is a discussion point for next meeting.)

Questions

  • How are we getting games there? The warden has a car, and enough exec can drive anyway. We can carry stuff if needed.
  • Who's going to be there? Exec that can be around: Finnbar, Thomas, Benjamin, Luke, Jon (Wargames), Josh, Anakin - I'll sort out a Doodle for this soon.

2. Warhammer Guy

Info / To Discuss

  • There's a postgrad who wants to run a Warhammer tournament (it turns out this is for June/July 2020) and would like us to book a room and borrow terrain.
  • We have some issues about this:
    • How okay is it that he wants to charge for this event?
    • Why does he need us in the first place, when he could just book the room himself? We have liability if we're organising.
    • He mentioned charging for food and prep, but he can't advertise charging for food due to Room Bookings rules.
  • Jon and I were considering meeting with him in person to ask these questions, but couldn't arrange anything before next Friday.

Discussion / Actions

  • We need to work out whether this is an actual collaboration between him and us, or him just borrowing our resources. (This matters for liability, who's organising, etc.)
  • Is this an event we're hosting for the benefit of the local area? We need to talk to James Sampson-Foster more about the previous event.
  • We should really be organising this because of liability, but he can definitely be Tournament Organiser.
  • Jon and I will definitely meet with him soon.

3. Sponsorships and Stuff

Info / To Discuss

  • How do we formalise our sponsorships? We have lots of advertising space (at events, social media) that could be used well.
  • Do we need a formal "sponsorship package" to show to potential sponsors? (The SU have some slides on this.)
  • Do we split up our sponsorships into tiers (tiers from mentions on social media all the way up to mentions at events) or just have them be called "generous benefactors" in a unified tier?
  • How do we approach sponsorships in general? We’ve been lucky with Zatu in that they approached us, but that’s not an effective way to continue to get sponsorships.

Discussion

  • We could allow sponsorship of specific events, e.g. Tabletop Weekend. This can be difficult however as corporations can be slow to reply. It could be lots of work for less rewards - we have to advertise the effect of those specific events rather than just ourselves.
  • These companies need to be somewhat relevant (and preferably non-dubious) - however, the most relevant companies are likely to only give us discounts on their stuff like Zatu.
  • Employer sponsors are good because of our demographics (we're mostly STEM) and can open up options. These require a census of what people at Tabletop study, however, and this requires data protection and many responses to actually be a trustworthy statistic for employers.
  • Sponsors could support prizes for the quiz and similar, like CompSoc's WASD prizes.
  • We had some tiers of sponsorship a while ago which were kind of hastily put together, and these accidentally promoted a bidding war ("they've got silver sponsorship? We want gold!") which was profitable.

Actions

  • We really need a "want to sponsor us?" message on the site! (After meeting note: this has been done.)
  • Benjamin will draft some stuff up, which will be discussed in a future meeting.

4. Local Game Stores

Alisdair was in conversation with Big Orbit Games, who were very happy to work with us with regards to WER and other Magic tournament things. Unfortunately according to Wizards of the Coast we're too far away for this to work, so we've had to abandon it. Daniel and Alisdair are going to go back to Games Den to discuss the deal we had and hopefully sort things out.

5. "What's Thomas been up to this holiday?" a new chat show featuring Thomas, our Web Admin, and the work he has done over this holiday

What did Thomas implement this holiday?

  • Database was migrated.
  • Email template was reformatted and shrunk.
  • Email notifications and notification settings in general were added.
  • Improved Markdown editing on mobile.
  • A new timetable system.
  • Image and file uploads without having to log directly into the server.
  • Inventory system for seeing our board game collection and borrowing from it.
  • Old pages moved to a new system.
  • Bug fixes and general cleanup.

What needs doing now?

  • The Privacy Policy needs to be updated as we now use people's email addresses.
  • Code changes need to be checked. (After meeting note: Done.)
  • Email template column maybe squished, but had to be done like that because there's no good way to fix it. (Basically responsive design on web email clients is awful.)
  • Newsletter no longer needs to be sent out by the SU site! (ex-Comms Officer voice) THANK GOODNESS OH MY GOD THAT SENDER IS SO BAD. (After meeting note: It will need to be used a little longer.)
  • Who's updating the inventory? Thomas initially. LARP stuff should probably be inventoried, board games definitely, RPGs hopefully, includes suggestions for things.
  • We need trackable accounts because real names aren't always linked to accounts - having first/last names optional on sign up would be good - Thomas has a plan for that.
  • There was polite applause.

6. Calendar Formatting

Info / To Discuss

  • We’re adding subscribable calendars to the website with all of our events on them! How do we arrange them though?
    • One calendar for all of our events. Means only subscribing once, but you get notified for every event and they don't come up in different colours.
    • One calendar per event (maybe not RPGs) and a calendar for special events. Requires many subscriptions, but reduces unnecessary notifications and can be in different colours.
  • In the latter case, where do events such as RPG Intros go - in special events, in RPGs, or in both? Same issue for postgrad board games.

Discussion / Actions

  • Having events in multiple calendars is not ideal, because of how conflicts are rendered.
  • Might be able to look into smaller text on the website for one calendar per event? Otherwise it's a lot of text - two long links per calendar leads to a very long page.
  • Conclusion: We're going for one calendar per event (not RPGs), and a general special events calendar (for all special events, regardless of faction alignment).

7. The Great British Badge-Off, also including hoodies and statuettes

You can now buy these - thanks Ares/Benjamin! Soon we'll do a super cute promo photo shoot reminding people to buy the badges. There's been discussion of an ally specific badge with a watermark, which has now been mocked up and put online. Reminders: hoodies are on sale until 5th May, badges and friends are up until 12th May. (Luke will get announcements out about those.) Please put funny answers for what you're gonna do as ruler of Britain.

8. RPG Intro Data / FAQ

  • Niamh (ran for Assistant RPG Rep) would like introductory paragraphs about each of the different RPGs run in the society, and Jon (RPGs) agrees.
  • Who's writing these? Various DM/GMs.
  • Where do they go? Via a link on the events page.

Jon is sorting this. Luke has been added to the DMs chat so he can see and publicise games. FAQ discussion moved to next meeting.

9. Discussion of Training (if time)

There wasn't time.

Next Meeting

The following will be discussed, with bracketed members focussed.

  1. Various Discord things - #serious, #external-announcements, moderation in general. (Thomas)
  2. More on FAQs. (Thomas, Jon (RPGs))
  3. SU training discussion. (Benjamin, Ares)
  4. A Discord channel for cool things that happened. (Luke)
  5. Brief discussion on what we charge for board games. (Benjamin, Josh)
  6. Boardgaymes and Equalitea (Ares)

i'm free

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