2019/20 Term 1 Week 1 Exec Meeting Minutes

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4 Oct 2019

Posted by Finnbar ( Avatar for finnbar finnbar )

[Lights spin, big band music plays, crowd cheering. The camera pans to a visibly tired host wearing a purple hoodie, non-binary pride pins, skinny jeans and very cool boots. They look visibly tired, and also somewhat clueless.]

Finnbar: Hello everyone and welcome to the Meeting Minutes Olympics! Where I attempt to write two sets of meeting minutes in one sitting! Intrigue! Excitement! Sleepiness! We'll continue with the second set of minutes for today shortly, but first let's look at the highlights of the last set. Run VT!

[A video of our host sitting at a computer in the Computer Science department plays. They type a bit, swap tabs a lot and groove along to some cool music. It's deeply unexciting.]

Finnbar: [looking at the lack of audience who all left after realising how boring watching this would be] where'd they all go

You can view the full PowerPoint meeting minutes on Google Slides This meeting was conducted on 4/10/19 at 1400-1500 in B2.03 Published 5/10/19, although admittedly finished the next day

Introduction

Exec Present

Finnbar (Secretary)
Callum (President)
Ares (Draft, Graphic Design)
Benjamin (Treasurer)
Jakub (LARP)
Josh (Boardgames) Jon Cheah (Wargames)
Anakin (Assistant RPG)
Ellie (CCGs)
Jon Bell (RPGs) Tim (Quartermaster)

Also Sol (non-exec) was here, hi Sol

Exec Absent (all with apologies)

Thomas (Web Admin) Luke (Comms)

Orders of Business

  1. Welcome Week Retrospective
  2. Shrinking our board games collection
  3. Budget
  4. Escape Room Update
  5. Volunteering Update
  6. Lost Property?
  7. Quiz?
  8. IS IT BOARDGAMES OR BOARD GAMES

Content

Reminders and Updates

  1. Socs Forum was uneventful. You can find my amazing notes on Discord (or by contacting me), nothing much worth mentioning other than the effective death of the Event Planning Pack.
  2. Open Day Socs Fair is tomorrow. Please arrive for your slot, or contact me if there's issues.
  3. Westwood storage sorted (thanks Jakub!) We need to move stuff out of there today and move it to the new storage a few days later.
  4. WE HAVE LOCKS ON OUR CUPBOARDS!!! After literal years of chasing up people, there are now locks. The code is pinned in Exec Discord, please don't distribute it...
  5. Postage problems. Two of Ares' parcels sent to the SU were rejected, apparently they may not have had the society name on them (Ares is certain they put it on there). Who knows what happened, just be careful and maybe consider alternate provisions when buying society stuff. This meant we were a few packs short for the M20 draft last week.

1. Welcome Week Retrospective

Wargames

Lots of games were run, everyone eventually got a game. We went through all the possible games right at the start, which was handy as people gravitated towards the games they liked the sound of. Retention was good the next week. Jacques made a very sensible comment which I agree with: allow more setup time next time, we had to stall people because setting up many tiny warfigures took longer than hoped.

Draft

There were 31 people there, which is amazing! We've had to order extra boxes of product for next week. Organising everything was difficult due to numbers, but all sorted and even finished on time. Other points:

  • Promos provided by Ellie, for future we have a few leftover promos (literally just found on a shelf in Games Den) but these need to last us until Christmas.
  • Goodish retention with 24 people in week one (some of which hadn't even shown up to the Welcome Week draft).
  • For next year: make sure there are enough knowledgeable people to take charge and run a pod.

Boardgames

Numbers were huge - we ended up using three rooms (B2.01/2/3) although it got much calmer after 6pm. A good variety of games were played (not just Coup...) although they're still small games - with fewer people attending in later weeks we can wean them onto bigger games. Retention was still good in week 1, but we probably don't need to book extra rooms yet.

CCGs

Unsurprisingly dominated by Magic - many new Magic players appeared of mixed abilities. Hannah did a lot of teaching, so in future we need to make sure there are enough people around to teach during the entire session because new players streamed in throughout (rather than just at the start).

Netrunner had a few new players as well, along with one experienced player! Woo, go Netrunner!

Yu-Gi-Oh was well represented at Societies Fair but not at the actual CCGs session - they seem to arrive later and have many fewer players.

Finally, Top Trumps was discussed as an alternative CCG.

RPGs

Many points were discussed!

  • 22+ games were run (of which only about half were D&D). Benjamin did a particularly good job of pointing out the non-D&D games while everyone was choosing what to play.
  • Didn't have difficulties with rooms only because Jon checked beforehand and found they were all locked. The Porters hadn't been notified by the Welcome Week team - next time we should tell the Welcome team to do this (why they didn't is a mystery).
  • We couldn't fit everyone in Soc Sci Cafe, so we moved outside where it was difficult to hear. Should try to get a room like LIB1 for the start next year, or a megaphone...
  • We had one extra player drop in and a few drop out early - advertising was clear on the nature of this event but people didn't read it. We do need to make it clear in future that this event isn't the only way into a campaign though.
  • Pub visit was extremely popular and left us with not enough seats (we tried to increase booking size but weren't able to). Booking was in Finnbar's name rather than the society's - this caused confusion for early arrivers so should be in society name if able next time.
  • Website events went too quickly - we need to stop autohiding events when they're full as otherwise it looks like nothing is running.

LARP

People enjoyed it, and the rain didn't stop the event! Seemed like a smaller cohort but that's partially due to fewer regulars. We'll see what happens next weekend! [After meeting note: uhhh there were fewer people.]

2. Shrinking our Boardgames Collection

Some of our boardgames get less love than others, and some of those get even less love. Also we don't have much space. We decided that getting rid of them would be sensible, and could get us a little money, so an auction will be discussed in future for members to get these games very cheaply.

[After meeting note: those looking at the slides may see the Unnamed Disturbing Game. This has now been removed, and thus the collection is no longer haunted.]

3. Budget

With membership fees, incoming payments for socs fair and SU boardgames, we're doing okay now! Benjamin will update the budget accordingly.

4. Escape Room Update

I'm just going to copy the slide because there's too much going on in it.

  1. We’re running an escape room in week 5. How’s planning for that going?
    1. We have the main logistics down.
    2. Cannot set up ticketing until the SU get their asses into gear and release the new way to do it without event planning pack.
    3. Need to amend risk assessment.
    4. We have yet to plan out the puzzles properly (planning session set, also employing Alex Dixon hopefully).
    5. And a lot of prop gathering/purchasing needs to take place.
  2. How can you get involved to help our burden?
    1. If you don’t want to run the room and want to help with design/puzzles, let me/Finnbar know asap so we can add you to organisation channel.
    2. If you do want to run the room but still want to help, we need serious help gathering props. Please peruse the props list I pinned in general. We especially need empty/clean alcohol bottles of interesting shapes. I am storing stuff in my office! Any prop suggestions on the theme of space wizard/plant witch also appreciated.

Actions: Callum and Jakub need to work out how to amend the Risk Assessment.

5. Volunteering Update

Back in term three, Warwick Volunteers (WV) approached us about creating a lunchtime boardgames club in a local secondary school. Benjamin and Finnbar have been working hard on this, and have:

  • Suggested games for the school to buy.
  • Filled in WV's website with the details.
  • Advertised the club at the week's events.

There still needs to be some other advertising for it done (on Discord / Facebook) but otherwise everything is going well. Aim to start it after half term.

6. Lost Property Policy

We have a bunch of lost property that might not even be from society events taking up space in our cupboards. We should try and work out what to do with this. After some discussion, the following was decided:

  • Any lost property that's obviously from a society event (e.g. dice, playmats) will be put in a small box and kept. That doesn't take up much space.
  • Any other lost property will be given to the SU.

In both cases, we'll advertise this to our members.

7. Quiz

We ran out of time to discuss this.

8. IS IT BOARDGAMES OR BOARD GAMES

I'm gonna copy the slide again:

  1. Callum: It’s boardgames
  2. Callum: You’re wrong
  3. Finnbar: uhhhh it depends on the context, “boardgames” for the event and “board games” is the noun
  4. Random bystander: why do you care about this
  5. Ares, banging head on office desk:
    board games. Boardgames is common enough now, but we need to stick to one, and board games is the correct way grammatically. I already went through this info quest personally when starting out with advertising material.

No actual resolution was made.

Next Meeting

  1. Quiz
  2. Auction