Term 1 Week 2 Exec Meeting

There were a few main takeaways from welcome week. First, there are ways we could better emphasise to the welcome week team how important getting the right rooms and space is, as has been done in the past. Second, a few event-specific comments:

Wargs - emphasise that people can show up whenever so we don't have to deal with everyone showing up at 5 on the dot.

Draft/CCGs - MTG cliqueiness and existing in-groups seems to hurt new player retention, we should search for solutions, will discuss further on exec server.

LARP - Get the uni to be more sure they give us the right rooms and times, possibly remove player number caps because consistently a lot more people sign up than show up (both this year and previous) - despite that, in character stuff worked well as a "we can't really go out rn" backup and still kept interest.

RPGs and BGs ran smoothly.

Future Events

A lot of faction specific plans for tournaments and events this term and next.:

Netrunner - Startup Tournament mid/early term 1, Circuit Opener afterwards.
Potential commander "speed dating" event to help integrate new players into existing pods/get people into games.
Wargames Narrative campaign ongoing, painting session planned to help people get into that side of the hobby.
LARP - Murder mystery week 6-8, and potentially a tournament event in term 2.
RPGs - Something to help people get into their signed up games, encourage running spooky oneshots for Halloweek, Big RPGs in term 2.
Board Games Weekend this next weekend - need to advertise.
Quiz - Will sort round runners next meeting.

Budget/Grants

Again a faction by faction rundown of where they all are - the deadline is the 28th but we're putting in an actual deadline of the 25th to account for any SU-side issues:

Draft have requested £0 as usual - mostly self-sustaining.

CCGs waiting for a few messages to sort out exact budget.

LARP needs a more precise accounting of its current request.

BGs need to sort inventory and space first.

We also need to purchase a replacement banner, business cards, and potentially discuss buying vs designing a new megagame following earlier events in the term (accidentally ripping it and unexpected success in the socs fair.)

ED&I

There was a minor situation at wargames relating to the flavour of some homebrew (not listed here because neither the slide minutes nor this provide an easy way to spoiler/cw text, and because it's not pertinent to the discussion), that was resolved amicably at the event but raises further questions relating to how we handle similar things given the nature of 40k and most other wargame settings - the conclusion was we can only really be reactive because many elements of the game contain potentially distressing content, but can seek to ensure we provide avenues for people to raise that discomfort. This led to discussion of starting an anonymous reporting system.

There was also a comment about the name of the exec channel on the main server (currently #exec-shitposting-and-other-bizniz) and the fact that moderator isn't a sufficient permission to access it - it was discussed that it's probably worth renaming the channel to a more useful description of how it actually functions and formalise that moderating that channel is the responsibility of any exec with moderation duties - this was not deemed a significant extra taskload due to the low post volume there.

Finally, there was discussion of how we can ensure the physical spaces our events are in are accessible, specifically with regards to partially sighted people and wheelchair users, and of looking into making an accessibility focused map of where our events are, nearest wheelchair accessible toilets, etc - as of this meeting notes it was understood that the SU's Disabled Students Officer was sorting a uni-wide version of this but as of typing these notes that appears to no longer be the case.

Any Other Business

Pride, Cypriot, Bobasoc all vaguely interested in collabs and have been pointed to the relevant exec. We could also poke mafiasoc to see if there's interest in them sharing the murder mystery/collaborating on it. A@W and HPsoc are both also notionally interested in loaning board games and haven't yet raised that with Alvis.

We've also discussed sorting merch, and are waiting until we actually have the SU grant so we know what is feasible.

Action Points

Lils - Advertise Tabletop Weekend in newsletter
Alvis, Sophie, Nathan - Sort budget
Matthew - Update handover doc wrt LARP stuff
Fern - get handover doc welcome week room booking notes sorted
Matthew + Nathan - sort Murder Mystery date
Alvis - stuff acquisition
Lewis/Fern - Acquire map w marked room locations (science concourse, basically) disability friendly marked points (toilets, lift) for welcome week, maybe include in handover doc, also makes welcome week stuff way easier.
Ben, Lewis, Lils, Scarlett - Set up and publicise anonymous reporting system (Lewis to manage for now, consider sorting specifics for long term + potential constitution addition?, Scarlett just to add link to website, Ben/Lewis to set up bc it’s just a google form based off one Ben’d already made for school)

Next Meeting

Week 4