Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 20:23:17 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl at KeithLynch.net>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Minutes of the August 6th meeting are online
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

Madeleine Yeh wrote:
> Congratulations Keith, that's real fast work.

Thanks.  I figure it doesn't take any longer to do it sooner than to
do it later.  And my memory is fresher.  Between my memory, my written
notes, and my tape recorder, I have a pretty good chance of accurately
reporting anything that's given to me in writing.

Actually, it might have taken a little longer this time, since I had
Wade scan in the flier that John distributed.  Then I had to proofread
it to fix the typos (scanos?) the scanner introduced.  A day later,
John emailed the flier to this list.

Ten egoboo points to the first person to find the one tiny difference
between the flier in the minutes and the flier he emailed to this
list.  (I'm not counting the Microsoft garbles he used in place of
apostrophes, quote marks, and hyphens.)

The flier in the minutes is identical to the flier distributed at
the meeting.

Erica Ginter wrote:
> I move we buy Keith a longer tape!

No need.  As I mentioned in the minutes, there was one whole second of
tape left.  (Seriously!)  Perhaps I should be admonished for spending
the club's money on a one hour tape when I only needed a 59 minute 59
second tape.

Maybe I could use the remaining tape on that cassette to record the
first second of the next meeting.  Then I'll ask the meeting to pause
while I hurriedly swap tapes.

Barry L. Newton wrote:
> Rather, move that the presiding officer gets the hook if the meeting
> goes over an hour.

How many minutes shall we spend debating that motion at the next
meeting?

I think the best way to speed things up is to cut out the side
conversations.  No matter how quietly people think they are talking,
they can be heard all over the room, and it really does interfere.
We have the whole rest of the night for side conversations.  People
who aren't interested in the formal meeting can stay upstairs or can
arrive after it ends.

Michael Walsh wrote:
> It's a little intimidating the first few meetinfgs, everything you
> knew about - or thought you knew - about running a meeting turns
> into guacamole and comes out your of ears.

Try participating in a meeting while writing down everything everyone
says.  Especially when it's your own turn to speak.  Or when someone
passes you something to immediately read and sign.

At least I've finally mastered the art of writing while I have a hand
raised.  (It helps if I use different hands.)

> Plus, we do have a tradition of having the Worldcon meeting be
> reasonable fast - and that's in a few weeks.

We have one more meeting before that.

Meetings have been long recently because so many things have been
going on:  Noreascon is coming up soon, Noreascon's first night is
coming up soon, new t-shirts, new membership cards, new membership
ribbons, the anthology, and Capclave is coming up semi-soon, as is
the Capclave table at Noreascon.  Not to mention SMOFcon.  And Mike
Nelson took five and half minutes to say what I distilled into two
paragraphs:  That we're bidding for the 2011 Worldcon.

Actually, it's still not clear whether that's a *WSFA* bid or not.
After all, the '98 Baltimore Worldcon wasn't a BSFS project, nor is
Noreascon a NESFA project.  I notice he also didn't say if he wanted
volunteers for the bid table and the bid party at Noreascon.

Noreascon will be over in a month, and Capclave will be over in a
little more than another month.  And of course we'll all have our
shirts, cards, and ribbons by then.  So meetings should get shorter.
Presumably it will be a long time before there's much to report on
the 2011 Worldcon bid.  Especially if the WSFAns in charge of it
don't show up at most meetings, as is the case with SMOFcon.

I haven't gotten much feedback about the minutes themselves.  What do
people think of my longer format?  Note that I've started putting a
brief summary at the bottom.

Wade pointed out that I left out a chair collapse.  I responded that
since it collapsed before the meeting started, it didn't count.