MASNA: October, 2004 BOD Meeting Minutes

(This meeting was held electronically on October 6, 2004 9:09 PM EDT)

ATTENDENCE:

BOD Present:

Cheri Phillips (President)

David Anderson (Vice President)

Charles Scannell (Past President/Webmaster)

Amy Larsen (Membership)

Robert Lemcke (Treasurer)

Marc Levenson (Editor)

John Brandt (Industry/Legislation/Ocean Conservation Rep.)

Joe Scavo (Public Relations)

Lee Morey (Secretary)

BOD Absent:

None

Members Present:

Stephen Parker Howard (Pres., WAMAS)

Craig Kuhn (Membership Director, WAMAS)

Tamie DeWitt (Secretary, WAMAS)

Glenn Rosenbluth (VP, WAMAS)

Duane Dennis (At Large Officer, DFWMAS)

Steve Shannon

Bob Castagna (NJRC)

Jon Clements (ORCA)

Kelly Jedlicki (Pres., LMAS)

Nancy Johnson (MASNA Officer emeritus)

OFFICER REPORTS:

NOTE: All officer reports were distributed via email to the BOD in advance of this meeting.  They are inserted into these minutes.

1) President’s Report:

1. MACNA XVI: I received the ordered MASNA vinyl banner, setup the MASNA booth with Chuck and included two large helium balloons (colorful marine fish and a palm tree to go with the theme of our raffle prize). I supplied a raffle jar and tickets as well (thanks to new member, Greg Phillips, for getting the balloons inflated and modifying the raffle jar lid!).
2. I mailed the second and third place MASNA Best Club Website awards to the recipients since no members of either the Las Vegas Marine and Reef Aquarium Society or the Delaware Reef Club were on hand to accept the awards at the MACNA banquet.
3. Helped Amy w/ Membership duties due to her need to concentrate on personal issues.
4. I followed up on a desire to make a list of clubs we could solicit for membership and an idea from Anthony Calfo to provide a database of clubs throughout North America to our members (for networking, visiting while traveling, etc.) I worked with John Link, owner of Reef Central, to pull club information from his database into a spreadsheet. I got club name, the textual description shown on the club forum’s page on Reef Central and a contact eMAIL address in some cases. That became the basis for the MASNA Clubs database with 118 clubs. I added more columns (area, state, country, contact name, contact title, website) and started searching the Internet for information and more clubs. The result was 132 clubs with quite a bit of the desired information for most of them. Chuck turned the spreadsheet into a database, which is now available to all MASNA members at http://www.masna.org/members/clubs.php (thanks Chuck!!). As soon as Search options are available, I’ll send a note out to all the members letting them know about the new feature. Membership can mine the database for contact info to solicit new MASNA members.

I’ve discussed my dream w/ Chuck of the top of this page showing a map of North America with pins showing the locations of each club (maybe different color pins for MASNA member clubs). If someone put the cursor on a pin and clicks, they could see the information in the database for that club. He’s got some ideas on how to make that reality!

5. The MACNA Host Agreement was signed with WAMAS while at the conference. Since then, I’ve reviewed the hotel contract between WAMAS and the Crystal City Hyatt and a revision of the WAMAS by-laws.
6. Followed up on resolution for a complaint from Mark Schreffler (North America Coordinator of MAC), that MAC had been invoiced for their booth. The MACNA host agreement with BRS specified that MASNA, MAC and AMDA all receive complimentary booths

2) Vice President’s Report:

Continued familiarizing myself with the MASNA website and past BOD meeting minutes and Reports. Met with Cheri Phillips to discuss the various initiatives and projects available to MASNA.  In particular, the development of a “MACNA Hosting Guide” could be of significant benefit to any club hosting the MACNA conference.  The guide would essentially represent the collective wisdom of years of successful MACNA event coordination.   Detailed interviews with the Dallas club, Louisville club, and the Boston Reefers Club would yield valuable information regarding their MACNA successes and disappointments e.g., event planning, budgeting, costs, timelines, etc. Also discussed was the prospect of pursuing “Member Discounts” with a number of different MASNA Sponsors.  I look forward to presenting these and other ideas and options to the BOD for its review and consideration as soon as possible.

3) Treasurer’s Report:

Attached is a draft of MASNA's Balance Sheet and Income Statement*. This time I have also provided a detailed report of all of the I&E line items so that Amy and Cherie can determine if their membership records and these financials agree.

I also plan on sending a proposal to change merchant processors prior to this week's BOD meeting.  However, upon further detailed analysis of the various fees, I will have to send my proposal out tomorrow.

[* - Secretary note: due to the size and formatting of the Draft Balance Sheet and Draft Income Statement, they are left as an addendum to the monthly minutes]

4) Membership Officer’s Report:

1. Current Membership:

2. Cheri welcomed the new members; processed and thanked renewals.
3. MACNA XVI Membership Drive: 2 new clubs, 21 new individual members and 1 new corporate sponsor have joined since the start of the conference. That is pretty significant!
4. Cheri talked by phone to the new owner of West Coast Tropical Marine, Ted Deck. He now says they will renew sponsorship. Whether the previous owner’s discounts will be offered is tbd.
5. Amy mailed out snail mail renewal reminders on 9-27-04
6. Amy phoned Joy Meadows and William Montalvo to remind them of renewal on 9-26-04, neither was home. Will make second attempt in the coming week. She also spoke w/ Mark Szwabinsky of Central Ohio Reef Aquarists (CORA) about CORA joining MASNA and answered several private messages on Reef Central (inquires for information on MASNA)
7. Amy composed a template to send to clubs listed in MASNA Clubs database that are not already MASNA members.

5) Secretary’s Report:

• MASNA National Speaker’s Database:

• September BOD meeting minutes were compiled and sent to the BOD.
• Sent announcement of the 9/6/04 BOD meeting to all members and posted in both the MASNA forum on Reef Central and the Announcement forum on Reef.Org.

 6) Editor’s Report:

I’ve been trying to put together a newsletter in HTML from what I have to work with.  One major obstacle for me is that I don't have any graphics ability, so all the GIF files I used are outdated or flat-out wrong.  If someone could generate some new ones, that would be ideal.  Here's a sample newsletter.  http://www.melevsreef.com/masna/sample_newsletter.html I made the newsletter 900 pixels wide, so that it will fit on a 1024 x 768 desktop.  Images and ads need to be 900 wide, maximum. Btw, for some reason the newsletter displays perfectly in Netscape, but in Internet Explorer 6.0 there is an empty void on the right side (you'll noticed your slider bar across the bottom of your browser window).  I spent about an hour trying to figure out what is causing that and I'm clueless. If Chuck or someone else happens to see my error, please let me know what it is. Obviously, I need content for the newsletter, probably new ads (correctly sized for the newsletter),  and updated information regarding the BOD members.  Unfortuantely, much of the info you see is from .gif files that I can't edit and correct myself.  That is why I need a graphics helper. Another thing that would help is if our ads were not GIF files but rather jpeg, as they are smaller in file size.  This allows the newsletter to download more quickly.  One ad is 250,000 bytes which is easily converted to 110k.

Another topic....

You notice in the newsletter that I'm writing an article to explain what MASNA is to the hobbyist.  I honestly feel that is a major obstacle in why membership is so low.  If we can explain the org more easily, I think more would be inclined to be supportive.  We can discuss this more in detail during the meeting.  I'd like to see it become less 'businesss-like' so that hobbyists want to get involved.  We can continue to present the site in a business-like manner, which is probably more important to government agencies checking our behavior when we ask for their assistance/attention, but if we can help those on RC grasp what it is we are doing, they'll be more likely to get behind it. 

7) Webmaster’s Report:

I wrote up an authentication routine which allows a member to sign up and be cookied onto our site with automatic access to what they have access to. No more signing in everything through the old htaccess password verification.  As such all scripts have been changed to include the new authentication routine.

I wrote a little who's online modification as well so we can see who is online.--More of a toy but I personally like seeing who is viewing the site.

I have updated all bod pages as well as listing all proper contacts and emails.  Cheri forwarded an excel file of clubs and I created a clubs page that lists them all. I may adjust that page to display more like our search membership page where there are search options then results.

Basically the cookies and authentication allows us the flexibility to adding more things of value to our membership promoting and hopefully to grow our membership base.

8) Industry/Legislation/Ocean Conservation Representative’s Report:

Attended MACNA and spoke with Drew Weiner, Director of Reef Protection International. Looks like House Bill HR4928 won’t come up for submission or revision until next year.

The USCTRF meeting in Miami has been unofficially rescheduled for December 2 & 3, 2004. I expect it will be announced soon. I’ll make arrangements for it ASAP. Looks like it will be cheaper than the estimated expenses I submitted earlier for the postponed meeting.

9) Public Relations/Internet Promotion Officer’s Report:

Nothing terribly exciting to report.  Here in Beantown, I have been handling/weathering post-MACNA issues etc.

Thoughts:

- Improving club inter-connectivity through the article database we had discussed

- Commerce to bring traffic to the site.  Mugs, etc.

- Increasing exposure on forums such as RC etc.

MEETING CALLED TO ORDER 9:09 PM EDT:

10) MACNA Update/Discussion:

·         Hotel contract with Hyatt Regency Crystal City is in corporate ratification process

·         macnaxvii.com has been updated with a request for paper from speakers and other information

·         WAMAS has become incorporated in Virginia

·         Currently finalizing bylaws and concentrating on 501c3 status

·         Meeting October 9 with Drew Weiner and Eric Borneman

·         Working on credit card processing process (K. Jedlicki strongly recommended that WAMAS check into getting a merchant account, D. Dennis recommended Authorize Net for credit card processing)

·         Sales: 50 pre-registrations for full conference, 20 booths in premium space sold

·         Legal liability concerns regarding damages to hotel from a potential aquarium leak discussed.  Discussed having a water extraction company on-call for conference.

·         Advertising at pet trade shows, such as Backer discussed.  Other sales techniques such as telephone calls, and magazine advertisements discussed.

·          Discussion of setting up a MACNA email list or a message board dedicated to communications regarding the conference.

11) Discussion of MASNA Marketing:

·         MASNA needs to get their name out to the hobbyist community, perhaps via an article in one of the online periodicals

·         Consider having a higher profile a MACNA

·         Concentrate on providing tangible rewards for membership, such as coupons, speaker databases, etc.

·         Consider the purchase or trade of banner space with some of the on-line communities, such as Reef Central or member reef clubs websites

·         Consider producing an informational package to explain how MASNA membership dues are spent

12) Motion made by M. Levinson to move to an electronic format only newsletter.  No second.  Referred: further discussion and a possible poll of membership for response.

13) Discussion of creating a MASNA forum to foster BOD conversation.  C. Scannell said that he’d set it up.

14) .J. Scavo said that he’s interested in promoting MASNA via the online boards.

15) General discussion regarding newsletter and advertisements.

16) Motion by C. Scannell to accept September minutes. Second R. Lemcke.  Passed 8 ayes, 0 nays.

17) Motion to adjourn meeting to general discussion made by C. Philips, seconded by C. Scannell.  Passed 8 ayes, 0 nays; at 10:48 PM EST.

Submitted:  November 3, 2004, Lee Morey