Winter 2016 Admin Meeting
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Contents
- 1 Agenda
- 2 Notes
- 2.1 Introduction
- 2.2 Amyrlin Seat
- 2.3 Keeper
- 2.4 Shatayan
- 2.5 Archivist
- 2.6 Department of Marketing
- 2.7 Department of Events and Conferences
- 2.8 Department of Technology
- 2.9 Department of Community Outreach
- 2.10 Department of Administration
- 2.11 Department of Membership
- 2.12 Department of Research and Records
Agenda
Amyrlin
amyrlin@tarvalon.net
- Address update
Keeper
keeper@tarvalon.net
- Hall Winter break
- Director position requirement
CFO/Shatayan
shatayan@tarvalon.net
- Taxes
Archivist
archivist@tarvalon.net
- Merits
Moderators & Operators
moderators@tarvalon.net
- No agenda items
Marketing
marketing@tarvalon.net
- Zazzle store
Events & Conferences
events@tarvalon.net
- Da'covale Outreach
Technology
technology@tarvalon.net
- Welcome new Director
- Membership database
Community Outreach
outreach@tarvalon.net
- Scholarship
- Avendesora
Administration
administration@tarvalon.net
- Dissolution
Membership
membership@tarvalon.net
- Bonding
- Staff position: Assistant MoNR and MoAS
Research
research@tarvalon.net
- Welcome new Director
- Companion
- Quotes
Notes
Written by Rhed al'Tere, Amyrlin Seat, unless otherwise specified
Introduction
Welcome to the Admin Meeting Discussion for Winter 2016!
Amyrlin Seat
No big topics! You can see my goals for 2016 here.
One thing to note is that we will be updating our official address in 2016. We are incorporated in Alabama, and we'd been using Dralyn's address; she now has a new address and it will be more convenient for us to have mail sent directly to her rather than the previous address.
Keeper
We will start having a defined winter break in the Hall. There is often low activity over the holidays, and people have extended waits for raising decisions. (Clarification from discussion thread: Due to the lull in activity over that period and the time the Hall takes to respond to raisings, the suggestion serves to prevent applicants waiting unnecessarily long)
We wanted to make a formal policy of an unwritten rule. If a person retires from an Executive level position (Director or Officer), there will be a 6-month period in which they are ineligible for admin positions. There are several reasons for this: 1. It gives new people a chance to get into an admin position. 2. We don't want to look like we're favoring one person, or one group of people, over and over for "good" positions. 3. It gives the former Exec a chance to have a cooling down period from being all official-like and enjoy their time as a regular old Senior Member.
Shatayan
Taxes are done!
Archivist
- Merits
We discussed hiring a Merit Administrator. At this time, we believe that once the current merits have been released and updated, keeping track of future merits should require only one person, not a team, unless new merits are introduced. We will transform the Merits team into a Merits Historian who will report to the Director of Research and Records and will interact frequently with the Archivist. We will aim to have merits released quarterly.
Department of Marketing
Zazzle has been dropped, as it earned $0. Social Marketing is progressing well. Twitter may eventually be dropped; the team has revamped how they use Twitter, and what they post.
Department of Events and Conferences
- Anni 2016
Only 27 people have registered, but we shouldn't lose money on this event.
- Outreach
We will need someone to run da'covale at Anni, possibly the head of the entertainment committee. We are looking into local charities for outreach other than Ronald McDonald House.
- Euro 2016
We will be going to Stavanger, Norway, on September 23-25, at a ticket price of 1100NOK. We expect to open registration in the second quarter.
- Fall Ball 2016
The venue is not yet confirmed, but we hope for a place and date by the end of January.
Department of Technology
Welcome Mendo! I'm very glad to have you on the team, and I can't wait to start asking you dumb tech questions.
Right now, the Membership Database planning is stalled. Mendo will see if it can get rolling.
Department of Community Outreach
Avendesora is under way and leaves should be added to people's Who's Who pages soon. The draw for Anni tickets from the Feast of Lights has happened, and winners notified. Winners unable to attend can transfer their ticket to an attendee. Twenty-one people made 33 submissions of service during Feast of Lights. Well done, Tar Valon!
A question was raised about our scholarship and if former Directors of CO should be allowed to apply. The Exec team discussed this, and we agreed that we will treat the scholarship like an admin position for the Director of Community Outreach only -- in other words, a retired Director of CO will have to wait 6 months after retiring before applying for the scholarship.
Department of Administration
As you may know, we put out a call for applications for Director of Administration late last year. In the same timeframe, we received a proposal of how to better divide our resources in the Department of Administration, and the Keeper and I thought it was a good proposal. We discussed it at the Admin meeting, and everyone present at the meeting was in favor of or amenable to the decisions and breakdown outlined below.
Essentially, we are dissolving the Department of Administration. However, the sections of DoAdmin will all find homes in other departments.
- Applicant tracking: The Keeper will handle this, as she already gets all the applications for staff and admin positions anyway.
- Annual Report and Membership Survey: These two teams will report to the Director of Research and Records, since these are, in essence, records of our community.
- Membership Activities Coordinator (MAC): Report to the Keeper. (This will help the MAC work more freely with all department heads.)
- Legal Research Team: Because this team does a lot of research for events, they will be moved under the Department of Events and Conference, and may be given a new name, to be determined.
Department of Membership
A proposal was put forward to hire a staff assistant for the MoNaR and MoAaS. The Exec team feels that a more detailed proposal of what the position would entail will be required before we make a decision.
- Bonding
A detailed proposal to allow all Gaidin a second bond was submitted. According to the proposal, Aes Sedai are currently discouraged because there are no available Gaidin and allowing a second bond would increase the pool of available people and increase involvement and retention. It was also stated that earning 5 merits to get the extra bond is too difficult.
As a group, we were not convinced. Bonding doesn't seem to increase retention currently or have any effect on community activity , though this could be confirmation bias on both sides. We decided to look into the current bond statistics to see what proportion of bonds are taken, how many people have an extra bond available, and if there is any correlation between having a bond and remaining active.
We will include questions on the Membership Survey, and review results from the survey and the data gathering at the summer admin meeting. We again discussed same-rank bonds (Aes Sedai-Aes Sedai or Gaidin-Gaidin), and decided we will not open that up.
Department of Research and Records
General: Welcome Kerna! Very excited to have you in the Exec team, and looking forward to working with you.
We have a re-read happening! Now! Here! There's also a book club, the Tar Valon Book Club (TVBC) that has four books chosen.
- Quotes
An update in the library allows a random quote on Wiki pages. Kerna currently has 45 quotes from New Spring that randomize on Wheel of Time pages, and will be working to expand the collection of quotations from WoT, as well as safe-for-sharing quotations from real life events.
- Companion
Kerna and team are working on updating the Library to include limited information from the Companion, such as full name and nationality of people. More specific information such as strength will not be included, but we may collate the information to present it in a form not available in the Companion, such as lists of channellers by strength or people know to be over 200 years old.
- Membership Survey
The Survey will run in May, as that seemed to work well last year.
