FANAC ANNUAL MEETING 2/20/2000 at Boskone 37, Framingham, MA
The meeting was called to order at 3:08 PM
Attendance: Joe Siclari, Chairman Judy Bemis, Member-at-Large Peter Barker * Gary Feldbaum Melanie Herz * Laurie Mann Mark Olson Tony Parker Jack Weaver * Ben Yalow
Judy Bemis took minutes, and Laurie Mann typed for the IRC.
Melanie reminded everyone that they owed 2000 dues of $15.00 except Jack Weaver and Becky Peters, who had already paid, and per the minutes, Mark Olson owed an additional $3.00 from 1999, and Ben Yalow owed $15.00 for 1999. Money and checks from several people were collected, a note recording who paid what was written and wrapped around the payments, which was given to Joe Siclari to deliver to Becky Peters.
Joe noted that an agenda had been sent out, and read it. He noted that he wanted to try to limit administrative stuff and keep it simple.
Officers' reports Chairman: Joe reported that the web site is growing and we're up to 20,000 hits a month, and the content continues to grow. Jack asked how much of that might be search robots, and Laurie surmised that it might not be many. We now have over 3,000 photos, and over 11,000 names in the cross-reference list. We should be adding a fanzine database (see later in minutes), and once that happens, we will have even more names. Jack also said he was working on adding a Search Engine to the web site.
Joe feels he's spending too much time on photos and he wants to devote himself more to other projects including membership. We need more people approving and captioning photos. Secretary - Minutes : Melanie said she had emailed two sets of minutes(11/14/1998 and 2/14/1999). There was some discussion on whether these had to be formally approved, and a vote was taken on whether to formally approve. The vote was many to 1, but we decided we should look at the bylaws and decide whether to change them for the future, so we would not have to do this. We then approved the minutes. Joe said the minutes had been sent earlier in the year, but we would try to get the minutes approved more quickly in the future. Treasurer: Mark read the treasurer's report, as follows:
For 1999 the following people paid dues: Mal (Peter Barker) Judy Bemis & Tony E Parker Gary Feldman Melaie Herz Laurie Mann Mark Olson (pd $12) Becky D Peters Edie Stern & Joe Siclari Tom Veal Jack Weaver Total deposit: $177.00
We wrote a total of 3 checks: #1009 Harold Gell (legal relating to MagiCon servicemark) $485.00 #1010 void #1011 Joyce Scrivner $100.00 (to Aussiecon for FanHistoricon) #1012 Fl Dept of State $481.25 for Reinstatement
Joe never submitted the paperwork for repayment of website fees (~$350.00 last year).
I do not have the statements for November, December or January.
The paperwork Bill gave me at the club house turned out to be a NOTICE OF BACKUP WITHOLDING from the bank, not a statement. Per this the IRS says our Taxpayer ID Number does not match the name on the account. After a lot of phone calls and a branch visit it seems that when we put FANAC Inc on our checks (per the bank person's recomendation!) we inadvertantly changed our name and to the IRS FANAC does not match FLORIDA (they go by the first 4 letters.) Friday I go back and they will straighten out our account and return the monies withheld since Dec. 15 1999 - possibly excepting a $50 fee owed the IRS.
The IRS does not want us to submit any paperwork to them, in any format.
Mark noted that this probably means that we have been dropped from the IRS's "active" list, and this often happens to small non-profits - so often that there is a specific form to fix it, and he will work with Becky to get this fixed.
Per today's visit we currently have $61,660.92 which includes the dues for 2000 paid by Jack Weaver and myself.
Melanie noted that last year's meeting showed we had $51,820.76 in the treasury.
Mark noted that we should spend more money where it is feasible to save work. Ben seconded the comment that we need to be spending more money.
Joe noted that in January we received Peter Roberts TAFF report from his SunCon trip in 1977, and we authorized our previously agreed reward ($100) to be paid to the current US TAFF administrator, which will show up on next year's financial report.
Joe also noted the donation made by Don Fitch of $1000, to be used towards continuing to preserve and disseminate Fan History and Fanzines
Joe brought up the idea of funding other fans' fanthologies, or collections of older fans' writings. Ken Cheslin is one fan working on such projects in UK. Ben moved and Mark seconded that we should spend up to $3000 on such projects, either for printing bills, or possibly for a photocopier. The motion passed.
Database report Mark reported that he is trying to combine Joe's fanzine checklist and Bruce's fanzine checklist. Joe's has 13,000 entries and Bruce's has 33,000 entries. However, Bruce's is very antique (designed for old IBM cards, for example) But he has, generally, combined the two. The next step is for Joe and Bruce to review the database and hand-correct. Mark noted that there's also some databases in England - Greg Pickersgill and Rob Hansen, that should be merged in at some point. Mark talked to Mike Scott about the English databases this weekend. And, of course, the English databases are currently incompatible with the American databases. Pat MacMurray also wants to add fanzine material to the database like convention publications. Ben said this should also have a search engine, but many are too big and not robust enough for our purposes. Jack indicated the one our host supplies breaks on our site, and he had been trying to add ht://dig but no success as yet. Mal said he was going to be working on search engines for his day job in the next year, and he might see what he could do to help. Ben said we might eventually want a CGI interface.
Web site report Joe reported that many people were now submitting phots to our web site; Dean Sweatman, Tim Frayser (60's photos), etc. There had been over 200 from non-FANAC sources in the last few months. Jack noted that there were currently over 800 photos to be approved to go up on the site, and he felt the bottleneck was in the approval process rather than scanning.Joe agreed, and said the editorial board (those approving things to go up) needed expanding.
A request had been made recently to use a photo on our page (of John Young from MagiCon)on another site; a wonderful indication of ways we could get further dissemination of our work.
Joe mentioned that there might be an opportunity to put up old fanzines on our site for retro-Hugo awards. There was some discussion of whether this would be graphics, ASCII, or both. Joe said he suspected they would be Gifs or jpegs first because it's faster to get them online.
FHP Membership Joe said he felt it was important for everyone to be active, but there were not enough people working on things; he was still personally doing too much, and therefore being a bottleneck. We should talk on the bounce and set goals for a specific period of time (2 years) and then get more new people enthusiastic to help us to reach the goals.
A part of this could be annual publications, like a Terry Carr collection he has contemplated, fanthologies, or a new edition of a fancyclopedia. Richard Lynch's outline of the history of 60's fandom was also mentioned.
It might be a good thing to update and keep current a projects list, as was done on the Fanhistorica site at one point. Updating the FANAC fanhistory project flyer we had at one point and keeping it in distribution (Corflu, Ditto, Etc.) could also be important.
Waiver for election of officers
Joe said he would like to extend the current officers' terms. Gary and Ben said that there would need to be by-laws changes to do this. Joe said he would like officers to have two-year terms, so we wouldn't have to do this so often. Mark suggested we postpone elections to the NEXT meeting (which will probably be Feb 2001). Gary suggested just relecting the slate. Current offiers are Joe, Melanie, Becky, Judy and Edie. Melanie asked if Becky wanted to continue as Treasurer, and Joe said she had said she was willing to serve. A motion was made and seconded to re-elect the current officers for another one-year term. The motion passed. Joe said he would like to discuss officers and elections on the bounce. We might wind up redoing the by-laws next year to allow longer terms. Joe would like to have a nominating committee in the future.
Joe would now like to discuss future members
Joe would like to get us more active in working on the site, especially Rob. Laurie suggested Joe try to get more of us involved in approving the photos for the site. Jack said he thinks that we need to expand the "Editorial Board" for fanac.org. At the moment it is Joe. Joe noted that Bruce Pelz has been really helpful in photo identification. Joe said we want to attract people. Suggestions were made by various people that periodic publications, a party at Worldcons (?), badge to wear at cons were some ways to do this. Maybe a memory book of photos. It was mentioned that David Hartwell just got the Emishwiller photos that go back to the '40s. It was suggested that we try to get Garth Spencer's Canadian Fan Photos.<<ACTION- Laurie Mann will write to Garth about this, and other Canadian Fan stuff to add We might do a collection of Terry Carr's stuff as a publication. We might be able to encourage people to do fanthologies. (The Seattle Corflu is supposed to be doing a fanthology, we think for 1994.) Jack Weaver mentioned "How about working on Fancy III?", as it has been sitting quite a while with no progress. It was felt to be useful, but there was no immediate enthusiasm. Some of this would be for the site, but some of it would also be just for publication. It was mentioned that a "Worldcon party" might spur the interests of people.
Other Business Melanie Herz mentioned that we are trying to spur the interest of South Florida fans with an open house at our new clubhouse. Since this is where the concentration of our work group is still, it was felt that this would be a useful place to try to get more help, and we moved and passed a $50 contribution to the open house. Joe should see that the brochure we had describing the FANAC project is updated and made available at this event.
It was suggested that the projects page that used to be kept by Timebinders ought to be updated and moved to to a main link off the FANAC home page.
Joe is planning to do the fannish museum for Chicago as an exhibit. Melanie suggested that with the discussion on being more active in FANAC, can we have other members help out at the Fan History Project table in Chicago
Priscilla Olson is doing FanHistoriCon for Philly and will be focusing on Convention History.
The meeting was adjourned at 4:09 PM.
Judy Bemis, recording secretary for the meeting
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