BQPA/PIONEERS
Barbershop Quartet Preservation Association
Minutes:
BQPA/Pioneers Board of Directors’ Meeting
Attending:
Prez
Noble called the meeting to order at
The list of Departed Friends was read, noting especially that BQPA member Cal Revis, for years our eastern festival photographer, had passed away earlier this year. We noted also the passing of Gene Cokeroft, the tenor of the Suntones, and James Sabina, the tenor of Metropolis. A reverent rendition of The Old Songs was sung in their memory.
In addition, we mentioned that our long time member Emmett Bossing was not well, and hoped that we could contact him in hospital later in the week. We also noted that Dr. Greg Lyne is laid up with COPD, and we asked for thoughts and prayers to be sent his way.
Martin
moved the minutes of the previous meeting be approved as posted on the
BQPA website
Gallagher sent a Treasurer’s report to Noble, who passed out copies to the attendees. A graph was also provided, showing trends for our treasury balances after receipts and expenses. It was noted that the balance prior to the 2015 Tempe Festival was $6597.18, but it had dropped to $5402.56 just before this Chicago gathering, due to the higher expenses in Tempe and the significantly smaller than expected total of donations at that event.
Gallagher’s
comments noted that our members have been donating an average of $10
per Festival, but that breaking even in
There was some discussion of options, such as changing to a less expensive venue, asking for more generous donations, and making it clear that we fund our festivals exclusively via our donations. Carroll emphasized the prices one would pay for the breakfasts we consume, and the cost of our gathering rooms, should be clearly conveyed to our membership.
Schwartzkopf suggested making it clear, using a meter or thermometer display at our registration table, where the state of our donations stands, during our Festivals.
Noble noted that there had been a discussion of this issue with our membership via email within the past month or so, and changing our venue was not a preferred option as tallied from the response received. The sense of the meeting was that we should be bringing to the attention of our members that we need to fund our Festivals in a way which does not result in an excess of expenses over revenues.
Milner moved that the Treasurer’s Report be received; Carroll seconded, and the motion passed.
Actions Taken Since Last Meeting:
Our Key Notes song list is now a full one-sided page, with a flier on the reverse side. These have been distributed at various barbershop events for some months. The file is now available on the BQPA website, so it can be duplicated by our members.
The Communications and Public Relations Committee sent regrets; Noble will provide their report later in the meeting.
VP
–
InSuites guest rooms would run about $85, with free breakfast, and they would offer a meeting room to accommodate 90 to 100 seats for $100 a night. However, a bikers’ group has reserved all the guest rooms for 2016.
Holiday Inn & Suites would offer guest rooms for $99, and a meeting room for $200 a night, to accommodate up to about 150 people, for our 2017 gathering. This facility does not offer an airport shuttle; it might be possible to make arrangements with a vendor such as SuperShuttle.
Milner
will be continuing the search for a less expensive venue in the
In
the meantime, the dates for the 2016 Festival have been posted on our
website:
VP-East Carroll reported that the important part of the negotiation session, that he and Schwartzkopf had with the folks at the Hillside Best Western for the 2015 festival, lasted no more than about 10 minutes, segueing to pleasant general conversation. Carroll reports that Don Fee may not be as involved with our arrangements in future, but our relations with John at HBW seem to be reasonable. For this year, the guest room rate remains the same, and our meeting room continues to be provided gratis, making our eastern festival expenses significantly lower than for the western gathering. It was noted that Best Western no longer has the larger van they provided in past years, but Carroll indicated that other informal arrangements will be made for shuttling to and from a Saturday evening steakhouse meal. Carroll will also contact Felix in regard to providing the raised stage for our various sessions in the meeting room.
Schwartzkopf
reported that the talent for our Saturday Parade was arranged for. He also discussed
the judging for the Friday evening Pick-up Quartet Contest. Theunsatisfactory rotational judging method, applied at
the 2015
In passing, Schwartzkopf mentioned the challenges for getting talent due to the Sweet Adelines having an educational weekend that conflicts with our gathering, and the Village Vocal Chords, the Harmony, Inc. champion chorus, has their International prep retreat at the same time.
Schwartzkopf defined our gatherings as the “do it yourself convention”, which is a new and interesting way of describing what we do. We should use this description in PR releases hereafter.
Milner gave a Webmaster’s report, emphasizing the conversion of all of our Word documents and PDF files to the HTML format, which has resulted in enormously faster loads of such files to the website screens. This also greatly enhances the speed of operation of our website on portable devices. The security of our website archives is ensured by regularly exchanging flash drives with Noble, who stores them in a safe deposit box.
Fliszar gave a report on the Membership database, which has been upgraded significantly over the past year. New reports were described, which will be provided electronically to all board members and appointees once updates from the current festival are applied.
There are now reports for Active Members, Festival Attendance, New Members, and Deceased Members. There is also a ten-year festival venue report, which assembles some details on our festivals.
Fliszar is in the process of generating operational instructions for the databases he administers, so that there is succession assistance for whomever might succeed Fliszar.
A later discussion pointed out that the membership reports should have “BQPA/Pioneers” as the main heading, with “Barbershop Quartet Preservation Association” as the sub-head. Fliszar agreed to make this change for future runs of the reports.
Regarding disaster recovery, the membership database is backed up on a flash drive, which is exchanged with the copy stored in Noble’s safe deposit box at every festival.
June Noble gave the Registrar’s report. At the Spring Festival, the total signed-in membership was 71, including 4 new members. The Friday “house” was at least 55 (the count having been taken after Bill Freck was taken ill.) The Saturday “house” was 95. Our average attendance for the past 10 festivals was 101.4.
As of the BOD meeting, there were 45 membership pins in stock. There was discussion regarding a possible re-order of pins, but action was tabled for later consideration.
Touslee and Carroll suggested colored self-adhesive dots to be applied to the name badges at registration, to demonstrate attendance at each festival, but nobody volunteered to provide these…
The Communications and PR report was given by Noble since the committee members were not in attendance. Big-screen ads have appeared at BHS International, and last year at the Harmony, Inc. International and the Mid-Atlantic District conventions. The Key Notes song list is now printed on the reverse side of the BQPA Flyer, which is customized for each upcoming festival, and these have been placed at a number of barbershop events by various BQPA members.
Press releases have gone to various barbershop bulletins, and announcements and articles have been seen in some of those bulletins, including the BHS LiveWire. We have established a Facebook “Page” (outward-facing) in addition to our Facebook “Group” (inward-facing, requiring a subscription.) Better methods to spread the information on our Page need to be discovered, but the easiest methods for pushing this info “out there” are to share the page and to post to the Page one’s happy experiences at a festival.
Earlier this year, snail-mail was sent to members not on our Google Group, to encourage them to join that Group. As a result, we added on the order of 50 additional members of the Google Group, so our mass emails should get to more of our interested folks.
The
Google Group is still “owned” by Keith Hopkins, who initiated the
Google Group in June of 2005, but Martin and Noble are administrators.
Schwartzkopf raised the question of whether we have, or want, a means of electronically gathering members’ intentions for attending our festivals. The point was made that we could initiate a Facebook “Event”, which would permit the user to indicate interest and/or intent to attend, but it would cover only those BQPA members who are also on Facebook – perhaps a minor contingent of our overall membership. No interest was evidenced for following up on this topic.
At
Martin asked for ideas for expanding – doubling – our attendance. None were put forward.
New
Business: Moving
to a location other that the
Tom Neal has contacted Noble, reporting that Jack Baird’s archive of early barbershop quartet recordings has gone off-line at the BHS. Neal is suggesting that BQPA/Pioneers acquire and host the archive. Eddie Holt at BHS has indicated that the disk drive containing the archive is not currently on the BHS systems, but that BHS intend to re-establish the link as soon as it can be arranged.
Schwartzkopf suggested that technical details might permit linking the archive to our current website. Milner indicated that size estimates might make this feasible. Discussion continued, but no action resulted at this point. Noble will contact Holt at BHS to discuss the feasibility of such a transfer.
Meeting
adjourned a few minutes after
Respectfully submitted, for the Secretary, Tom Noble