Officers meeting minutes

February 2009

ATTENDING

Bill Ritch, President David Benedict, VP Daniel Taylor, Secretary David Carter, Treasurer Ron Butler Nancy Skidmore Jonathan Strickland Hal Wiedeman

Meeting called to order 2-8-2009, 5:15pm

MINUTES:

After corrections, MOTION (db/n) to accept minutes PASSES.

VICE PRESIDENT’S REPORT PRODUCTION

Completed a rough draft of “Island of Dr Marceau”. Waiting to work on Christmas music until after March show. Juliana has secured studio time, so can hand-deliver her song to us. No progress on “Country of the Blind”

LIVE PERFORMANCE

Chattacon: went well.
25th Anniversary, March: All things are go. We have a sax player.
SOUNDS OF LIBERTY: Brad Linaweaver will be in L.A. in March. Will meet with executors of Hamill fund. Bill will pitch five novels to be adapted. Requesting budget of $20k each.

TREASURER’S REPORT No report this month

OLD BUSINESS

Google Analytics – no progress
PoS – DB has assembled list of desired data from sales. DT has downloaded software from Intuit that is FREE (intended to work with QuickBooks).
Speaking of sales: Bill has racks he would like to get removed from his storage facility. Nancy will talk to Cyd about that.

BUDGET

Income vs Outgo: Trends were discussed.
DC examining trends in annual income. We should probably assume spending will be down, thus our annual revenue will be lower.
DB believes that we will have genuine New Product this year, which will positively affect our expected revenue.
DICEHEAD: Jeff Baskin encountered the store owners at Chat, who want to carry our product in their stores. Nancy offered them 40% discount nonreturnable (except in case of defective product).
CONNOOGA wants us next Feb 19-21, 2010. They need to know within the next 3-4 months. They will also be at the Chattanooga Choo-Choo hotel.
CHATTACON: They’ll elect their board this month; then we’ll know if we will be invited to reappear in 2010.
DRAGONCON: We will have to begin negotiations sooner than in previous years.

NEXT MEETING: March 8, 5:30pm

Motion to adjourn db/dc passes.

Daniel Taylor, Secretary, ARTC

January 2009

ATTENDING

Bill Ritch, President David Benedict, VP Daniel Taylor, Secretary David Carter, Treasurer Ron Butler Nancy Skidmore Hal Wiedeman

The meeting was called to order at 5:15pm

MINUTES: MOTION (db/dt) to accept minutes PASSES.

VICE PRESIDENT’S REPORT SOUND IDEAS HD COLLECTION: The drive came in. David C has read the documentation and wishes to make a LINUX copy, just to ensure that we CAN back it up before the intrusion of possible Windows copy protection. RORY RAMMER: David B has concluded that if he doesn’t produce the Rory Rammer project, it won’t happen. This project may be approaching the status of a CURSED production. David is also putting together an outtakes reel. CHRISTMAS: Distributed preliminary edits to Georgia Radio Reading Service. Next major task is to get “Civil War Triptych” into studio. COUNTRY OF THE BLIND: no progress. LIVE CHRISTMAS SHOW: Went well. CHATTACON: We will perform The Gargoyle’s Shadow and Colour Out of Space. 25th ANNIVERSARY KICKOFF, March at Academy Theatre: David B wants to do Blues for Johnny Raven + other short material. Bill relates a suggestion of Hal’s: A presentation of different forms of radio drama, which tells the history of radio. Ron has not yet given any thought to bridging material. DB has asked Juliana Finch to be our “musical guest”. He may also ask Alton to play, since he played so much throughout the Coffeehouse era.

TREASURER’S REPORT Posted and received online.

AGENDA / OTHER BUSINESS: TECH SOUP: The following potentially useful software is available cheaply: Antivirus; QuickBooks Premiere 2009, 1 user $45, 3 users $99; Adobe CS4 $160. COMPUTER DONATIONS: Received from David Benedict’s father’s employer were eight Gateway R1000 desktop computers. Two additional computers were retained by Mr Benedict, who will pay us for them. GOOGLE ANALYTICS: 1&1 provides only basic data mining services. David B is looking into Google Analytics and other alternatives. POINT-OF-SALE SOFTWARE for a laptop: David B wishes to be able to harvest table sales information in a form usable by QuickBooks and manipulable by Access or Excel. There are shareware / open source products that will probably satisfy our needs. Daniel T will look into this. Bill has an older laptop he no longer uses that he is willing to provide for this purpose. BUDGETS: Clarification/Reminder: Today was the deadline for departments having their budget requests ready. This deadline has been extended to the end of January. DB has proposed Production and Marketing budgets Production 6 projects for CD duplication* 3300 Studio time 600 Postage 100 TOTAL 4000 *Six projects: Rory Rammer, Throne of Shadows, Christmas disk a, Christmas disk b, Kissed by a Stranger, All You Zombies. Marketing Rack cards 300 Ads in Showguide, 2 x 850 900 Unexpected opportunities 800 TOTAL 2000 STUDIO: Bill mentioned the possibility of buying a freight container, refitting it for our needs, and having it sit on an unused part of Caran’s family’s land in Chatsworth. This, he estimates, would cost $2,500. For comparison, he estimates the cost of building a studio in Atlanta to be $20,000. He projected that this could happen this summer. DB has some contacts who are looking at the possibility of forming a studio partnership here in the Atlanta area. If they do, they may be amenable to allowing us to utilize their services.

NEXT MEETING Feb 8, 5pm, at Ritch/Wilbanks home unless otherwise announced.

MEETING ADJOURNS.

Daniel Taylor, Secretary, ARTC