Auckland Committee Meeting - April 2012

nzLARPS
#1

NZLARPS AUCKLAND COMMITTEE MEETING – 4th APRIL 2012

Present: Mike Curtis, Anna Klein, Adam Parsons, Zara Parsons, Cameron Burns, Luisa Parkinson, Dave Agnew, Phillip Brown (late)

Apologies:

Absent:

Opened: 19:45

Minutes:

• March’s minutes
o Changes to be made:
 Anna to update constitution with Cameron.
 Add Zara and Adam’s offer to store gear, Anna’s query and Zara’s rescinding.
 There was a discussion about whether we could legally hold events to which not all people who are members of the society are able to attend.
 IRD confirmed we are a not-for-profit organisation
 Muppet sent an apology.
• Action Point: Cameron to investigate
o Action Point: Zara to update

• Accounts
o Anna has not yet had a chance to checkout banks for more accounts as she want to check accounting ramifications with accountant first. – didn’t happen due to personal reasons
o Action: She will do it this month instead.
o Unfortunately as we made money last year this means we owe $367.80 tax.
o Anna has not done this as she needs to talk to Hamish about it first.
o We discussed what big ticket purchases we have made before. They have all been listed as assets; we will change this in future.
• Gear
o Anna has made 8 new giant black robes to replace the ones sent to Wellington.
o Action: Anna will submit receipt.
o Mike submits receipt for reimbursement for shipping gear to Wellington.
o Scouting mission to Hannah’s Mum’s place
 In Kelston – not near motorway
 Where she wants us to put the shed is on a slope. We will need a builder to help level and erect the shed. Discussed who we could get to help do this. We should ask the community for anyone who could help with this.
 Other option is discussing moving a cinderblock wall with Hannah’s mum.
 Action Point: organise a group of people to go and delegate with Hannah’s mother.
o Shed is stored at mike’s place atm.
o Shed is going to need more roofing screws, rivets, and at least six people to help put it up. Six people who have experience with rivet guns. It will be a whole project on its own.
o Paid storage – Anna hasn’t gotten around to looking at this. Will look into it this month.
o Cameron’s parents as storage is a no-go.
o Hobbiton – Zara and Adam are heading down south next week and will hopefully be able to organise a date then to meet up with Jared and check it out.

• Player code of conduct:
o Anna will do next month
o Mike still to talk to Scot about time lines.

• Finance report
o Going well. A lot of money sitting in the account at the moment as a lot of people have paid for Teonn already. There is also a lot in the Wellington account from Hydra. Vast quantities are expected to go out to pay for these events. There is roughly $2500 in the Auckland account that is not allocated to games.
o Teonn day game actuals need to be submitted. These are known to be positive though.
o Concern was raised over participants in games paying for their game. Particular participants are repeat offenders and this is a real problem. This is not a common problem, but is becoming a serious issue.
o Everyone’s agrees something needs to be done.
o Suggested actions: Anyone who does not pay for an event, must pay any owed moneys before they are allowed to attend another event.
o Possibility that project managers could limit these repeat offenders.
o Auckland committee could set a limit on an amount of money people owe and then could notify project managers about the risk these people pose and take steps to recover money.
o Wording was discussed
o Action Point: Anna will start an email paper trail to the participants chasing up owed money.

• Marketing Report
o Anna suggested getting in touch with motat about getting a stall again at Aether and Iron. We have all the promotional material for this already.
 Action Point: Cameron will assist Dave in this.
o We discussed what games we could re-run for new comers.
o Muppet reports we have huge numbers of new players coming to Teonn. We are being almost too successful at recruiting new larpers.
o Anna has noticed Larp goes in phases. We are in a growth phrase at the moment. She expects we will plateau next year.
o Need to get the newsletter up and running again.
 Suggestions were made as to good things to include in the newsletter.
 Action Point: Dave try to get one out by the end of the month.
o Adam requested help in recruiting new players for Defence Mariumburg.

• Gear librarians report
o Gear is now stored at Anna’s, at Mike’s and in the Trailer until we can store it somewhere more permanently.
o Knightshade did not have enough weapons for crew as a significant number of weapons were not larp safe. A suggestion was made to have a gear day to do something to repair and assess these.
o We also need some more weapons. We will look at purchasing more weapons in July near the end of the financial year.
o We also need to take stock of the make-up. Preferably before Teonn.
o Action Point: Semi-professional make-person to look at our stocks and come up with recommendations. Anna to organise.

• Upcoming Larps and game proposals
o Defence of… game series proposal submitted.
o Each is supposed to be a three or four hour game.
o Defence of Mariumburg budget submitted. Loss is expected so actuals will be expected to be submitted.
o Committee votes for approval: unanimously approved.
o Winterdale: Series of Victorian larps set in the Winterdale intellectual society. Ten games over two years, one every school holidays effectively. Because of concern over costs of venues in upcoming games, the day games are planned to make a profit for the weekend game. Currently only the project is being proposed. Budget for each event will be presented as the project continues. Most games 10-20 pre written character games. Minimal gear required from NZLARPS because of little Victorian gear. Clarification that gear stored outside of the gear shed is still property of NZLARPS.
• Gear
o Where gear is being stored needs to be sorted before next Teonn.
o Hannah’s mother wants to make sure that she knows at least one of the people who is accessing the gear at all times.
o Write a procedure for accessing gear for games.
o Action Point: Mike to arrange 4 people to go and meet her.
o Mike proposed that when we access gear at Hannah’s mother’s house for large weekend games we take her some flowers or other small thank you gift – this will be put forward as part of the proposal that will be created for this.
o We need to start communicating to GM’s that no wet gear is no be put away. It needs to be clean and dry before it is put away.
o Trailer – leaks. Mike used his corking gun to silicone seal the trailer. Mike used up most of a tube. Reimbursement to mike proposed for the silicone: Anna propsed, Louisa seconded. Passed unanimously.
o Arrangements to get a warrant of fitness for the trailer organised for the teonn weekend.
• Legal liability of the committee members
o Cameron has started looking into this. So far it appears that the committee members do not have legal liability except for when they have okayed an event for the specific purpose of conducting illegal activities. Additional cases where fines may be levelled against committee members exist, but these are in relation to refusal to assist in official investigations of the club.
 Action Point: Cameron will keep looking into this
o Player code of conduct was briefly discussed again.
 Action Point: Mike to talk to Scott about it.
• Camp Awhitu
o They mixed up the venue booking and it ended up double booked.
 They claim there were not identifying features on the deposit to match it up with the booking. Anna will be looking into this.
 They were immensely unhelpful. They ignored the fact that we booked and paid first and that we had higher numbers. They were extremely unsympathetic and though the booking had been written down they did not follow it up at all. It took Tigger over a week at the beginning to get in touch with the booking lady. At no point did they contact us to say there as a conflict of dates or problem. It was only discovered when Anna rang up on the day to confirm.
 Louisa knows the other group that it was double booked with and they had trouble with Awhitu as well.
 There is a new booking lady.
 Action point: Anna will follow up with getting the money for the deposit back.
 Bonus of this was we discovered the South Auckland Presbyterian Church Camp. They were amazingly trusting and helpful. It is a venue that we should definitively utilise in future.
 Action Point: Mike to draft a letter of complaint that the committee will approve online before it is sent.
o Meeting Ended: 9.46pm

#2

[quote=“Minutes”] Where she wants us to put the shed is on a slope. We will need a builder to help level and erect the shed. Discussed who we could get to help do this. We should ask the community for anyone who could help with this.
 Action Point: organise a group of people to go and delegate with Hannah’s mother.
o Shed is stored at mike’s place atm.
o Shed is going to need more roofing screws, rivets, and at least six people to help put it up. Six people who have experience with rivet guns. It will be a whole project on its own.[/quote]

I’m happy to help with this. We probably won’t need a builder, but if we need to put in any kind of retaining wall, it begins to get expensive. We’ll certainly need at least six strong backs. Picks, spades and wheelbarrows. I imagine it will take a whole weekend.

It might also be worth getting a price for 10-20 swords from Ryan as well, because the professionally made weapons really do last better than the home built ones.

I’d like to help clean out some of the worn out weapons, seeing what can be salvaged in terms of materials. I’m happy to help build crew weapons for NZLARPS, but I’d prefer not to make weapons that are already commercially available (at very reasonable prices). The financial savings are negligible, especially when you take into account durability.

We may want to do this immediately, if we want to have enough weapons for Teonn.

#3

[quote=“Derek”]It might also be worth getting a price for 10-20 swords from Ryan as well, because the professionally made weapons really do last better than the home built ones.

I’d like to help clean out some of the worn out weapons, seeing what can be salvaged in terms of materials. I’m happy to help build crew weapons for NZLARPS, but I’d prefer not to make weapons that are already commercially available (at very reasonable prices). The financial savings are negligible, especially when you take into account durability.[/quote]

I think durability would have to be significant for it to be a cost-saving; maces and axes were under $15 all-up if made at home, but $60 or more imported. Swords you can do for $20 vs $100 imported. Even with the discount, DIY is a serious cost saving.

That said, professionally made weapons look a lot nicer, and may have less hassle factor (placing an order vs setting up multiple gear days to construct them)

#4

[quote=“Derek”][quote=“Minutes”]

It might also be worth getting a price for 10-20 swords from Ryan as well, because the professionally made weapons really do last better than the home built ones.

I’d like to help clean out some of the worn out weapons, seeing what can be salvaged in terms of materials. I’m happy to help build crew weapons for NZLARPS, but I’d prefer not to make weapons that are already commercially available (at very reasonable prices). The financial savings are negligible, especially when you take into account durability.

We may want to do this immediately, if we want to have enough weapons for Teonn.[/quote][/quote]

Just to add it wasn’t so much that there weren’t enough weapons per se, I supplemented from the Hamilton gear pool plus my own personal supply to cover the needs.
The biggest problem was that a lot of what was supplied was pretty much FUBAR. One example is of a mace which was repaired with open cell foam taped crudely around the top. In all honesty adding a boffer head to the weapon would have been better. There are also a number of failing weapons to be condemned, including the old black handled woodcutters axe.
They were not only ugly but several verge on dangerous.

In comparison, the paddywhack weapons in the gear pool were shiny. Home made does give best bang for buck but the professional ones last a long time if cared for and look great.

#5

That’s not quite correct. That mace was actually looked at in the meeting physically, it had an open cell foam head glued onto it, but the ADOS hadn’t worked properly on the open cell foam, hence it coming off. Just wanting to clarify that it was a repair job that hadn’t gone well rather than us supplying super half-arsed weapons.

#6

That’s not quite correct. That mace was actually looked at in the meeting physically, it had an open cell foam head glued onto it, but the ADOS hadn’t worked properly on the open cell foam, hence it coming off. Just wanting to clarify that it was a repair job that hadn’t gone well rather than us supplying super half-arsed weapons.[/quote]

Fair comment Anna.

But I still feel that there are some that need sorting and removing. Or major reworks done. And in that light the mace looked terrible and therefore shoddy looking, even if it was not.

#7

[quote=“Derek”][quote=“Minutes”] Where she wants us to put the shed is on a slope. We will need a builder to help level and erect the shed. Discussed who we could get to help do this. We should ask the community for anyone who could help with this.
 Action Point: organise a group of people to go and delegate with Hannah’s mother.
o Shed is stored at mike’s place atm.
o Shed is going to need more roofing screws, rivets, and at least six people to help put it up. Six people who have experience with rivet guns. It will be a whole project on its own.[/quote]

I’m happy to help with this. We probably won’t need a builder, but if we need to put in any kind of retaining wall, it begins to get expensive. We’ll certainly need at least six strong backs. Picks, spades and wheelbarrows. I imagine it will take a whole weekend.[/quote]

I visited Jennifers yesterday, and walked out the size of the shed based on what Mike said earlier - 2.5m x 4.5m. There is a big concrete slab directly behind the house where this could fit immediately and easily, but it does slightly impede one entry to the house. However Jennifer said that the shed could go there if it is just for a short duration, say to the end of this year at the latest.

However if it is going to be of a longer duration, then she would prefer to have it placed on the slope Mike mentions. It would involve putting in some piles to support the timber bearers that were resting on the concrete slab at Nikkis. Or Derek are you thinking building a retaining wall to make the ground flat, and placing the shed on the ground still? The fall is less than a metre I think, maybe about 0.6m, but I haven’t measured it.

Mike was hoping to get the gear shed erected before the Teonn game, so that after the game everything could be put into its new home. The number of weekends until Teonn are coming very quickly. Howabout sorting out a date to work on now, and then finalise the details as required. I am available to help and liaise any of the weekends between now and Teonn. Derek/Mike what date suits you?

#8

If it is 0.6m then we should be able to make a low wall out of bricks or blocks and dig one side down 0.3 and use the earth to fill the other side up 0.3m
Or put in about four posts and do a low retaining wall. We may want to run a bit of drainage pipe around the back as well. That’ll be a good days work :smiley:

I have my daughter’s birthday next Saturday, but I can do Sunday 29 April.