NZLARPs Auckland Committee Meeting 11-6-2014
Present: Mike Curtis, Hannah Jackson, Prema Cottingham, Clare Stones
Absent: Dave Luxton
Apologies: James Cooper, Reuben Strom, Anna Klein
Note: These minutes are a record of the discussions and decisions that took place at the meeting. Discussions are not word for word.
Meeting start: 7:45pm
Acceptance of minutes for last meeting – 3 ayes (unanimous).
Online discussions:
- Nikki Brown has resigned from the role of Gear Officer. This is due to the stress of the role combined with her early pregnancy.
- Brad Thompson has withdrawn his offer for NZLARPs to use his garage for gear storage. His car has been broken into twice during the last month while parked near his house, so he will be using the garage for parking instead.
- Crucible requested a reimbursement for costs associated with running the tavern last weekend game, we have paid this as requested.
- Crucible has requested that the finances for the day games and upcoming weekend game be partitioned, so that the day games and small events run outside of NZLARPs (as affiliate events?) but the weekend game runs as a project.
Discussions:
- Streamlining the societies processes to make it easier for bigger projects to work with NZLARPs.
- Currently the processes around starting a project and getting budgets approved are not documented. We have no project liason or guide person, which makes it difficult for people new to running games to know exactly what to do. We should create a group of mentors that people can contact for advise, and this group should be separate from the committee.
- Action Point: Prema to post in public part of Diatribe, to ask for mentor volunteers.
Election of new gear officer:
Mike Curtis has attended this meeting to stand for the position of gear officer, until the AGM later this year.
Motion that Mike Curtis should be appointed to the role of gear officer from now until the AGM: Raised by Mike, seconded by Clare. 3 ayes (unanimous).
Big game finances: GM Kohas
We discussed whether kohas to GMs would be acceptable in budgets, if this were to come up in the future. (This has not come up yet in any budgets). The idea behind this is that with bigger games, there is a tremendous amount of work involved in running the game, including responding to queries and questions from players for months. It is essentially a second, unpaid job.
In the larger games we run, it has become customary for cooks to be given a koha to offer some recompense for their efforts. Some members of the committee felt that it would be reasonable for GMs to budget a koha for the GM committee into their budgets. However, Mike felt that the respect from the community and the creative opportunities involved in running a large game were reward in themselves.
Crucible Finance Partitioning
The Crucible team has expressed a desire to partition games, so the next weekend game operates as a project while the upcoming day games run separately from NZLARPs. Our understanding is that the day games would operate as affiliate games.
This would allow Crucible to run day games without having to submit budgets, which would reduce administration. It would also mean that the games would be financed completely by Crucible, and would mean any profits would belong to them.
Crucible is eventually planning to move to a full affiliate model, and that’s why they are proposing this. – Clare
We need to find out if this is being done to reduce clerical burden, or as a means to keep profits. We need to discuss this with the Crucible committee. - Mike
The committee members present are generally OK with the idea of Crucible moving to a full affiliate model in the future. However, this does mean we have concerns over gear storage, as this impacts the ability of NZLARPs to pay for storage of gear.
Overheads funding proposal
Nikki reported back on her recommended structure for gear/overheads fees last meeting. Last meeting, we thought that we had storage lined up with a member of the society, so we were not so concerned about fees and were considering lowering them from Nikki’s original proposal.
Motion to accept Nikki’s original fee structure for projects: Prema, 2nd Hannah – 4 ayes (unanimous)
This meeting, given that the society will have to pay approximately $3000 for gear storage per year, we voted on implementing fee structures for projects and affiliates.
The fee structure we voted on is a flat fee structure, staggered at different game sizes. This is to make it easy for projects to incorporate into their budgets.
For Projects:
These fees are only for projects that use gear. They have been developed to cover gear storage costs only.
Number of Attendees Expected Day Game Weekend Game
19 people or less $30 $45
20 to 49 people $80 $120
50 to 99 people $200 $300
100 plus $500 $750 The cost of weekend games is the fee for 1 day plus 50% (that is, equivalent to 1 ½ days cost). We have set the fee at this rate because there is only one pack in/pack out even though weekend games are multi day events. For events over long weekends (3 full days), our intention is that they will be charged 1 full day plus 2 half days.
The weekend game fee for projects of 100 plus people has been raised slightly, from Nikki’s proposed cost of $700 to the $750 stated here. This allowed us to create a consistent fee structure to cover smaller weekend games.
For Affiliate games:
These fees are only for affiliates which use gear. As well as covering gear storage, they are also intended to cover gear maintenance and to provide the society with funds to cover other essential costs, such as trailer registration and WOF.
Affiliates will need to organize load-in and load-out of gear with the gear officer, and will also need to clean the gear before returning it.
Number of Attendees Expected Day Game Weekend Game
19 people or less $40 $60
20 to 49 people $100 $150
50 to 99 people $250 $375
100 plus $600 $900We have calculated that this amounts to an increase of around 50c to $1 per person per game over that of the cost for a project, which we think is reasonable.
Fees will be charged according to the number of attendees an affiliate budgets for. This means that if they have a couple of surprise people on the day, they won’t get slapped with a higher fee.
We also discussed whether affiliates should be allowed to use the NZLARPs trailer. We will check the insurance policy for the trailer to see what it says.
Voting:
Motion to accept updated project fees, and accept affiliate fees – Hannah , Prema 2nd – 4 ayes (unanimous)
Motion: Chimera to be assessed for 2015, and not 2014, and to be assessed on its own. Hannah 1st, Prema 2nd - 4 ayes (unanimous)
Affiliation – Carnival Costumes
Carnival Costumes on the North Shore have asked to affiliate with us. They are a costume hire company.
Nikki has been communicating with Carnival Costumes regarding the affiliation; Clare will take this over.
They have agreed to give NZLARPs members a discount on costume hire for events in return for advertising the Diatribe banner.
Discussion about how to ensure they know what events are coming up and who is an NZLARPs member:
- Give them access to the NZLARPs membership database
- Give them access to the NZLARPs calendar
Hamilton Branch:
NZLARPs Hamilton has formed a branch. Congratulations to Jared and everyone on the Hamilton Committee.
Action Points from past meeting:
Action Point from last time regarding Nikki contacting Jordan to ensure all gear was returned from weekend game: We don’t know whether this has been done. Action Point: Mike to follow up.
Muppet – proposal to update the website – is not here so we don’t know if it has been done.
Finance report – none for today.
Gear:
Action Point: Mike to update database with new gear from Crucible.
Hannah – Anna Klein found 3 or 4 boxes of things when moving, to put into gear library.
Mike – found a bag of Ogg weapons plus some practice bows, when cleaning out his shed. There are also some other gear items under his house.
Action Point: Mike to follow up gear with Nikki, and to obtain access to the gear officer gmail account. Also to check whether application for storage with Council has been submitted, and find out details of insurance policy.
Action Point: Mike to find out the details of the trailer insurance policy. Who does it cover?
Marketing report – none for today.
Gear storage: Mike has located a place in Onehunga, off Nelson St. Light industrial area, professional storage space, 35m total at $250 a month, with the first month at $50. It’s on a second story, but has a goods lift. Mike will go and have a look at it this weekend, and will draw up plans for shelving. Open 8am in morning to 10pm at night, 7 days a week. Will also check whether it has electrical supply/lighting.
We will probably need to hire another trailer for the move, so we can move all the gear at once.
Would be ideal to move it all in before Chimera – but this may be difficult, given people will be making costumes and writing games around this time. We may need to do it before Crucible instead. We will aim for the 2nd to 3rd August. – Hopefully do it on Sat, and set up shelves on Fri night.
Will also need to find out whether Crucible wants the shed – maybe gives them first dibs on it. Otherwise, we could sell it on Trade Me or for scrap.
Discussion about the place Nikki found and told us about a few months ago – the cost of the one Mike has found is the same as the one Nikki found. Nikki’s one had space for gear rationalizations and this one doesn’t, but it does have better motorway access.
Upcoming LARP events:
Chimera –
Anna has sent us actuals from last year, which have been audited by James; and also budget for this year.
She has expanded the code of conduct to make it clear that bad behavior will result in consequences.
Has raised the event charges this year, as accommodation and other costs have increased.
The numbers have dropped since last year, we are not sure of the reasons behind this. She would like some assistance with marketing from committee, to increase the sign up numbers.
The committee thinks that some people from Wellington might not be going, due to Crucible coming up a month after, and also because Wellington has the Hydra convention now.
Motion to accept Chimera 2014 as a project – Mike 1st, Clare 2nd. Vote unanimous.
Action Point – Reuben to follow up with Anna Klein regarding marketing for Chimera.
No Quarter – The game has been postponed, as it was scheduled for the weekend after Chimera.
Budgets – happy to have day game ones submitted online. This means they don’t have to get it passed at committee meetings.
Next meeting – 9th July.
Meeting Closed 10:13pm