7/03/2007 NZLARPS Committee Meeting
7th March, 7.22-9.07pm
Agenda:
- Previous minutes
- Financial Update
- Previous larps; 3b: Project Officer responsibilities and event process
- Upcoming larps update
- Simplify financial forms – Ryan
- Affiliation, Quest Waikato and One World By Night – Adam
- Trailer update – Adam, Quote – Mike, and Insurance – Nikki
- Immersion – Anna
- External funding – Adam
- Growth strategy – Craig
- Website, pictures and GM updates to nzlarps.org, updates to Diatribe
- Business cards
- Other Business
Nine members present (Adam, Rhiannon, AJ, Craig, Nikki, Anna, Mike, Steve, Ryan). Also Dylan and Malu. Derek there beforehand working on No Mans Land combat rules.
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Previous minutes and actions were accepted with changes.
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Financial statement
Mordavia books now completely closed, profit $670 – a 30% return on investment. $1500 came across to NZLARPS account. The old Mordavia account will be turned into the Grand Battle account. -
Previous larps.
Should we cover this every meeting, because it takes up a lot of time, especially when we have had half a dozen larps since the last month? We should only mention what we can learn from events, not good/bad points. Perhaps there should be a formalised review of larps turned in to the Project Officer after a larp by the organiser.
3b: AJ is concerned that event organisers do not keep him up to date with how their project is moving. This month he didn’t overtly remind anyone, and received NO updates. Do we need a formalised ‘Event Plan’? While the financial form and project documents get handed in if the event needs money, after that nothing much is necessarily heard. Perhaps organisers should be encouraged to send a bi-monthly email to the Project Officer, and should include contact details on the project document. A database, or flow-chart, of the structure through creating, developing and realising and playing an event or project needs to be made. -
Upcoming larps.
Og has found a GM: Gareth. Will be running on the 24th of March. Steve will be going to Taiwan and bringing back a freeform 1980’s Egyptian roleplaying game, Curse of the Pharaoh, in 3 months’ time. Stargate is being planned for end May, Ravenholme needs players, and is booked for 27-29 April in Awhitu. Ryan wants to run ‘Flight of the Hindenburgh’ in June. Anna Cruze is thinking of running a Lateral Worlds game as an NZLARPS project with Dylan as the organiser; they are currently looking at the rule structure. Skirmish next date is 17th March, probably at the Auckland Domain (not entirely formalised yet). Nightmare Circle is this weekend, 9-11 March. Unity is stalled. OWBN is this weekend and also March 31. -
Ryan has not yet simplified the financial forms. Will confer with Craig about them.
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Affiliation.
Adam has been sending emails to OWBN but they haven’t been replying and don’t seem to be getting most of the emails because at Battlecry they mentioned that they were disappointed we hadn’t been in contact. Adam will try to sort this out. There may be a local game of Requiem starting up we could contact. Also Quest Waikato are meeting tonight and voting on affiliating with NZLARPS. Alistair seemed confident about the prospect. -
Trailer update.
Adam has filled in the Lion Foundation grant form except for a couple of things he needed to ask Steve about. Mike has a quote for buying a trailer, including registration and warrant, for $5372.60, or around $5900 for a galvanised one that would last a lot longer. Nikki says the cost of insurance is about $200. It will cost us a lot more for cover (as in about four times the price) if we expect people under 25, or even worse for under-21, to be driving it. Another condition of the insurance is that we must have either wheel locks, or the trailer be kept in a garage. Mike will look for quotes on the price of wheel locks. -
Immersion.
This quarter’s magazine is 97% finished. It will be 24 A5 pages, illustrated. There was discussion on how many magazines will be needed. Craig says that with the last one, he had two copies, and got two people to join on the spot by talking to them and giving them a flash mag. We may need a quarterly budget for the magazine – for example at the moment it’s been costing about $200 to print and mail the magazine (colour covers are expensive), but if we could get it done within $150, the money from memberships just about covers the 4 quarterly magazines in the year. However this doesn’t count the other things that membership money needs to go to, like membership cards and Diatribe. But the magazine should become an awesome tool for recruiting and enlarging the community, as well as, well, being a magazine. Which is already cool.
A motion was put forward to print 100 good copies of the magazine in this print run. The motion passed unanimously. -
External Funding – comes from the Lion Foundation and ASB, but local councils also may be a source of funding for games we run in their areas, for example may pay for a venue.
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Growth Strategy
Craig’s most impressive growth strategy document includes an Executive Summary, which reads:
Playership is the most serious problem nzLARPS faces. If we do not grow urgently we face lapsing larpers, tiny games and widespread disinterest. Growing our numbers will present new larping opportunities that are currently not available and take the strain off our small dedicated community.
Building upon existing assets, this paper details a suggested growth strategy: ‘empowering word of mouth’. This focus relies on making sure our single proven effective growth strategy (word of mouth) packs more punch and more clearly explains the larping concept to potential newcomers.
So we need a larger player base. So we need a plan. We need to give people better resources. We also need people who are good at marketing ideas to a wider audience. We need to define good targets, and get the word out. Libraries may be a place of recruitment, as may doctors’ waiting rooms, hairdressers, schools, workplaces… Printing ads in newspapers may also be a good idea as this is how the Northern Horde gets lots of new members, in the North Shore’s local paper. -
Updates
Diatribe was moved to a new host today! Craig now has 200GB service space. Anyone wanting a website hosted…. The old banners need to be taken off Diatribe. Some other things that will be done are a Live Journal community for Nibelungen characters, an online character database, and some way for GM’s to tell who’s paid. We need a Skirmish site; each project should have a single page website. Any registered user should be able to update and submit photos. -
Business Cards.
Ryan suggests we should have cards for the main projects, with full-colour about the project, and b&w nzLARPS contacts on the back with space to write.
Projects should have to pay for their own cards: there will be a space made in the budget form for that. It is about $130 for 1000 colour/b&w cards at Mono Printing. However it may be possible to pay for these over several events. Obviously, this will be a great way of advertising both our main projects and nzLARPS itself. Bigger projects will probably both require and be able to pay for more cards. Since projects pay for the cards, they can distribute them how they like, but receiving business cards from the Committee along with Immersion or membership cards is likely to be a fairly good way to get knowledge of your project out into the wider community, so it is advised to let the committee keep a stack to distribute in this way and at things like Battlecry and the Taupo Joust. -
Other Business. AJ’s other business has been dealt with in 3b.
Motion to make Hansi a member for donating a lot of stuff to us last Mordavia game – passed 8, 1 abstention.
Action points:
• Adam - contact OWBN and try to clear up email problem
• AJ - make project flow structure database/flow chart
• AJ - chase Lucy for Pirates money
• Need process for making/signing off/distributing business cards
• Anna – get new member to email secretary with details
• Rhiannon – update membership database
• Mike – source cost of wheel locks
• AJ – start Mt Wellington and Environs Immersion Delivery Service
• Adam – put details of external funding on forum
• Craig – get growth strategy ideas to/from Kath
• Get newspaper ad pricings – everyone in their local area please!