Notice of NZLARPS AGM 18 October 2017

NZLARPS will be holding its AGM at 7pm on Wednesday 18th of October. The meeting will be held at 80C Woodglen Road, Glen Eden. It will be followed immediately by the Auckland regional AGM at 7:30pm. Wellington will be holding their regional AGM on the same night, and may be able to participate by Google hangouts.

AGENDA:

  • Acceptance of last year’s AGM minutes if available
  • Approval of accounts
  • Reports from committee
  • Election of returning officer
  • Election of the new national committee
  • Motion 1: amendment to s26 on meeting procedures
  • Motion 2: amendment to insert new s21A on regional representation

Electronic ballots for voting will be emailed out on October 11, after committee nominations have closed. We need 30% of the membership to participate in order to make quorum, which at present is 44 people. I urge everybody to attend or to vote by email.

FURTHER INFORMATION ON BUSINESS:

  • Acceptance of last year’s AGM minutes if available
    Minutes were taken at last year’s AGM by the Auckland secretary on someone else’s computer. They were never posted or passed on to the national secretary. It is possible that they will be found, but for the moment are presumed lost.

The minutes of July’s Special General Meeting are here:

  • Approval of Accounts
    Accounts for last financial year will be posted tomorrow in the NZLARPS forum on Diatribe:
    http://diatribe.co.nz/c/nzlarps

  • Reports from committee
    These will be given at the meeting. Additional material may be posted in the NZLARPS forum on Diatribe.

  • Election of returning officer
    The meeting will need to elect someone to count the votes, including electronic votes. Nominations will be taken from the floor.

  • Election of the new national committee
    A nominations thread for the national committee is open here:

Nominations close on October 11, 2017.

  • Motion 1: amendment to s26 on meeting procedures (proposed by Lee Patrick)
    Motion: In Section 26, delete the opening sentence “The Committee shall meet at such times and places as from time to time be determined by the President upon their giving written notice to the members of the Committee.” and replace with “The Committee shall meet at such times and places as are mutually agreed by its members.”

Explanatory note:
“I’m aware that the national committee ran into problems earlier this year when the president attempted to define meeting times and places, and a majority of the committee were unhappy with his decision. This amendment should prevent future committees experiencing the same difficulty, and make communication between national committee members easier and more equal.”

  • Motion 2: amendment to insert new s21A on regional representation (proposed by the South Island Committee)
    Motion: to insert the following section after s21:
    “21A Regional representation
    In addition to the positions specified in section 21 above, a region, at an SGM or AGM, may create regional bylaws permitting them to create and fill additional general officer positions to ensure geographic diversity.”

Explanatory note:
The South Island is a geographically large region with members in both Christchurch and Dunedin and so they’re concerned about ensuring that both major centres are represented on its committee. The normal electoral process should cope with this, but this would allow them to appoint someone in the event that it doesn’t.

Because of the requirement for email voting, no amendments will be accepted from the floor.

A two-thirds majority of members voting is required to pass each constitutional amendment.

REGIONAL AGMS

As noted above the Auckland and Wellington regional general meetings will be held on the same evening. Information on the Auckland RGM can be found here:

Wellington information is here: Wellington AGM 18th October 2017 nominations

The Greater Waikato and South Island regions are holding their RGMs early, on October 7 and 11 respectively.

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As promised, the financial statements for the 2016/2017 financial year are available at NZLARPS financial year 2016/2017 financial statements Please feel free to post there if you have any questions about them.

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E-ballots have now been sent out to all members. If you have not received one, a) check your spam folder, b) check your membership, or c) email "secretary@nzlarps.org" to find out where it was sent.

Please do not reply to this email. Send votes to nzlarps2017agm@gmail.com instead. Votes must be received by 7pm on 18 October

Hello NZLARPS member,

NZLARPS will be holding its AGM at 7pm on Wednesday 18 October 2017 at Nikki and Phillip’s house, 80C Woodglen Road, Glen Eden, Auckland. It will be followed immediately by the Auckland regional AGM at 7:30pm; details on that will be handled by the Auckland Secretary.

We need a large number of participants (over 45) for quorum, so if you cannot attend please vote by email using the ballot below. Otherwise we have to do it all again in a week.

The business to be conducted is as follows:

  • Acceptance of last year’s AGM minutes if available
  • Approval of accounts
  • Reports from committee
  • Election of returning officer
  • Election of the new national committee
  • Motion 1: amendment to s26 on meeting procedures
  • Motion 2: amendment to insert new s21A on regional representation

The text of the motions is as follows:

  • Motion 1: amendment to s26 on meeting procedures (proposed by Lee Patrick)
    Motion: In Section 26, delete the opening sentence “The Committee shall meet at such times and places as from time to time be determined by the President upon their giving written notice to the members of the Committee.” and replace with “The Committee shall meet at such times and places as are mutually agreed by its members.”

  • Motion 2: amendment to insert new s21A on regional representation (proposed by the South Island Committee)
    Motion: to insert the following section after s21:
    “21A Regional representation
    In addition to the positions specified in section 21 above, a region, at an SGM or AGM, may create regional bylaws permitting them to create and fill additional general officer positions to ensure geographic diversity.”

Because of the requirement for email voting, no nominations or amendments will be accepted from the floor.

Any member may vote by email. At the start of the meeting a returning officer will be elected who will have the responsibility of tallying up the votes. To vote, email your ballot (below) by 7pm on 18 October to: nzlarps2017agm@gmail.com.

Email voting is not anonymous but only the vote counter will be able to see the emails, and they will subsequently be deleted.

Below are the things you need to vote on for the AGM if voting by Email. Pick one option for each:

Vote: President
Mel Duncan
No Confidence
Abstain

Vote: Secretary
Malcolm Harbrow
No Confidence
Abstain

Vote: Treasurer
Anthony Doornebosch
No Confidence
Abstain

Vote: Marketing Officer
Courtney Parnell
No Confidence
Abstain

Vote: Information technology Officer
Naomi Guyer
No Confidence
Abstain

Motion 1:
Yes
No
Abstain

Motion 2:
Yes
No
Abstain

A two-thirds majority of members voting is required to pass a constitutional amendment. Ties between candidates will be decided by a coin toss.

So it was brought to my attention that my lack of a statement had been noticed by at least someone. So… uh…

I’m Mel Duncan, I’m running for National Pres and I’d like your vote. (Also, please vote for someone even if it’s not me, it’s not hard and having to re-do the AGM will be a drag. Your voting form should be in your email.)

Credentials: I ran (with help, so, so so much help) a campaign in Wellington - 3 years, 6 sessions plus day games, no IRL fatalities, only one ambulance call-out, and the venue still didn’t blacklist me. Success?
I have managed the gear shed in Wellington for five years and basically accepted the nomination for regional pres as well as the national one so as to have plausible deniability that I couldn’t be nominated to keep running it. I have just about sorted out the new home that is not in anyone’s house. I’ve had plenty of ideas for improving the gear shed storage, but space has always been an issue.
I’ve run the Wellington Road Trip to Auckland games a couple of times.

Why do I wanna be National Director?
I wanna get some shit done. Off the top of my head, these include:

  1. Figuring out for sure and proper how we fit into the new ACC legislation (This new legislation is scary and involves the phrase “personal financial liability”, so it’s important.)
  2. And even if we’re exempt, we need to do some work on safety and welfare. We don’t have policies on first-aiders or first-aid kits or emergency contact details, we don’t have strong guidelines on feeding people with significant dietary issues (oh, hi, personal issue I suffer from!), our method of dealing with bad and/or criminal behaviour is vague at best (another personal example: what do we do if we think someone has stolen from us at a game?). And we don’t have any kind of measurement of how big our safety and welfare problems are. Plan 1: register of safety and welfare issues, with anonymous reporting and confidentialised summaries being publicly posted? Y/N? Plan 2: complaints policy up and running, including what to do about complaints that are larp-related, but not happening at an NZLARPs event. Plan 3: Some proper safety/welfare/accident prevention training. Plan 4: How can we make the hobby easier for diverse people to join in? (Often cited issues in this space: children/minors, bathrooms, sleeping spaces for snorers and insomniacs, non-coms at boffer games, old farts with knee problems at venues with hills). Plan 5: Alcohol policy (Disclaimer: I love whiskey! I love drinking IC at campsites with my friends! I hate there being lack of clarity about this issue!)
  3. Succession planning: So you may have noticed the same people on the committees for a loooooooong time. How do we encourage people to step up? How do we train them in “how things are done?” Also succession planning for GAMES: How do we get new GMs contributing new ideas and running new games (and letting the old GMs actually play for a change). “A newbie’s guide to running a pre-written one-shot”?
  4. Software improvements. I have ideas, possibly terrible ones, that should take some of the manual labour out of managing … everything.
  5. GST Registration! (More work, some savings if we juggle the timelines right!)

Questions or stuff like that, please email me (u_ne_korn@hotmail.com). I am job hunting right now, so replies will come at weird times.

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Since people are doing these:

I’m Malcolm and I’m running for National Secretary. I’ve served in the role for the last four years, and I’m familiar with the role, the NZLARPS constitution, and the ins and outs of the Incorporated Societies Act. I run games and participate in larp events in Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin, giving me a good overview of our different communities and the different ways we do things, and I’ve been doing some work on documenting various things in an effort to make it easier for new people to get involved. If re-elected, I’m planning to provide efficient administration, as well as assisting with legal compliance duties.

On the night results: The new committee is Mel, Malcolm, Anthony, Courtney, and Naomi. Motion 1 failed to pass the 2/3rds threshold required for a constitutional amendment (43 yes, 21 no, 9 abstain). Motion 2 passed (60 yes, 5 no, 8 abstain).

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