Curia 5/19/20
Abelard, Ysolt, Tatiana, Armond, Idonia, Rachel, Arnbjorn, Arthur, Sofonisba, Asabella, Geoffrey, Randall, Rhys, Kale, Katie, Mysie, Belle,
Officer's Reports:
Baron/Baroness: Hey, dance video and Glow video! Thank you to everyone who submitted videos!
Seneschal: Physical gatherings are still cancelled through June. Tatiana is Seneschal again. Position is up in six months. If interested, please submit an LOI by next month. Do your reports! Let the Seneschal know when it's done. The Kingdom does have a Zoom account; if you want to use it there's a form to fill out. Ask Tatiana and she can direct you to it. Outgoing Seneschal: Nothing to report.
Chronicler: Thank you to Their Excellencies, Arnbjorn, and Tatiana who have been turning in articles regularly! If it's late, it's okay. Send something! Articles are due on the 25th (next Monday).
WebMinister: All the discounts and everything that we have are only for new accounts, so we renewed at $102 per year (renewed for two years). Site and domain name are paid through Jan 2022. The TechSoup account is set up and running, so the next project is setting up the email through GSuite. We have a month before iPower expires.
MOAS: Stay at home crafts are happening. As far as he knows, nobody's been injured in an A&S thing.
Knights Marshal: Nothing to report until the ban on SCA events ends. We still have a site, though! Will take up a collection to continue to pay for the site.
Archery: Submitted quarterly report for archery. Windhaven's artillery arts martial event (Missile Mayhem) is postponed until next spring because of a scheduling conflict. Office is open in six months; intends to put in for a third year.
Rapier: No practices until the end of June. Needs to send in report.
Thrown: Submitted quarterly report for thrown weapons. On hold until we can start playing again.
Youth: Office is open - intend to reapply. Will deliver boffer weapons to interested kids. Reports are due for MITs. Will be doing a 'youth combat' chapter of Ajax's fighter talks.
Chatelaine: Virtual camping event is this weekend!
Exchequer: Let's pay for two months. We have a balance. We have some outstanding checks which haven't been cashed yet. Public storage payment has gone out - can he get reimbursed for $152.60? Moved, voted, passed. (Storage locker thought we hadn't paid because they didn't know what account to credit it to.) Need to change the name on the account, as well - it's still in Magnus's name. Working on reports. Need to send out some checks.
Quartermaster: Nothing to report. Trailer's still here.
Herald: Submitted quarterly report. Next ethereal court is next Friday at 7 PM. Badge and award name submissions should be in the next letter. Nice scroll, Kale!
Signet: Scrolls for the Kingdom have been happening!
Old Business:
Border Skirmish 2021: Armond and Sofonisba will autocrat; we think Kristiana will as well.
Baronial Champs in September: The hall isn't booked, but they're aware it's happening.
Boar's Head 2020: Theme is Winter Solstice (Light in the Darkness) Nothing new to report. People should volunteer to do things! Rhys was not going to be feast steward. Maybe a team of people, each in charge of one remove? Armond will be in charge of feast. Hopefully social distancing is not a factor at that point. Otherwise, volunteer!
New Business: (This is notes from a long conversation about membership - how do we retain old members, bring back people we haven't seen in awhile, and attract new ones?) We don't want to get new people and force them to be officers, we want to recover existing people (80 paid members) _and_ draw new people. We need data - we need to find out who received the Tower newsletter and what their response was. (We heard that Pete really liked the paper copy.) We'd like to draw back people who we haven't seen in awhile. Have we heard from anybody we haven't seen in awhile? We hear from Fancy every once in awhile, for instance, and Corin is sometimes at practice. Still need to encourage people to participate, even if we don't have a whiz-bang thing to do right this second. Ysolt and Abelard will start calling people. "Increase retention." Seneschals had this conversation too - we're not alone in our retention problems (not just in the SCA, but across fandoms.) When we can, we should increase demos. Since we have virtual curias perhaps we can get more people to do it. Some people don't want to go to physical curia, for instance .... now that we've proved that we can do a virtual curia meeting, maybe we continue it. Demonstrate that reporting isn't that hard. Officers should also write up what they do to demonstrate how much work it actually is. Need to mentor new people. How do we make it fun? We have really low turnouts; maybe we should frame Curia as a populace meeting, not a business meeting. (Monthly 'holding court'.) Create an SCA event with no strings attached. "Hey, show up at the populace meeting!" Hold it as a court, where the baron and baroness invite each officer up to report on their offices. Potential problem: Length of meeting. How did they make it short? It didn't used to be long... Officer reports can go to the Tower. Have the meeting at a different time and combine it with something else. ("July's meeting will be on Saturday and we'll have beer and brats.") Maybe change it up a little bit. Yule court worked - people attended if they wanted to, or went to the bar. So, if people show up for the meeting, great; if they show up for the social, great. "If you don't have anything to bring up, we won't call on you." Doing a populace meeting might also bring people back. One of the easiest thing to get people to go is fighter's practice, and it costs money. Somebody has to do the grunt work to maintain us as a Barony. Persona Moments: 5 minute bio for two members, each meeting will be different, ask for volunteers at first, then move to assignments for members. Much easier to get new people to come to local things. Maybe we should have A&S things more frequently than monthly. Other baronies are doing social nights online, do we want to do that too? Jara has a weekly scribal zoom meeting hangout. Homework: Think outside the box. Examples: Mobile beer garden in garb! Arrange in advance with the museum an afternoon to hang out in the lobby in garb.