Ĉeestas

Phil D., Fred M., David B, Hoss F., Jane S., Tim R., Alex M. (Joined for the last 10 minutes).

Ĉeestas sen voĉdonrajtoj

Bill H.

Komenco

Call meeting to order. Tim Rice is acting secretary for the meeting and will post the notes for the board afterwards. Mission statement. Quorum not present. Minutes approved automatically.

Reports

Central office report

All in order. The printed membership list has been mailed. A link was included in the printed list to further resources online.

Treasurer’s report

Quarterly reports have been received and forwarded. $1701 positive balance.

Discussion regarding publishing quarterly fund balances on the website. This has been done in the past. Hoss F. has volunteered to inform managers directly.

Quorum reached with arrival of Jane S.

Bill H. has let the company interested in one of the properties in TX know that their records are incorrect according to TX state records. We have also offered the other property to them. They have not responded as of this time.

President’s report

Publicity committee will be focusing on communicating about EO to non-Esperantists. Publicity committee will not be responsible for fundraising. Focus will be made on getting the message right. Focusing on facts instead of myths.

Discussed including details about Publicity committee and Special interest groups in Usona Esperantisto.

Phil D. requested ideas regarding special interest groups about creating and maintaining special interest groups. (With reference to MENSA and UEA experience)

Action item: Phil will send MENSA special interest group handbook to board.

Video Contest

Video contest is still open for voting. UEA did not post information about it. Should have sent to relevant special interest groups.

For contests in the future, communicate more on all channels.

Timing is naturally disjointed in the group due to the pressures of life. We are improving our coordination on slack. Board is advised to keep up with Slack channels to stay up to date, read meeting minutes when posted, and to keep one another accountable on completing tasks. See the attached president’s report.

This year has been more active than last year, which was more active than years past.

UK Montreal Publicity

Discussion regarding sending stickers about the UK in Montreal with printed material. Challenges include there being only a small number of copies of Usona Esperantisto being delivered in physical form.

Bill H. idea: put the stickers on the Esperanto-USA store with no shipping cost, with Esperanto-USA absorbing shipping costs.

Phil D. suggests sending to regional coordinators to send to local groups that request them.

Bill H. suggests sending an email announcing availability.

Action: discuss with regional coordinators , set price for Esperanto-USA retbutiko, start campaign asking people to post pictures where they stuck them.

Phil D. talk with William M. regarding meeting times for social media group. Talk with Jane. S as well.

Completed items listed in Agenda minus farendaj agadoj

Hoss F. and Fred M. are done with the special interest groups spreadsheet. Verbal agreement to have fields filled in Esperanto.

Action item: write announcement of special interest groups for website.

Clarified which form to use for testing the system. Individuals will be able to fill out a form that with approval will be posted to the website.

Clerical Matters, Video Discussion

Alex M joined the meeting at 1:50pm. He had not received the email with the invite as a reminder the day before. We found that he had accidentally not been added to the Groups email list and received an invitation to join that before the meeting was over.

Action item for Bill H.: send Alex M. the link to make sure that he is able to see board communications.

Discussed more participation in making videos. Alex encouraged the board members to appear in future announcement videos, both to vary up whose face appears on the channel all the time and to slowly improve the quality of videos made by other directors through practice and trial and error.

Appendix: President’s Report

The Publicity Committee

William Morton is steering the Publicity Committee into a focused subset of our overall publicity vision. It is inspiring to see the attention to detail that the committee is giving attention to. The Publicity Committee is focusing on making Esperanto known to the non-Esperanto public. Publicity for the membership campaign will remain with the Membership Committee. Publicity for fundraising will remain with the finance and resource team. The Publicity Committee intends to meet weekly. The team feels driven to get these messages right, so that we can attract new and genuine participants into the Esperanto community in the United States.

Kudos to Vilĉjo Morton for this important groundbreaking effort.

SIGs

Special Interest Groups need to launch within a few days if we are to announce the launch in the coming issue of Usona Esperantisto. What steps remain?

1. Do we have all the pieces defined? 2. Do we have the procedures defined? 3. Do we have the spreadsheet that will be used to drive the webpage? 4. Do we have the webpage? 5. How soon can we do a launch?

Video Contest

Kudos to Alex Miller, the judges, and the video team. We look forward to 2022.

Delegation, Cooperation, Timing, and Patience with one another

I want to thank this board of directors for the patience we show for one another. Even when we are on the same page with great common visions, we sometimes differ on timing. The frustrations teach us patience, which we have certainly showed for one another. When one of us has a dream of what should happen next, we sometimes think it should happen right then, especially when the ball is in somebody else’s court. All this cooperation and communication is something we realize we are getting better at, step by step, especially on Slack.

We are getting better at delegating tasks to committees, most recently to the Membership Committee and the Publicity Committee. We do trusted work. That means we trust our committees to do faithful work and that we ourselves in the Board of Directors do work that our members can depend on.

Thank you, Fred, Tim B., Tim R., Alex, Charlotte, Jane, and Brian for your good work. Special thanks go out to Hoss for the excellent issues of Usona Esperantisto, and to Dave Beck for most excellently fulfilling the responsibilities of Treasurer.

Amike, filipo
Phil Dorcas, president, Esperanto USA, filipo@grupoj.org