Besides eight of the eleven SFSFC directors, Dan Lopez and cherylmorgan attended. The meeting room we found in the train station is just about the right size for us, has a telephone line we can use for a dial-in conference call (two directors had to dial in; one wasn't able to participate at all and sent a proxy), and we can have the room if we buy $100 worth of catering (that is, coffee, tea, and cookies) from the Depot Cafe. Considering that we've paid $200 for a hotel conference room with no catering at all, this is a very good deal.
This meeting was fairly routine and placid. The corporation is in a slow period, but unlike post-ConFrancisco doesn't appear to be moving into a near-hibernation phase. We are pursuing a possible bid for the 2009 World Fantasy Convention and David Gallaher reported on his trip to Madison to talk to the WFC board about it. (They told him, more or less, "Sounds interesting; come back to us between now and Austin next year with more information.) We do plan to hold another Bay Area ConStruction next July (although that's been in the plans from the beginning, as we charged the ConStruction committee with doing at least two of them from the start, in an attempt to get some momentum.
Most of our other projects are pretty quiet right now. I talked yesterday here about SFSFC acting as agents for CWSFA/Westercon 58 to do their US membership reimbursements.
This was the meeting where we elect directors who will take office next January 1. SFSFC has eleven directors, serving three-year terms, staggered so that we elect three or four directors each year in November. Joining re-elected directors David W. Clark, Jan Price, and Tom Whitmore is Tomoko Shintani Stocksiek, who was one of SFSFC's SMOFCon Scholarship winners last year and who is (at last I checked) President of Anime Resources Group, parent of FanimeCon.
After the regular meeting, the directors who will make up the board as of next January have to meet to elect officers to serve for next year. Whenever possible, we prefer to do this immediately, because the meeting to elect officers rarely takes more than about five minutes, and it is such a hassle to set it up if we can't do it immediately. Unfortunately, Tomoko wasn't able to attend today's meeting and couldn't call into the conference call; however, in accepting the election, she indicated that she'd go with whatever the rest of us decided, as long as it wasn't to elect her to one of the jobs. The Board of Directors-Elect then re-elected incumbents David Gallaher, Nancy L. Cobb, and Kevin Standlee as President, Vice President, and Secretary respectively (yes, I agreed to do it another year), while Cindy Scott was elected Treasurer.
The meeting over, five of us (David Gallaher, David W. Clark, jbriggs, cherylmorgan and I) went to a nearby Afghan restaurant, where we were joined a bit later by dinogrl
Errands done and returned home, we watched the New Zealand vs. Ireland rugby match we downloaded from MediaZone. New Zealand, who had beat up on Wales something like 41-9 a few days ago, put out an entirely different 15-man squad against Ireland, and proceeded to thrash the Irish just as badly, winning 45-7. Ireland and Wales are not dub teams; they're first-class sides. But the All Blacks are not ranked #1 in the world for nothing. I commented that NZ must currently have both the number one and number two sides in the world currently.
Incidentally, I think "Ireland's Call," the music they use as the anthem for the combined Irish rugby team, is a superb song. (In rugby, Ireland fields a combined team, both Northern Ireland and the Republic. When playing in Dublin, they also play the Irish national anthem, but elsewhere, they just play "Ireland's Call.") It's just perfect for these situations. It's easy to sing, and makes you want to sing it, and gets people all fired up for the match about to start. It may not be the Haka the New Zealand team does before their matches, but it's still good, and much better than most countries' national anthems.
One disadvantage of watching these downloaded games is that it uses my laptop computer -- I can't work on things while watching the game. So writing up the minutes of today's meeting will have to wait. And we have more errands to do tomorrow. Except that both of us are showing signs of coming down with colds. This is not good when one plans to fly to Calgary next week.