BAOC Board Meeting Minutes
Date: (Thu.) Sep. 14, 2006
Location: Menlo Park, CA
Event Director: 
- 650.906.9672
Type: Quarterly meeting of the Board of Directors -- 7:00-10:00 pm; pizza will be available at 6:30 -- All club members are welcome
Minutes of the September 14, 2006 meeting of the BAOC Board of Directors
Attending: Kelly Wells, Tony Pinkham, Esther Heller, Jean Beuerman, Ev Beuerman, Steve Beuerman, Jay Hann, Jeff Lanam, Rex Winterbottom, Brad Wetmore, Nancy Lindeman, Gary Kraght, Steve Gregg, Nick Corsano, Mark Blair, George Minarik, Jim Waite
1. Approval of Last Meeting Minutes – Nick Corsano
Scott Aster was kind enough to record the minutes of the last meeting, while Jim was on vacation. Two corrections will be made to those minutes:
- E-punch Director's additional comments regarding use of e-punch on W/Y.
- Strike President's comments about open board positions remaining open.
2. Report of Email Votes – Jim Waite
One BAOC board vote occurred by email since the last meeting: Rex made a proposal that the Sprint course at Joaquin Miller Park on August 6 be designated as a fundraiser for the US team ($5 for each entry).
The proposal passed 12 to none, with one abstention.
3. President's Report – Nick Corsano
- Recognition for several people who made exceptional contributions to the club over the summer.
- Note made of the good BAOC turnout at the USOF meeting held in Colorado.
- Silva award to Vladimir Gusiatnikov.
- Bayfront Park update. The park is likely saved from being another golf course, but now faces another proposal — new ball fields for the city of Menlo Park.
4. Event Coordinator's Report – Brad Wetmore
- Upcoming event review (as published on the web site).
- Special note of the "give-back" event scheduled at the Presidio by Terry Farrah.
- Dwight Freud has set two courses in the last few months, and will set another in December.
- Discussion of the light schedule over the summer. Events were planned, but couldn't find ED/CS. Number of events is directly proportional to ED/CS volunteer level. New ED/CS are encouraged to give it a try. ECs will try to set up new ED/CS as Co-ED/Co-CS, or pair with a mentor if they want to try it alone. Recent example: Bill Strauss working with Dan Greene and Tapio Karras.
- Announcement of Area Event Coordinators:
- Steve Gregg (East Bay)
- Mark Prior (North Bay)
- Mikkel Conradi (South Bay)
- Permits
- Event Directors are responsible for obtaining the event permit. This was true up until 5 years ago, and now the policy has reverted to this. The ED has always known the required details, including the number of attendees, course length and location. But now that the permit is their responsibility, EDs are encouraged to apply early.
- Insurance
- Brad Wetmore has taken on the job of obtaining insurance for each event. Much bigger job than anticipated.
- At the USOF level, new insurance companies are being queried for coverage plans so that alternatives are understood. (From Gary K)
- ED/CS for each event must be a BAOC and/or USOF member to be covered by the liability insurance.
- No USOF member has ever been sued. (Gary K)
5. Treasurer's Report -Steve Beuerman
Detailed status reports of the current-year budget and event income were presented and discussed. Event income has generated almost $16,000 net year-to-date. Other details are in the reports.
6. Mapping Report – Bob Cooley
Bob Cooley did not attend, as he is at the ARDF Championships in Sofia, Bulgaria. George Minarik commented that the mapping of Boggs Mountain is proceeding as planned.
7. Contribution to U.S. Trail-O Committee – Steve Beuerman
The Trail-O held at the last "A" meet netted $101. A motion to donate the entire amount to the USOF Trail-O committee passed unanimously. A request should be put in the envelop for the CS to send the corrected map to Bob Cooley.
8. Formation of 2007 Budget Committee/Discussion of Contributions – Steve Beuerman
- First meeting will be in November, contact Steve if interested.
- Directors should send any requested increase or decrease in their 2007 budget to Steve.
- Nick proposed budgeting for contributions, e.g., the USOF Team Sprint, or USOF Trail-O. Esther though this could be used as a placeholder item, to be used in case it's needed, or not. After discussion, this item was tabled and deferred to the Budget Committee.
9. O in the Oaks IV – Marie-Josee Parayre
- The new bulletin has the latest information.
- A carpool site has been arranged at the Walmart in Livermore.
- There will be a shuttle on Day 2 (Long course).
- Marie-Josee is checking on hotels to use as the event center and packet pickup.
- Online registration will be set up with Active.com, once Steve finds workarounds for web-page issues.
- Marie-Josee is still looking for crew chiefs.
- Awards will be separate per day, generating many awardable categories, so creative suggestions are welcome.
- Consensus that this is EDs prerogative, whatever fits the available effort. No opinion on whether a ribbon-only event is OK.
10. 2007 Ski-O Champs – Tony Pinkham
- US Champs for Ski-O now exists.
- Discussion on publicity. Many out-of-state attendees have expressed interest.
- Advertisements are expensive (e.g. Cross-country magazine = $400).
- Other options: Nordic News, Adventure Sports
- Tony is still working on entry fees, which are complicated because of the multi-venue and multi-day aspects. Ski areas charge more on weekends, so coming up with an understandable fee structure has been a challenge.
- No event will be an "A" meet, and won't factor in rankings.
- Jeff Lanam suggested that we should generate a public/private lodging list, to help out-of-towners understand that reasonable options exist. (A typical example is a cabin at $40 pppn.)
- Tony is looking for a lodging coordinator.
- Should list the event on the IOF calendar.
- ONA advertisement is scheduled for Sep/Oct, and another in Nov/Dec.
- Tony doesn't yet have a sense of how many will come to the event, so it has been hard to develop a budget. Gary K. noted that for this "first-time" multi-day Ski-O, it would be OK to treat the event series as a loss leader. Maybe over time it can become the 1000-days of Ski-O, or something like that.
- Motion to authorize $1000 for Ski-O marketing and advertising. Passed unanimously (13 to zero).
- Ideas for web advertising are appreciated. Please send to Tony.
11. 2007 Western States Championships – George Minarik
- October 13-14 at Boggs Mountain Demonstration Forest near Cobb, CA, and adjacent to Harbin Hot Springs
- Map has been field checked
- Flat rolling hills, 3000'-4000' elevation plateau
- Runnable pine forest, no PO
- Map will be complete in February
- Scott Aster will be Event Director, George Minarik and Mark Blair will be Course Setters
- USOF A-meet status applied for
12. Re-establishment of A-Meet Planning Committee – Nick Corsano
- Value of having this committee active is to provide a longer range look.
- Current committee carried us through 2007, but need to start planning for 2008 this fall and finish by year end.
- For example, planning for the 2009 U.S. Champ must start in 2007.
- Major event (WOC, APOC, WMOC, WJOC) requires 4-year advance planning.
- Previous members (Evan C, Bob C, Steve B, Tony P, Gary K) are all asked to continue on.
- Propose to add Nick C, Brad W, George M.
- The first update from the new committee will be presented at the December meeting.
13. Junior Development Strategy – Jay Hann
- O-coaches – where are they?
- Propose contests to help bring in Juniors for meets.
- A placeholder web page has been setup on <http://baoc.org/wiki/Juniors>.
- Tap Scout leaders, ROTC leaders, X-country team coaches to be O-coaches.
- The last category is questionable. ;-) (Steve G)
- USOF annual convention next year will have a Junior coaching clinic. (Gary K)
- In 2007, USOF will have a program to distribute Junior development money to clubs.
- Idea: Setup an O-league in city parks to get kids started early. (Tony P)
- Briones is a special case of the last suggestion – one event per year for the last 15 years!
- Earning a book when achieving a certain performance level might not be a great incentive for a kid. Prizes need to be fun.
- Need passionate adults!
- Relays might be more appealing, since teams generate interest.
From Dan Green by email: The idea is to provide juniors with additional reading material:
- For our more serious juniors, I would suggest giving them subscriptions to Orienteering Today: <http://www.orienteeringtoday.com/>.
- While the English is a little broken in places, its very well produced and I think it addresses the youth and elite demographic better than ONA and our own Bulletin. In other words, it might be more inspiring reading.
- Orienteering Today is not cheap (~ $80/year), so I would suggest giving a few issues (or just one year) and then more carefully determining if it's a useful gift.
- For our more beginning juniors I'm thinking we could buy a box of "Orienteering: Skills & Strategies," by Ron Lowry and Ken Sidney, and give these out to juniors after they've shown some minimal level of interest (e.g., attended 3 events). I think this runs ~ $20-$25. I'm sure others may have stronger opinions about which textbook to hand out, I like Lowry and Sidney's text because it is introductory, but it's also part of a progression towards more elite orienteering (i.e., they have a second book on Training & Performance, which I wouldn't give away initially).
14. Fees for Sprint Courses – Nick Corsano
- Should Sprint fees be separated on the fee schedule?
- Comment: Costs are driven more by venue than length. This argues against stating a Sprint course fee as a matter of policy. Example: At Berkeley, there were two Sprint events, and the normal fee was charged.
- No change in current policy. ED are still responsible for setting the price of special events, and need only discuss any unique situations with the President.
15. Directors' Reports
Registration – Ev & Jean Beuerman
Fees could not be charged for the recent Joaquin Miller event. Ev & Jean distributed self-addressed envelopes that people could use afterwards. This seems to have been a perfectly reasonable workaround to the rule, since the checks are still coming in.
Equipment – Mark Blair
No updates on the Ukrainian control bags.
E-punch – Trinka Gillis (by email)
I have ordered 30 more EPunch control units, and they should be here in about a week. I hope to have them ready to use at Calero. With these, BAOC will have enough controls to cover all courses, including White and Yellow.
I would like to be relieved of the duties of EPunch Director. I have been doing it for over two years, and I need a break. Since we have several events coming up that I have already committed to doing, I would like to be relieved of the post in early February, after the Ski-O Week. Of course, if anyone else steps up before then, that is great. I am willing to train the next person/people. I would especially like to thank Evan Custer — without his tireless help I would never have survived this long.
Membership – Kelly Wells
The following is Kelly's written report:
- The number of members in the BAOC is a roller coaster of moving averages. I was initially concerned about the drop in membership shown in previous bulletins since 1996.
- The following data is derived from the archive member database.
Memberships Members 1st-Year
Year Expired Dropped Retention Rate
1999 78 142 36%
2000 97 179 47%
2001 88 159 37%
2002 79 149 36%
2003 94 182 35%
2004 86 165 31%
2005 90 194 51% (to date)
2006 (to date) 59 97 671 1267
- For whatever reason, we only retain about 35% of our memberships after the first year.
- We have a fairly high turnover, which needs to be further analyzed before we develop club policy and strategy to retain these members. (I.e., are these mostly White and Yellow course members, and how many events did they attend?)
- From 1999 till the present we have lost approximately 40-45 net memberships and 90 -100 net members. We seem to be attracting a lot of new members, but for a variety of reasons they move on to other activities (or just move) and let their memberships lapse. It would help to compare meet and course attendance and club revenues in conjunction with this data in order to determine the balance for a successful healthy club.
- The following represents approximately how long the members were in the club before they let their memberships expire.
Years Number of memberships expired
15-20 10
11-14 21
6-10 68
5 29
4 39
3 49
2 62
1 306
0 83
- In response to this data, Nancy mentioned that some people aren't joiners, and just pay increased fees.
- When people are dropped from being members, we should send them a thank you note.
- Common wisdom was mentioned that everyone should make an extra effort to talk to new people at the meets
Training – Steve Gregg
At the Presidio event (this Sunday at 10 am), George Minarik will lead a discussion on advanced orienteering topics.
Event Quality – Dan Greene
Dan could not attend tonight's meeting.
Juniors – Jay Hann
- Jay requests that the four permanent course maps be made available to youth leaders for training purposes.
- Shell Ridge, Presidio, Joaquin Miller, Briones
- Members thought that specific text must be reviewed to be verify non-commercial use for the maps. Meg Gerstner to be consulted.
- Parks hand out simple black and white maps, so the new policy should be carefully reviewed.
Publicity – Nancy Lindeman
- NOD has had newspaper ads, but no feedback.
- BAOC events are posted on the Adventure Race site (sorry, no link was given).
- USOF calendar has the Rogaine (Astrogaine).
- Working on flyers for the Ski-O week.
Bulletin – Jeff Lanam
Printed extra for NOD (have maybe 150 for distribution during the two events at Presidio and Coyote Hills).
Website – Van Boughner
Comment from Brad: EDs need to send Van the event report, in addition to the bulletin report to Jeff Lanam. Normally these can be exactly the same, but please remember to do it!
Submitted by Van (email):
- Chuck and Brad have been doing the lion's share of keeping the web site up-to-date, with all the upcoming event announcements and results. We've had some recent participation by regular club members as well, as they discover and experiment with the wiki on the site, that allows anyone with an account to edit the content using a web browser. Accounts are available to any club member interested, but you have to email baoc@baoc.org to get one. We took down the automatic self-signup a few months back when the web site was briefly abused by a spammer who signed up for an account.
- Lately I have been working on technical improvements to the web site that would increase the ease with which events may be edited or added to the schedule. I'm taking our custom event schedule management software and moving it into the wiki (as a wiki extension), so that we could consider allowing Event Coordinators, who have a wiki account, to use a "hidden" version of the schedule to plan events. The advantage of this would be that once an event is "approved", it would already be there in the schedule and we could just "turn it on" so that everyone can see it in the regular schedule. Brad and Chuck are already both well acquainted with the scheduling system, but I think if we want to make it useful to more people I need to make it easier to learn and use. I would be happy to put more effort into it in order to make it more useful for the purpose of tentative event scheduling.
Adventure Race Coordination – Mark Prior
No report.
Outreach – Scott Aster
No contacts since the last Board meeting.
Social – Rex Winterbottom
- Even if they aren't well attended, small events foster communication.
- Next social is at Calero – watch for details.
- Also note that a Halloween event is coming up (mid-week).
- Thorsten will hold another Christmas Street-O this year.
USOF – Gary Kraght
As a number of USOF issues came up earlier in the evening, a move for adjournment was made and all agreed.
16. New Business (including date of next meeting) – Nick Corsano
The next meeting will be on Wednesday, December 6, 2006. Unless another site is suggested and booked, Nick will reserve a room at the same location (Burgess Recreation Center, Menlo Park).
17. Adjournment
The meeting adjourned at 10:05pm.
Respectfully submitted on 9/17/06 by Jim Waite