draft notes from 3/7 meeting

please suggest edits in the comments section, and i will interpose them - tg.

At 12 noon on Friday, March 7, 2008, the Board of the North American Federation of Guitar Circles met by teleconference call. Participating were: Jaxie Binder, Sandra Bain Cushman, Tony Geballe, Curt Golden, Victor McSurely, Tom Redmond, and Dev Ray (as GC Contact for North America).

The meeting notes from the call of 2/29 were not yet ready for approval. It was agreed to continue the approval process by email.

Tom gave a final report on finances from the Snowshoe weekend and will send us the spreadsheet. We have about $4600 in the bank, with possibly a few more (minor) expenses to come in. This is exclusive of deposits made by people who withdrew from the Snowshoe course but who wish to apply their payment to a future offering. We discussed formalizing a policy for deposits, refunds and monies to be applied toward future offerings. CG agreed to work on wording for this and send it around by email. We were reminded of Hernán’s message informing us of GC Europe’s deposit/refund policy.

Dev is preparing a notice to send out announcing the July course in San Cugat. This notice is for the 40-odd people who have expressed interest in attending an introductory course. Once the notice of the course is up on the GC website, providing application and course information, Dev will send out the notice. He will also prepare a note for the people who were accepted at Snowshoe and paid their deposits but were unable to attend, alerting them that this money could be applied to San Cugat (we would transfer the funds to GC Europe).

To be sure that all new applicants are given the chance to consider the opportunity and recommendation of San Cugat, we will postpone further action on the Camp Caravan course penciled in for June 12-15. However, we need to keep aware of the approach of that date.

We spent some time discussing the repercussions of the Snowshoe course. Many of the participants are in touch by email, and are enthusiastically preparing to meet in various formations. The Executives are organizing themselves and others in their areas, and we may tap into those organizational and executive talents for our own purposes. An aggregate group is planning to meet in mid-March, and has been in touch with Bert Lams and TG about leading this group. Various Venn diagrams and spreadsheets are circulating on various new email lists, diagramming the relationships and schedules of these groups.

CG reported that Jacob Gorny is waiting for our signal to set the Raft Island Fall course in motion. SBC suggested that the Fall course would be a great opportunity for these newly forming circles to meet with some more experienced circles, particularly the TTA group, and will likely be at a very good moment for them to get some fresh insight into circling.

The letter to the North American GC community is ready to be sent out. We are finalizing the list of NA crafties and the letter will go out in the next week. Victor has been in contact with Leonardo in Mexico to apprise him of the formation of the NAFGC and offer connection and our support

SBC reported that she and JB have been discussing the formation of a permanent US office. We need coordination of various materials and resources, such as checklists for courses, facilities, etc. We discussed possibilities of centralizing this office online, so that everyone on the board can have input and access to the materials. SBC, JB and TR will begin to collate these materials, TG will look into Google documents online and will contact Terry Kalka to get his input. We will also look into a centralized website for the various North American circles to report on their activities.

JB suggested that we might bring in even one experienced European crafty to our courses, for purposes of connection and cross-fertilization. We discussed this possibility in the context of financial aims for 2009, and the resources of experience we have here (e.g. the CGT, TTA, etc.). This will be an ongoing investigation.

North American circle ntoes: CG reports that TTA has found a new space for their next season (and some other activities). The season runs from April 14 until sometime in July. Victor reports that the New England Circle has determined to undertake a recording project.

The next Board meeting will be by conference call at 12 noon Eastern time, on Friday, March 14. Instructions to follow.

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RESPONSES...

from cg: looks good to me. approved.

from DR: well done!





great job tony!