BITS Board Meeting for May 1, 2024

AI Generated Transcript

Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Blind Information Technology Specialists May board meeting. I want to welcome those of you who are listening on ACB Media, as well as, I think we have Clubhouse with us, too. Is that correct? That’s correct, right, Brad? Clubhouse is here, but yeah, they have raised hands turned off. Okay, that’s fine. Just wanted to welcome everybody that’s here and welcome our board members and welcome our members to the meeting. I sent out the agenda a bit later this time because I wanted to give our committee chairs time to get the reports into me. And I believe that we got, if not all of them, almost all of them. I think we’re missing just one, I think. So we’ll now proceed with the agenda as it is, and we’ll need to approve that in just a minute. But before we do that, I will ask our Madam Secretary Robin to call the roll. President Jeff Bishop? Here. Vice President Brad Snyder? Here. Secretary Robin Frost, I’m here and happy to be so. Treasurer Diane Scalzi? Here. Michael Babcock? He was here. He was here, yes. John McCann. I’m here. And David Edick. I’m here. As the President said, we would also like to welcome all of those who have joined us through the various platforms through which they can. And we would like to let those members who have joined us via Zoom know that each of you will be recognized individually by name in the written minutes of this meeting. And with that, Mr. President, the call of the roll is complete. Thank you very much. can I get someone to move the adoption of our agenda for this evening? I so move. Second. Okay. John moves and Diane seconds. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Michael’s here now, by the way. Okay. Yes. I was going to comment on that. Oh, all right. Great. Okay. So we have a full complement to board members. We do have a full forward here. That’s excellent. Next, I’d like to again return to our secretary to discuss, or at least have her potentially move. I don’t know if she has any further comments on her minutes, but the April 3rd minutes for our last board meeting. Robin? I have no comments or changes to report, but I would like to take this opportunity to thank two of our prior secretaries in bits for their assistance in filling in some gaps we had in our archives. Their efforts are greatly appreciated and valued. Thank you. Yay. And you have been doing an amazing job of organization and, you know, making things a bit less chaotic in our Dropbox. So thank you for that. My pleasure. Keep up the outstanding work because, gosh, that’s hard. All right. can I get someone to move the adoption of the minutes please don’t move okay Michael and David any discussions I thought it was Brad I heard Michael I think was it what was it it was it was me that said so move oh sorry Michael yeah I thought it was Michael no problem same time okay so it was Michael and David okay all those in favor aye aye aye aye any opposed all right now we’re going to do something a little bit different and i’m hoping that people will play along all of you have the committee reports that have been interest affiliates and others. This does not preclude you from doing a report, but I would ask you to do, because we have a lot to cover tonight, especially when we get to old and new then I would ask that you kindly make note of that because there’s some things concerning things like the logo and other things such as that, that we’ll be discussing under a new, new business and things. So we’re all busy. I forget where I put it, but it’s there. So unless there’s an objection to this, I would, I would like us to try to stay a little crispier on our committee reports because it’s all written. Unless, I mean, it’s your opportunity to speak to the organization as well. So I will leave it up to you, but I would just ask that you kindly be at least aware of the fact that this consent agenda is here and they do the same thing at the national level. They say the same thing and people still give reports and it’s fine. But I’m just asking that it’s not necessary to read all of War and Peace. You want to read a few chapters? I think that’s awesome. Okay. And by the way, I am going to say that to myself, because honestly, I can be a little waffly too, like I am right now. So I’m going to pick on myself. So can I get someone to move the adoption of the consent agenda? I’ll move. I’ll move. Okay. I’ll second. Okay. So David moves and John seconds. Any discussion? Because I want to make sure that. Jeff, the only thing I would say is that speaking for my part, I just am going to make like one or two updates where information was overtaken by events. And you can understand how that might happen. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I didn’t think that was a problem. I didn’t think that was just. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, I just don’t. I just don’t think that we need to go read every line of the whole report. No. Yeah, exactly. right okay okay all right all those in favor aye aye any opposed okay and i think this will also help our secretary too which will make her life very happy even if she did mention things like puppies and fish on mastodon today yes i did okay now i’ll have to look yes we won’t go into that here but it was kind of fun it made me smile i needed that crazy today smiles are good all right uh we will now turn to diane who may have things to tell us she’s our treasurer and we’ll turn things over to her diane yeah okay thanks jeff um first of all We do have another BitsLife member that paid his $200 in April, and his name is Randy Reed. So I want to welcome him as a BitsLife member. I had to do an interim treasurer’s report. So when you hear the recording, you will hear that word in the title. That’s because the PayPal statement was not available when I did the report. Hopefully it will be there tomorrow. I can make any corrections and submit a real report and remove interim from the title. I think, unless you had something else in mind that you wanted me to bring up, Jeff, right now. No, I think that’s fine. I think this board meeting actually caught a lot of us off guard because it came up on the very first day of the month. And honestly, it feels like we were just doing this about two weeks ago. So I don’t know. This month went by so, so fast. Okay, so I think you have a recording, right? Brad’s going to play the Treasurer’s Report. Michael Babcock read it, unless he was able to make his voice that good on Siri. So, yeah, we’ll go with that. Let’s find out together. Here we go. Bits Interim Treasurer’s Report, April 1, 3, 2024. Checking. Beginning balance, $8,071.18. Credits. Transfer from PayPal, $600.06. Total credit, $600.06. Debits. Zoom monthly subscription slash increased meeting size to 500 participants minus $26.50. ACB certification dues payment minus $3,125. Total debits minus $3,151.50. Ending balance $5,519.74. PayPal. Beginning balance $132.68. Credits. 14 regular member dues payments, $280. 1BITS life member dues payment, $200. 1 student member dues payment, $10. 1 partial dues payment, $15. 1BITS organizational membership, $25. Asterisk 1. Total credits, $530. Debits. PayPal fees, minus $18.71. Asterisk 2. Transfer to checking minus $600.06. Total debits minus $618.77. Ending balance $43.91. Savings account. Beginning balance $37,128.55. Credits. Interest $0.32. Total credits $0.32. Debits. No debits. Total debits $0.00. Ending balance $37,128.87. Total for all accounts $42,692.52. Asterisk 1. One member paid $25 organizational dues, which was eliminated for this year, proposing issuing a $5 refund. Asterisk 2. For information on PayPal fees, visit https://www.paypal.com slash US slash web apps slash MPP slash PayPal hyphen fees. Submitted for audit. Prepared by Diane Scalzi. Bits Treasurer. May 1st, 2024. Excellent. Diane, I just have one question, if you don’t mind. And I don’t need this tonight, but when you do your final report, can you please let us know kind of where we are in reference to last year’s numbers? Are we ahead? I think we’re ahead, but it would be interesting for me to know that number. In other words, at this time last year, what was our total balance? So you want me to get the May report from last year so you can compare it with the May report this year? Yeah. Or April, I think. April, I mean, yeah. April, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, basically the April. Right, exactly. Okay. So if you can, because there’s a reason why I’m asking that, because I’m hoping that, I think we are ahead, but I would like to actually see that data if we can do that. But that’s my only question for you, for me. Does anyone else have any questions for Dan? Yeah, there’s two. Brad. Brad and then me. Thanks. Well, my question is to the item for Zoom, and I’m not questioning the item, but it seems to me when we upped our account to 500 participants, we were taking advantage of a, I think it was a three months at half price. It was, yeah. I thought so. And now is that, I would think. I thought it was four. Was it four months? I thought it was four. That four months may be over. Yeah, I think it might be. I think this was the fourth month. And now that that four months at the half price is over, can we not shift to paying annually, which would give us 12 months for the price of 10 is usually how it works? That’s something we can look into? Ooh, we should look into that. because I know we’re talking something a month I can’t remember what it is it was $26.50 but that’s a half price that was a half price that includes sales tax so yeah we should find out $100 a year so if we can look into that that would be amazing yeah if anyone knows how I can go about finding that out Zoom website. Okay. Go to our account. Okay. Choose to upgrade the plan or change your plan. Mr. President. Yes, ma’am. Monthly to annually. Yes, Robin. The total for all accounts in the May minutes of last year was $38,446.88. So it is up. That is excellent. Okay. That’s okay-ish. So I don’t have to look anymore? Robin just gave me a view? Boy, she’s on the ball. That is amazing, Robin. That is spectacular. That’s why the minutes are there. Gold star for you. Holy smokes. Okay. Mr. President? Yes. Given that great news, I didn’t make any issue of Robin to me, but I just have two things. Dan, were there, the report that we read, I thought I saw slightly different figures that were released earlier. It’s not super important. Am I mistaken and if I am, that’s fine. I don’t think the report was any different. Okay. I might’ve been looking at some bad figures anyway, their interim, and that’s my second point. So not to worry about that, what I just spoke about. I was just intrigued. I just wanted to clarify that while it’s our usual practice to submit reports for audit, this should be exempt from that since this was the best we could do given the timing this month. And the real report will be tomorrow, which we can adopt and should adopt along with the- In the June report. So should I remove the word submitted for audit? Yeah, for now. For now, yeah. Yeah. On this one, since it is interim and it’s going to be superseded, yeah, I would remove it. That’s the only correction to this, you know. Okay. That’s easy enough to do. Very good. Anyone else for Diane? No, no, John, that’s great. All right. Yes, great report and great find from Robin. So thank you for that. Okay, I will go over the President’s report. I actually did not write one this month from the standpoint of a long article. And you’ll find out why in just a minute. Because I did write something, but I don’t think it’s out yet. Maybe we’ll learn more about that from the Publications Committee a little bit later. First of all, and you’ll be hearing more about this later on in the meeting, but our work is well underway for convention planning. And this includes some leadership things that we need to discuss tonight and make some decisions on so that Denise doesn’t come chase me. And I get in trouble with the national organization because I definitely don’t need that since I’ll be at the convention. So we’ll be discussing a little bit about that tonight. I have had an opportunity and I am going to continue to have that opportunity over this month and in June to continue to talk about bits at different affiliates and their conventions and chapter meetings. So that’s been going really, really well. And lots of people are reaching out. Not to mention the fact that we are also making a presentation, additional presentations in this month as well. And we’ll be talking more about what’s coming up at the convention when Brad talks. We’ll be doing lots of that in June as well. I wrote an article for our first inaugural newsletter that’s coming out. And it’s about the BITS family. And if you look at the agenda, family is all in uppercase. So F-A-M-I-L-Y. And I think you’ll find it kind of fun. I kind of try to have fun with these and come up with acronyms. And so there’s some calls to action. There’s some recognition of who we are as a group and what makes us special. And I think you’ll thoroughly enjoy that. I think it was a fun article to write. And it’s my typical, you know, four-plus-page article, which, well, unless Ms. Armstrong shortened it, because Josh knows what the editor will do to it, but which is fine. That’s what she gets paid for. We’ll be talking about delegate alternate and the person who will be going to the nominating committee tonight. We do not have an education committee report this evening, but I will tell you that the education efforts are going very, very well within, within bits. We are starting planning on the next round of educational opportunities, at least the big one. And then we’re also looking at other options for future training opportunities and partnering to go along with that. So stay tuned for that. Our basics with bits sessions are going very, very well. And our Python course is going really, really strong. I will tell you that we’re down to about 85 students. About 90 in total, if you include the administrative staff, that’s a part of the Python course itself. So that’s down about 40 people, which is not bad when you think about the course is actually getting very complex at this point. We’re writing code that is getting, and John can attest to this, we’re getting into some pretty in-depth things. Yes, I can. Yeah, it’s getting rather even challenging for me. We’ve got four assignments for this one, which we only have to do two, but I’m doing all four. And so far, I’ve got about 400 lines of Python code written and not done yet. So I don’t know how long I don’t know what that’s going to end up looking like. But suffice it to say, Ken Perry has been doing a valiant effort with the course and along with Joel and Michael and others that are involved in the course as well. Just an amazing amount of effort that goes on for this. And for those of you that handle Zoom and all of that, you’ll know how busy we are in office hours because a lot of times you’re kicking us out of office hours as part of that process, which is fine. That’s been resolved, though. We have some solutions for that, and that should be rectified going forward. I want to call attention to the fact that we’re coming up on July, which means that it’s time to start asking for people to start renewing or at least paying for the upcoming year of dues. And I would like to talk about that. There was a strategic reason why I asked about the numbers, and I won’t get into it here. but I think we ought to take a look in the mirror and see how well we did the last time we offered our free memberships. And assuming that the website is up in time, I think that that could eliminate a lot of the administrative and technical hurdles that we ran into last time that we did this. But I would like at least the board to be pondering it and see where we’re going to go and if we want to do that again or what we want to do. So I’m not asking for a solution tonight, but I would like the board to be pondering that. It’s something we do need to decide in June so that we can get that announced to the membership so that they have time to comment so that we can make those changes accordingly. Okay. um i left this list and i and i’m going to start meeting with the chair specific chairs and and seeing what we can do to expedite some of this a lot of it’s already in motion but i’d like to the first thing is of course our backlog of content so we have we definitely have people who are stepping up and wanting to assist with that so i’m i’m really hoping that david will start organizing that content and handing that out start getting it uh edited and and ready to go up on the website which we’ll hear more about later this evening um i would like to get a a welcome letter written that we can attach to notifications after people enroll in bits that gives a lot more information about our email lists and our structure and who we are and how to get in touch with things and all of those types of things. So I’m hoping that, uh, we might be able to form a subcommittee and get that, get that figured out so that we can put that in place, um, on the new website, especially as people will renew. Um, uh, we, we, uh, and I know that the convention is coming up, but we also have September nearing, so we need to be thinking about constitutional amendments and changes, and I know that’s on John’s plate. So I’m not saying that we have to have a solution for all that today, but at least be thinking about it, contemplating your naval, lying in bed doing nothing but thinking about bits. You see, that’s the way it goes, right? Something like that. And then, of course, website fundraising and publications goes without saying. There’s a lot of efforts that have been going on there already. So that’s all I had for tonight. Any questions for me? I have a question that doesn’t have anything to do with this, but I want to make sure that I am at liberty to issue that $5 refund to the person that overpaid? Oh, of course. Of course you do. That’s fine. Okay. I don’t think that you would need to bring that to the board. If they overpaid, just pay them back. Okay. Yeah. I don’t think that that’s necessary to get a vote on. Okay. I mean, it would be different if we had to pay someone something that they didn’t pay for. But we’re just giving something back that they give us. So I’m fine with it. Okay. Okay. Anyone else? Hey, Jeff. Yes, sir. David, I was just going to ask if anybody wants to help edit content, please send me an email. I’ll send it out if people don’t have it. Okay. I know that you’ve had some takers here, there’s also been others who have reached out. I think Debbie Hazleton has also told you about some people with you all right okay great yeah okay anyone else all right well it’s time to do things a little different now because i’m going to keep all of biggest changes over the past 30 days but we should talk about it first and to do that Merv is here Merv I know you’re in a hurry here no no you’re fine take take whatever time you okay well I won’t reiterate anything that was in the report um in the subscribe addresses will go out later tonight. If you are already subscribed to one of the lists that we originally had, then you have been subscribed to the new list. If you are not subscribed, then the subscribe addresses will go out later tonight. And that’s that’s pretty much what we have. Go ahead. Go ahead. No, go ahead. Yeah, I was just going to say, I think because this is such a major change, and I don’t know that everybody has seen this, and I think it’s probably important because if someone writes to the Braille list, they’re going to wonder what happened to the Braille list. Okay. Well, we merged Braille and AT, and it’s now called Access. We have merged, I don’t have them here in front of me right now, but we merged five lists into… So Apple, Microsoft, Google, Home. And audio. And audio into technology, right? Into technology. And then we made development out of the four programming type lists. which is like programming, web development. Enable. Enable, correct. And tech pros. Yeah. Okay. And social and chat merged, right? The social. And social and chat merged, correct. Okay. And of course, we’ve made gentle is now called mentoring. And we’ve got big plans for mentoring. So stay tuned for that one. Okay. And then the general list stays the same with the three-day grace period for topics. And then the other list is going through a seven-day cycle, correct? And that is correct. And that is to encourage, the seven-day period is to encourage conversation. The three-day is actually, it’s to keep that list low traffic. Because that’s sort of like a lobby. It’s sort of an intersection. because we want people, that’s pretty much where everybody defaults when you join BITS. But we want you to go over and talk and have conversations on all of the other lists. That’s more, the lobby is more of a catch-all. It’s where you go if you don’t know where else to go, but the other lists are there for your education and your entertainment. Okay, we do have a couple of hands. Yes, we do. They’re email related. Normally, I wouldn’t do this, but because Merv’s here, I thought we should go ahead and do that. Want to go ahead and take those hands? Yep. And so I’m going to ask Debbie Armstrong to unmute. I promised Rosanna the Bits Billet on Sunday is my job to produce it. But because of all the email list changes, I had done this beautiful article on email list. And I realized, oh, my goodness, it’s out of date. I can’t send this thing to Rosanna. So the biz bulletin is delayed by a few days until I get Merv’s post. And I want to do some of the quotes from this meeting, you know, where he talks about the main list being a lobby. And I need to rewrite that article. So if you all want to send me the recording of the meeting or Merv wants to send me a private email telling me what he would like me to say about the list, then I will redo that article so it will not be out of date. And Rosanna, I will get your bits bulletin. I’m really sorry, but I felt like I didn’t want to publish anything obsolete. Thank you. I’m back on mute. And I will do that. I’ll send you, I will be posting something tonight, and I will also send you something privately. And Dave also, David also has his hand up, and he can unmute himself. All right. My question is, which list are we going to see the subscribe address is the one you’re going to do it to, Merv. I will send it out to the lobby. And some people would like to see that posted less than three days a week. We will be sending that one twice a week, and we’ll be sending it once a month to the members list. I would recommend it initially go out to the members list. One of my concerns, based on conversations I’ve had with other members, is not everybody knows about the events list. So it would be good to figure out a way to let everybody know that they really should be on the events list to hear about BITS members’ online presentations. Right. Both the announced lists, the two announced lists haven’t changed, and neither does the artificial intelligence list. All of the subscription addresses will go out, as well as the new lists. All right. Any other hands? Not at this time. Nope. Okay, perfect. Okay. Anything else, Merv? Nope. Tremendous work, sir. Your team should be very well commended. And a special shout out goes to Jason Castingway, who was up into the wee hours of the night and then got up and continued to work Well, we did. No, they’re gone. No, we’re done. Okay. Rosanna, publications, you’re up. Well, there’s a lot going on in publications, as Daph had mentioned. And Debbie, thanks for your comment. I appreciate it. I was kind of just assuming you were kind of wrapped up and busy with a whole lot of stuff. But thank you. I am looking forward to getting the first Bits Bulletin out to the membership. It’s very exciting. And there’s a lot of good stuff that’s in there. And just a note, going forward, the Bits Bulletin will go out quarterly. So after this goes out, we will be looking for new articles from the membership. And if there are things that you would like to share, experiences that you’ve had with technology, please be free to share that and send that over to us. There is an email address, and we’ll post that again on the membership list so that it will be out there. You can send any articles that you have to that list, and Debbie will be able to get those articles from you. And work with it. so that is the first thing I wanted to address the next thing I just wanted to address is to say that we now have 109 followers on our Mastodon yeah it’s really exciting and yeah as of today I think Robin said there were 109 and as you know Robin’s been keeping up with Mastodon almost every day and continues to post the events on Mastodon. Marianne Murad is continuing to post updates on our Facebook page as well. We are looking also at adding the Facebook page. The Bits ownership will be added to the Facebook page shortly as soon as I can get hold of Herbie and get that taken care of so that the Facebook that we have will belong to Bits, which is what it should be. Yeah, that’s really cool. The other thing, and I guess I’ll wait until it comes up on the agenda, but yes, we do have- About the logo. Yeah, we have a huge thing going on with that. One other thing I just want to mention is we did, The Publications Committee, as you know, has two components to it, the social side, and we also have the handbook side. The handbook side of it did meet this past Saturday, and it was a great meeting. We accomplished a lot at that meeting. We did work on working through, you know, reading through some of it. We went through the board of directors and started reading through that, as well as the officers. We did send out a note to the board asking the board to respond with thoughts or feedback that they have based on the handbook. They can send us feedback that they want to add to their particular respective roles. Diane has already done that. So with that, we have completed the role of the treasurer at this point. That draft has now been completed. I want to thank everybody for all their excellent work. On the handbook, Robin and Penny Moss and John McCann, we had a great meeting and I’m looking forward to meeting again now in May and going forward with the next step. Rosanna, can I make a recommendation? Please, go ahead. Do you want to set a deadline for the officers to get you that feedback on their roles? You know, actually, I would, John. I’d like to have it no later than, honestly, I would like to have it no later than June 1st because I would like to complete that area of the handbook so that we could finish the, you know, the remaining parts of it and then move on to the membership portion, which has to be built from the ground up. When is your next meeting of that committee? I believe it’s May 11th, but that’s the handbook side, I think. I don’t know. Robin might have that. Robin, do you have that there? I believe we set it for May 18th because it’s the Saturday before Memorial Day. The 18th. Okay, that’s what it was. I knew we changed it. Why don’t we set the 15th as the deadline for the officers to get you their data so you have it for May 18th? That would be awesome. I would appreciate that. And the handbook committee would appreciate it as well. Okay. So what I would ask that you would do is if you can, send an email to the chairs list with the text of those. roles from the current handbook so that there’s you know that’s out in front if you don’t do you want me to send it to the chairs list that’s fine yeah we could do that i think i think all of the officers are on the chairs list so i think that’s i believe they are yeah that would be fine so you can get that out yeah and then they can read it that way they don’t have to go hunting for it and then uh and then you can assume that if you don’t get something from them by the 15th they don’t have anything to share with you. That’s right. Well, Jeff, you did send it to the board list as right? I did, but I’m just saying that I’m just, you know, put it in front and center. It’s not a bad idea. Yep. Not a problem. Will do. Okay. Okay. And thanks again, everybody, for all your great participation and time and effort. And stick around. You’re coming back. Yes, I’m not leaving. I’ll just go on mute until you’re ready. Okay, anyone have any questions for her? Okay, David, Zoom. I believe my report in the packet speaks for itself. Okay. Unless anyone has any questions. Any questions on Zoom for David? All right. Okay. We’re going to move to presentation and outreach. So I’m going to hand this over to Brad and he can take a convention or in presentations in whatever order he wishes to take them in. So. All right. Well, we’ll take care of the easy one first. My presentations committee report pretty much speaks for itself. It’s in the notes that Jeff sent out. It just basically I rehashed the presentation we had during April and what we’ve got planned for May. As Jeff already says, basics with bits. We’re getting great attendance and Debbie and her team are doing a wonderful job. We’ve already decided, I believe, on the 25th of May is Memorial Day weekend. We are going to not hold basics with bits that weekend because it’s the holiday weekend. And in an email I had with Debbie today, after looking at the calendar, I realized that July 13th would be the second Saturday of the month. And that’s the day everybody will be returning from convention. So I think we’re going to skip basics with bits. But that’s a little bit down the line. Anyway, that’s pretty much the highlights from the presentation court. Now let’s talk about convention planning. Okay, my report starts out. I kind of rehash a lot of what’s already been said. I outlined real quickly what our presentations are that are planned for the virtual portion of the convention. And I state we have been meeting the milestones that Janet has set forth. We’ve, you know, got our presenter information to her on time. And the next milestone is to get presenter email and contact information to Cecily Nipper, who will send out webinar links. links now but what’s new on the convention report is we’ve been waiting a while we’ve been talking this bits reception that we are proposing to do at the in-person portion of the convention in jacksonville and i think somebody’s unmuted if you could mute yourself that would help me focus So, Janet has her information, I mean, has information on catering from the hotel to us. And we had a meeting of the Convention Planning Committee this past Saturday. And Janet attended the meeting and went over and was with us and was able to make suggestions. So, let me briefly give you some highlights from that meeting. The BITS reception is already on the schedule. We’ve planned it for Wednesday, July 10th from 4 p.m. until 6 p.m. Pick that time specifically because there is no other technology related event going on at that time. So 4 to 6 p.m., it’ll be held in a meeting room at the hotel, and we’ll have catering by the hotel per the contract with the hotel. We are looking at having a cash bar and snacks from the hotel catering. Snacks is, you know, Janet’s still working on exactly what that will be. Janet likes to call them salty snacks like, you know, Chex Mix and popcorn and just, you know, simple food like that. Anything else gets pretty costly. She sent out a list of options and cold hors d’oeuvres, warm hors d’oeuvres, and that runs into a lot of money. So we’re looking at, you know, something simple. The idea here is for people to mix and mingle and talk and, you know, stuff like that. So that’s the primary thing. So let me see. Cash bar costs us $165 just to have it in there. The hotel provides a bar. They provide a bartender. And I’m not sure the prices of drinks, but you can probably imagine their hotel prices. Then she’s working on our food options with catering. Janet recommends that we charge a fee ticket because that way you have a head count, which helps you with your catering. If you are planning on 100 people and 300 show up, that’s a problem. If you’re planning on 300 and only 100 show up, well, that’s a different kind of problem. So Janet suggests we charge a fee. It would be on, you know, you sign up on the convention registration form, you check a box, the fee is added to your registration. What we’re looking at then, hang on, what’s my next line? It has been suggested that if we’re going to charge a fee, I’m getting to the fee, that we have a raffle in conjunction with the fee. And so we’re looking at a raffle. It’s been discussed. A number of ideas were discussed. And I think what we’re looking at is doing the same, you know, we’re donating that Zoom H4E recorder and a bundle of a microphone, SD card, batteries. I can’t remember what else in the bundle. We’re donating that to the summer auction. And the idea was that we give away the same bundle with the H4E recorder at the reception. And so you would get, when you purchase a ticket, you would get a free drink and a raffle ticket. And we’re looking at, I believe it is $15 would be the fee. It makes it kind of a wash. You get a raffle ticket and a free drink. But mostly what we’re looking for is it’s a way to get a head count in advance of the event. Moving down my list. you would have to be present so you have to be in the room when your name or ticket number is pulled from the giant fishbowl to win the prize and then we would award the raffle prize right there on the spot to the winner no gift certificate where you get it later nothing like that it is immediate gratification We’re looking for, I said, one drink coupon. We said $15. Oh, out of the 15, ACB, the house, gets $3. So really, we’re getting 12. ACB gets three. And the person buying the ticket, of course, like I said, drink coupon and raffle ticket. Additional raffle tickets will be available for purchase on-site at the reception. We’re talking about one ticket for five dollars, three tickets for 10. We do not uh and that’s pretty much it obviously all these expenses that i’m talking about the price of the the raffle prize the whole concept and the prize all that is subject to board approval and i believe jeff has that farther on down the agenda under new business so um that’s pretty much all i have to talk about on the convention planning committee. Our next meeting, we continue to meet every two weeks because there’s a lot going on and we’re trying to stay on top of everything. And our next meeting, well, it was originally planned for May 11th. I sent out something today. I got to move it to May 18th because it turns out I have a conflict on May 11th. I’m committed to doing something, another presentation that day. And it would normally be on Sunday, but Sunday is Mother’s Day. So it’s going to be on Saturday. So anyway, May 18th, which I think is fine. That’s after our next milestone where we have to get the presenter contact info to Cecily. And I think we’re pretty much on top of everything. So let’s see what we’re going to do about this reception. I think it’ll be a lot of fun to have a reception. We’ve grown a lot. Getting a lot of people. You know, we’ll see. We’ll see. All right. We will see. Okay. We’ll talk more. I have questions, but I’ll wait because there are questions pertinent to things like tickets. Do we have tickets to sell? And if not, where do we get them? And I don’t know. Things to solve. Okay. Any questions for Brad? Okay. Debbie, do you have anything for education or are my comments sufficient? I’m going to assume since she’s not unmuting, but I think she’s fine. Okay. We’re going to now move to the IT committee report. so I’ll hand it over to Michael. Thank you Jeff. So a committee report went out in the packets and presume board members have had an opportunity to review that and members have as well. If anyone has any questions I’d be happy to answer them. I know we’re talking more about the website stuff later on in the agenda as well. And I appreciate any committee members’ assistance last thing right now that I will mention is that some members have gotten access to the website. Um, and I’ve gotten some positive feedback, so I’m positive. I’m, I’m excited to see where that goes. And, uh, we will, I I’m confident that we will be in position for whatever we end up doing in July in relation to membership. So that’s what I have. Okay, cool. And then there’s a go daddy, uh, item on the agenda. Yeah. Just because we have to sort of be thinking about June. Okay. Yep. Any questions for Michael? Okay. It’s now time to turn to budget and finance. I don’t know if Taylor is here. If she has anything additional, she sent out a comment on the audit. She is here. Okay. All right. Hey, everyone. Do you guys hear me? Yep. We hear you. Do you have anything additional to say other than the report that you submitted? – No, other than it may seem like I’m not doing anything, but you also have to remember that there is a CPA shortage and a sales tax season in Texas currently happening for end of quarter. So that’s why my report still applies. And like I said, I mentioned about the internal audits and my constraints, but we don’t need to go into that right now. So that’s kind of really all I have to say. – All right, thank you, Taylor. Any questions for Taylor? okay um real quick i don’t know if renee was able to get here to the meeting she texted me she was not able to connect i don’t see her on the list okay so rosanna and diane and and diane um i’m hoping you two can sort of pinch hit here yeah uh diane you can handle the budget and And Rosanna, I know you’ve been talking with them about the fundraising ideas and things with the logo and all of those things. So let’s let Diane go first on the budget, and then we’ll hand it over to you to Rosanna to talk about the logo. And I think Marty is here, so he can describe the logo. Is that the plan? Yeah, we can both describe it. Yeah. Okay, perfect. Okay, great. Go right ahead, Diane. There are some things that we didn’t put in the budget committee report that I wanted to mention because the report, the board had requested a report on our proposed investments for, you know, some of the money out of the savings account. And I didn’t feel real comfortable talking about it. And so I took the liberty of asking Daryl Oxner to weigh in. And Robin, his name is spelled Daryl, capital D-A-R-R-Y-L. His last name is capital O-C-H-S-N-E-R. And he does a community call on Saturdays called Personal Finance and Investing. And so I thought he could give me some perspective on the two funds that I was looking at, J-E-P-I and J-E-P-Q. And he gave us, I think, quite a balanced analysis, maybe leaning toward the conservative, but there’s nothing wrong with that. And, you know, basically what he said was that we should be more conservative because JEPQ, they do have very good dividends, but they also invest in stocks in the technology sector. And he was concerned that if the technology stocks, if the technology industry or sector ever went down the tubes, that we would lose a lot of money. So he suggested a couple of conservative approaches, either maybe investing in a money market through a company like Fidelity Investments, which would pay around 5% a year, or investing. And then also through them, I guess you could buy certificates of deposit, which might pay as high as like 5.5%. And either that or go with, if we were going to go with one of the two that I was looking at and that we should go with JEP, maybe go with JEPI because they invest in the S&P 500. So there are more stocks to choose from, and it’s, you know, it would be, maybe wouldn’t be as volatile as investing in the technology sector, even though the technology sector is doing great right now. So I hope that we can come up with a decision. I threw out a figure of $15,000 that maybe we should invest out of the savings account. But I wonder if we could maybe even go a little higher. Again, last month, as you heard in the Treasurer’s Report, we got all of $0.32 on our $37,000 in the savings account. So, you know, I really appreciated his information. He also gave other information that I shared with the board and the Budget Committee. And I shared fact sheets with them about JEPI and JEPQ. And we went into a thing about, we went into a thing about, wow, now I heard that and it’s kind of distracting me. But anyway, I guess that’s my report. we should maybe go, maybe we should, I would propose going with JEPI. That would still, that would be in the middle as far as, you know, the income that we could get and being conservative, being more conservative. Before we take a hand, that’s because I think it’s pertinent to the discussion. Does anyone on the board have any comments? John, I’m specifically looking at you. I’ve just unmuted. So if that was a nod to me. It was. First of all, I profoundly appreciate all of the hard work that Diana’s done on this and the great input she was able to share with the board. If I heard it once, I heard it a thousand times during my third year of law school when exposure, with a conservative approach, so as to not expose the corporation, be it nonprofit or otherwise, to undue risk. That’s more than enough. The initial thing that flashed in my mind is go to 30K. But also, you know, 25 would work for me. And I would go with the JPEI, which I think obviously, you know, may not get as high a return as the JEPQ. But every transaction in those financial sectors is a balance between risk and return. And it’s not like we really you need the return. I think that represents an appropriate balance for corporate investing. between risk and return. God knows we’ve not paid attention to that over the last time. How many years has there been existence? And I would even move if it’s appropriate to do so at this time, or if you prefer, I’d wait. But I would move that we take $25,000 and put it in GEPI, or JEPI, excuse me, whatever. Okay, second that. Well, okay. We have a motion on the floor, and it’s been seconded. So we’re going to continue on with discussion. I have thoughts too. Anyone else on the board have a comment? This is Michael. What I really think is important with these funds is it’s very important to have a diverse range of investments. And I appreciated the feedback that we, or that Diane received and forwarded to the board in relation to these funds. And I think that it makes a smart choice out there. Okay. I will. I have to say that I was, I’m very nervous about this in large part because it isn’t my money, you know, that we’re talking about. This is where I’m at too, Diane. And I have a recommendation, actually. that I think if you don’t know about me I’m a pretty conservative guy but before I go there we have a hand raised I think it’s Marie it is and I’d like to go ahead and let her I think this is pertinent to the discussion I think and I’ve just asked her to unmute okay am I on? she is yep you’re on are you here to talk about Are you here to talk about the funds or? Yes, I am. Okay. I just wanted to make sure. I was in accounting occupation for over 25 years and I’m like Jeff, I tend to be quite conservative. I’m very nervous about us putting funds in stocks of almost any type. I have worked, I have had my retirement fund with Fidelity for many years and investing it conservatively over the years has been absolutely the best choice I could make. And their agents are really good to recommend what you should do. And I would like to have somebody talk to them before they make the decision. And their money market, that is a fixed it. And it is around 5% right now. Last year on Discover Bank money market account, on $10,000 less money, I made almost $12,000. Okay. So I want to thank you. $1,200, not $12,000. Yeah, yeah, I knew what you were doing. Yeah, I mean, you know what? We made, what, like $3 on our savings? That’s ridiculous. I don’t think we made that. That’s just my quick input. Right. Well, I just want to thank you for just stating what I was going to say, which is that I think that we should do two things. I’m just one voice here, but this is not my money. And I think that it’s this board’s responsibility to make sure that we are protecting these funds as judiciously as we possibly can. But I would recommend. Yeah. Yeah. Well, not only that, but we need to protect them. Yes. Yes. And I am not a professional money manager. And I don’t pretend to be one on television. In fact, I’m having a discussion with Fidelity on Friday about one of my accounts that it’s only earning 1.1% right now. So that’s a little annoying to me. So I would recommend that we set up a committee. And I would like it to consist of the treasurer. I would like to be there, and I don’t know who else would like to serve on that. But I think it would be good for a couple people from the board to be in on the conversation with someone like Fidelity. And what I would like to – yes. Wouldn’t it make sense to have Marie there? I mean, she has a perspective, and she’s been in accounting. Yeah, I think that would be great. I’m not going to volunteer my brother, but he’s been in mortgage banking and has done very well. and I could run some things by him. Okay. Well, here’s what I would like to propose. Yeah, go ahead. The only one other thing, just to clarify our thinking, with either of those stocks, and I’m not advocating for Q, I’m only advocating, or was advocating for I, and I’m amenable to being convinced out of it to lessen it. But that is what’s called a stock fund. Yeah, you’re investing in stocks, but you don’t actually own those stocks, as Daryl made clear in one the communications diane center you have a piece of an overall fund so your exposure no i understand yeah okay i don’t know if the other board members do yeah yeah i got that okay and but if we’re going to do this i think that we need to handle this as a managed fidelity account in other words i think we should have be hiring someone to manage the fund and with whatever we are doing and what i mean by that is that we have a professional who is monitoring the market such that if the market tanks 40% that they do something about protecting our assets. Right? Do you think… Go ahead. These funds have managers that are supposed to be doing that already. But not like Fidelity, who’s looking in the best interest of the individual, not for the best interest of the fund. And this all begs the question of what the management fees are. they could dig deeply and depending on what they are they could dig deeply into your profit margin they could and they could so we need to so i would like to look twenty five thousand dollars i’m not professional advice on how to handle this. And Marie, would you be willing to be a part of that conversation with fidelity or anyone else? Do we have to limit it to fidelity? We make sure she, no, we don’t have to limit it to fidelity. No, but the nice thing about fidelity is that there. Okay. She muted again. So I have asked her to unmute. Okay. I’m sorry. I had muted myself, so I wouldn’t be. That’s okay. Would you be willing to be a part of these conversations? I would love to be in on the conversations, please. Okay. Okay. All right. So it’s going to be, I would like to be there, Diane and Marie. And if there’s anyone else that wishes to do that, send a message on the board list. We can, we’ll make it a party. Oh, God. And not really. Do we need to vote down this motion though, since there was a motion? Yeah, we do. Well, or we need to at least table it. So yeah, let’s table it. Let’s consider it tabled. I’m fine with that. I just wanted to get a discussion started, and you start with emotions. So there it is, but I’m not a fan. Okay, perfect. And I’m not saying that’s not ultimately what we will do. I just want to make sure that we’re doing due diligence. It’s not my money. Yeah, right. We all understand that. The board has to own whatever it is we do. The board totally has to own it. And with the understanding that none of us are professionals. When you’re not, you get what expertise you can. Right. And trust me, I wouldn’t want you to think about what I think about money out of a wet paper bag. So I have a hard enough time managing my own finances, let alone somebody else’s. Okay. Yeah, I just, I don’t have, I don’t necessarily have a problem with it being some kind of a stock fund. I mean, those have historically done better. But yeah, you know, but we need to be careful about what we invest in. I agree. But it’s just starting the discussion. Yeah. Yeah. And I think just getting another, you know, unbiased, you know, if I were to hand you $25,000, how would you not you, but how would they how would they invest it? You know, kind of thing. OK. Yeah. Anything else for the Budget Committee? And thank you for the great conversation. No, we’re yeah, we’re. We’re working on the 2025 budget, and we’ve done the income part. We have to do the expenses part. And, of course, a lot of it’s going to be guesswork because we don’t have the experience to back up what we’re putting down. So that should resolve itself more in the future. Okay, perfect. Okay. We will now move to fundraising. And this is going to be fun because I think there’s some cool things to talk about here. So, Rosanna and Diane and Marty. So, I’m going to get Marty unmuted and we can have this discussion. Okay. Rosanna, I’m going to hand it over to you and then you can pass the baton as you see fit. Okay? Okay. Thanks. Actually, the fundraising committee, I’ve been working with them for the last couple of meetings, and they were working on some fundraising ideas. And we came up with a great idea. I’m going to let Diane talk about it. It’s called Terry Lynn. And Marty is also going to be doing a raffle, which he’s going to talk about. They’re going to be really great events and a lot of fun for bits. So I’d like to turn it over to Diane and let her talk about the Terry Lynn. Diane? Okay. Yeah. Terry Lynn is, it’s called Terry Lynn Fundraising is the website. And apparently other ACB affiliates have used them. And you have the option of either setting up a store or, you know, you can like buy the candy and sell it yourself. I think we would go with the store. But they have a lot of different like nuts and snacks and candy and things like that. And you have the option when you sign up with them of either keeping 20, 30 or 40 percent of the profit. And the more you decide to keep, of course, the higher the cost of the items is going to be. I believe that we I thought we agreed last night on going with the 30 percent. We did. Yes, it was the 30 percent is what we agreed on. Yeah, their site seems to be quite accessible. And one of the things that they want on the site is a picture and a logo. And I guess we’re going to be discussing the logo next. But, Jeff, we were actually talking about having you be in the picture as Bits president. What? As Bits president. You want someone else better looking? I don’t know. No, we wanted you with Chief. Okay, that’s good. We’re just going to put Chief in the picture. Maybe, you know, I don’t know, a pile of candy or something. You know, that’s the kind of thing we were discussing. But, you know, we want something that will make people want to gravitate to our website and buy the Terry Lynn stuff. He might have been a better advertisement for it in his younger, in his other day. All right, John. That was, that was not nice, John. That was mean, man. So anyway, once I get, once I get a picture and, or a logo, I’d like to have at least a picture, you know, that we can put on the site. So, you know, if you want to do that picture, Jeff, and send it to me, I’ll be happy to. I’ll leave that up to my wife. She’ll figure that out. Oh, okay. All right. She’s a better picture taker than me. So, but it looks like it’s going to be, you know, quite accessible. And so I’m, I’m, I’m looking forward to, I’m looking forward to doing it. I hope that it will raise us a pretty good amount of money. yep well the one good thing about the terry lynn also is that it can be ongoing there’s no you know it’s it there’s no commitment of time so if you wanted to run that fundraiser for a for people to do an order and the order will go directly to you when you do the order and then proceeds will go to diane and you know and that will she’ll have your mark i have to give them the bank account or something and yeah is that for your hawaiian trip diane or I’m not going to Hawaii anymore. I’ve been there three times already. Oh, I want to go. Geez, I guess it’s for Rosanna’s trip to Hawaii. Yeah, really. I want to go to Hawaii. Oh, man. Okay. So anyway, I really encourage people, when we put it out, it will go out on the membership list when Diane has everything set up. And we really would encourage you guys to go ahead and buy stuff from Terry Lynn. Their stuff is really good, by the way. Their popcorn, their chocolates. Chocolates are really good. So I think it will be really great. Once we start it, it will be great to get feedback from the membership as well. And that can go to Renee. She’s the chair of the fundraising committee. I was just helping them with some ideas. I’m going to turn it over to Marty because he will be working on a raffle thing, which was another great idea and another good way to raise money for bits as well. The logo, too. Yeah, we’ll let Marty do the raffle thing first and then we’ll do the logo. Yep. Marty? Marty? All right. So, hello, everybody. So the first thing that we talked about was doing a raffle. And the way the raffle would work is we are going to have a prize or item, I should say, that will be put on the website. And then you can purchase a raffle ticket in order to win the item. So we would do that over a 30-day period. And then once that’s done, 30, 45 days, something like that. Once that’s done, then we would have someone or a system draw the name for whoever would win. And the things that I guess we need to know and have approval on is how we process that money. I was told there could be some issues with PayPal due to gambling and all of that. Rosanna has let me know that there’s ways to get around all of that. And then we also talk with Diane about doing possibly Zelle and or Apple Pay, I guess. So more than one option to be able to accept money. People can go on PayPal. They don’t need to be a member. And they could just put in their information. But then we just want to make sure that anything we do isn’t going to get us in trouble with PayPal due to the gambling thing. Rosanna has some input on that and said there’s ways to get around that. So I guess just all of the things in general, we would need approval from the board, I guess, to move forward. Rosanna, do you have data on the gambling aspect of that? Well, yeah, I do know. I’ve spoken to some people at GTUI, and they’ve already done it. Families has done it. The family affiliate has done it. What’s her name? I can’t think of her name off the top of my head. Carla Rushable? Yeah, thank you. Carla Rushable has done a lot of work with this. So I kind of tapped into her brain a little bit. Did they use PayPal or what did they use? They did use PayPal. GDUI used PayPal also. As a matter of fact, GDUI is doing one now. It’s doing a raffle now, actually. And what they basically have done is they have used, you know, whatever the prize is, you know, as the, you know, we are giving away blah, blah, blah, you know, I forget how it was worded. And then you can send the money through PayPal. What we decided to do was, for example, let’s say we’re using a battery as a gift, you know, as a raffle prize. then the person would send in the money to PayPal. And in the memo, they would write battery in that memo. And Diane will know that that is going to the raffle. At that point, she can earmark that money for the raffle. So that’s basically how it’s been done. We can put up a form, actually, to do it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That’s basically how it’s done. We have some hands. And I think Larry Watkinson, and who was the other hand? David. Let’s take David first. My question is, do we have a solution for people who prefer not to use PayPal or my suggestion is looking at Stripe, they’re cheaper rates. Looking at what, David? What’s Stripe? Or Apple Pay? Don’t make it too complicated. I think, what do you call that? Stripe will do Apple Pay. So I think we should look at that for other purposes. What’s it called? Stripe? Stripe? S-T-R-I-P-E? That’s just another gateway PayPal. It automatically transfers it to your bank account. Well, no, but the setup process is where we’re involved. Yeah, Zelle was one of the one. So I would stay away from Zelle. What about Zelle? Zelle you can’t use for any business purposes, so I would recommend staying away from Zelle. Right, exactly. Okay, Larry. Yes, sir. I actually belong to a national organization. As you know, I work in the public arena. The issue of an online raffle could be problematic. For instance, in the state of Oregon, they constitute that as gambling. And in some states where there’s gambling prohibition, you’re in violation of state law. It’s only noticed if somebody were to file a complaint, and then they would start looking into it. I would be very careful or I would look very carefully to your legal counsel who deals with those types of issues because it has ramifications by doing it. It’s considered basically online gambling. And so I just want to point that out to folks. And I also want to side note, so I don’t raise a hand. John, you were looking last month for folks for your Constitution Committee. And Jeff, I would be willing to serve as a member if there is that need there. So I will mute unless you have any questions. Larry, I just want to, Larry, can I address your issue, your question? Go ahead, Rosanna. Yeah, I just quickly want to address that. And yes, I understand that. And I know that as well. This is going to be more of win a prize kind of thing, rather than we’re not labeling it as a raffle per se on purpose. And so hopefully, you know, that should alleviate the gambling. We are not sending out tickets either. Like if you were doing a raffle and sending out tickets, yes, that absolutely would be an issue and would be gambling. But yes, you’re absolutely right. Thank you for bringing that up. Yeah. Have you spoken to the national office? someone no but i plan i plan to do that this week actually okay yeah i would like us to be a little careful about this just to get like dot our i’s and cross our t’s and yep exactly i plan to get with them so we will we will unless there’s an objection on the on the raffle piece of this i would like to wait until we have further details on that before we move forward unless someone has an objection. I want to make sure we do this right. I’m with you on that one, Jeff. All right. John, you made a note about Larry wanting to serve on the competition. Kathy has a raised hand. Maybe Larry does again. Larry, what’s up? I’m not going to debate it. It comes down to a few factors, as you mentioned, But it’s about the value of the prizes, et cetera. And so I just, I think it’s a good idea that you are going to check with National. And you might be able to do it because if you included only club members or members of the organization, instead of selling outward, you very well may be able to get by with it as an internal operation. Yeah, we’ll get some legal counsel on this. We’ll get legal counsel on it. And I will come back with, I will get back to Jeff on that. – And thank you for allowing me to provide some- – Thank you, Larry. – I’m gonna check with our treasurer, Lisa, because we don’t do any online raffles of any kind for this exact reason in our state. – Okay, yeah, let me know what you find out. – But again, that’s a state issue, so it’s better to check with- Well, but we don’t want to create state problems. Correct. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I think, Marty, you have one other item of business to discuss. Is that correct? And I think this is something we can approve. Yeah. It’s about the logo. So we had a meeting on trying to figure out a logo for Bits, and we took all the ideas and kind of mashed them together and came up with what the logo looks like currently right now. And that would be, if you were to imagine taking your two hands and pointing the fingers to the sky, and then the bottom of your hands, like by the wrists, come together. And imagine that holding up a globe or a world, which is in between the two hands. And then above the world, like right across the top curve, It has the letters bits in bold, you know, like a bold font. And then under the globe, there is like a rectangle with the word bits in braille under there. It’s not tactile, just bits as a graphic. The dots. The dots, yeah. Right, exactly. So that’s kind of like a mock-up of what the logo looks like so far right now. And just an FYI, too. The work on the logo really was a joint effort between publications and the fundraising committee. You know, publications had come up with something very similar, and that’s what I brought over to fundraising. And then they kind of embellished that, and that’s how we came up with this draft. Now, as Marty will explain, the logo itself would have to be in black and white. The one I have here that Morty sent me is in color, but the black and white can be used, you know, on the website and other things as well. But of course, we want to get it up on the website and also be able to use it for bits letterheads. The thing about the black and white part only was brought up because if you’re creating a graphic or a logo and you’re doing forward thinking, you’re thinking where is this going to be used if it was only on the website then it wouldn’t really be a big it wouldn’t matter we want but if you’re going to use it for letterhead if you’re going to use it for possibly merch like mugs t-shirts hoodies like any of that kind of stuff or anything else then you’ve got to look at how expensive it would be if you were to print that stuff in color so typically when you do screen printing or things like that they charge you buy the color usually so you try to stick with one or two colors so that was kind of the purpose keeping the colors to a minimum have we had anyone visually look at this as well well i can see it so more than me yeah so i was able to do that and um when he sent it i printed it out so i was able to on eight by ten you know regular size uh paper which i was just the way he did it was incredible It could be, you know, made in any size that you wouldn’t, any size that we would need it in. And I think Marty, as he suggested in the meeting, it would have to be in a vector format. And that is probably, you know, he’s probably correct about that. Because that way you could play with the size of it. Are you asking the board to approve the logo? It would need to be a minimum of 300 GPI if you’re going to do any kind of print or graphics or anything like that. If you’re only using it for the web, it would only need to be 72 GPI. Okay. We would like to approve it if we could, because that way, if we can get it done, we might be able to get it up on the website, and Michael might be able to get it up. And he has his hand up right now, actually. Go ahead, Michael. Michael, go ahead. This is great, and I really appreciate the work that’s gone into this. What is this going to cost the organization to get produced? actually right now nothing um because marty’s friend uh did the graphic design for us at this point so marty’s gonna we asked him to please ask his friend if he wanted any money for doing this so that’s we don’t have a specific answer to that as yet we’re going to need to know that yes you are going to need to know that so I can always find it out and report back so if it’s free does the board have an issue with the logo as presented if it costs something if it costs something then they’ll have to think about it I mean you know an artist could charge anything for it right what we want to do is get the idea approved at this point so that we know what we’re working with. And Marty can go back to this graphic designer and say, yes, this is what we want to go with. So basically what we’re looking for is to get the idea approved by the board at this point. So that way we know where we’re going. If you’re looking for authorization to go forward, I think you can get that. You continue talking to the guy. Is that where we are? Yeah, I don’t think that the board’s going to restrict you right now as far as yeah and if he comes back and says it’s free then just do it i don’t i don’t think that this board’s going to have a problem with yeah you know with uh with with the publications committee putting out a logo okay that’s what we wanted to make sure we didn’t want to you know we wanted to make sure it was agreeable to everybody and that david can the board get a look at it or a visual description of it for those that can’t see it? I can send a written description of it, if you’d like, to the board. And I can send you what Marty sent me, which is the actual graphics. So anyone who can see can print it. Okay, why don’t you do that? Okay. I think we will tentatively agree to this. and the other thing too you can um you’re going to want to put some alt text on it maybe anyway no describing it so yeah yeah and i’d recommend getting the artists to um keep give us a color copy and a good black and white copy so if they need to change anything for it to look better and see what it would look like that makes sense so if you can go ahead and do the due diligence because then we can get it through and start to move forward on it. Anything else, Rosanna? No, that’s it. I’m very excited about it. I’m very excited about the logo. I’m excited about going forward with it at this point. I think it’s going to be great, and it’s going to look great up on the website as well. Great. Okay. John, membership. Okay. I’ll make this short and mindful of what I said at the outset of the meeting. And it was represented at the board meeting last night, and it came true this morning. AMS is back online. I woke up to Nancy Marks-Becker’s email about it and Jeff’s memory jogger about it. So let me lay it out for you. First of all, one qualification, your report says there are 22 members. Strictly speaking, that’s not the case because there’s one member who did not pay sufficient dues, apparently was confused about the amount to be remitted. I’m hopeful it said individual will make up that deficit and join our ranks. But let’s just use 22 with that caveat. Ten of those individuals were folks that I knew were on the roster, and I took care of first thing this morning, updated those records. In some case, there was additional information that was in their record as submitted during the month of April. Out of the remaining 12, Nancy had records for nine of them. very much hope. Go ahead, Jeff. Okay, I thought somebody said something. Nine of the remaining 12 are records that ACB already has. I’ll check them against the data, and I’ll get those records updated and the bit-specific information put there. That only leaves me with two records to create and hopefully three when the other person’s due situation is squared away. I want to tell you Just shy of 50%. From July 1 to May 1. I think that’s pretty incredible. And one thing I want people to note, that the TAP, again, gets turned off, closed of business on May 24th in order to honor the requirement, the record date requirement of the ACB convention. So we’ve got 24 days to maybe round up a few stragglers and make sure that our records are totally in order. And we will have to make a supplemental remittance for the individuals paying between they basically who paid after the certification and before the tap is turned off yet again. And in on close business, May 24. Will we, John? No, no, no. We don’t. We don’t. You’re right. We don’t because Diane and I discussed that. We already paid the max, so we’re good. You’re exactly right. No, we’re good. Anything we get now is great. Yeah, it’s just great. It’s great. Okay. Exactly. Okay. All right. Thank you, John. Sure. All right. We’re going to move to old business, and we have a number of items. We’re going to try to move through these rather quickly if we can. We have a number of convention-related topics to discuss. So, Brad, reception approval, including food and beverage expenses. Go. We’re still waiting to hear. We know the bar, the cash bar is $165. Still waiting on what our expenses will be, and that’s determined on food, but that’s based on how many people register, sign up during the convention registration process. I don’t have a number because number one, Janet hadn’t given me a number on like, she’s still working on the hotel because I don’t know why it’s so difficult. The hotel is complicated. Okay. So, but, but let’s just keep going then. Tickets. Is the board okay with a $15 charge for getting in the door? Is that what we’re saying? Yeah, that’s what we said, $15, and it gives you a drink coupon where you can get yourself an alcoholic beverage or a soft drink. It’s up to you. And the raffle drawing ticket. And then it’s $15. ACB gets $3 off the top. That’s $12 to bits. Right. So the hotel doesn’t get any other of that $15? No, they make the money on the cash bar and the food. Okay. Yeah, they’re selling, you know, they’re providing the food, and there’s a fee for that. And then we’re going to sell tickets so we can have a head count. Yes. And then we’ll know based on how many people register, you know, when is registration open? I believe for members May 13th. And then opens for non-members. And then I believe at some point there’s a cutoff or I believe you can still register on site. You can register at this site, but it’s more. So, I mean, hopefully Janet will come up with a number. I know it’s we’re asking you to write a blank check right now, but I don’t think it’s going to be ridiculously high. I mean, we eliminated things like we’re going for the least expensive food option because this thing could get out of hand. I mean, it was stuff like a plate of a platter, plate, whatever they call it, tray. Like $45, right? Veggie spring rolls, and it’s 20 of them. It was $40-something, $43. I don’t remember. What did we just say? Yeah, that’s outrageous. Like chips and dip or something. I don’t know. Yeah, so we’re going, like I said, you know, snack foods. And we want it to be in bulk. We’re not buying individual bags of chips that we hand out. No. We would like like a bowl of, I imagine, check mix that we will give you a paper cup. And then you can come back for more until you’re sick of it. And you probably won’t be sick of it after a while. We don’t make money based off how much beverages are sold, but we are paying the hotel $165. They provide a bar that rolls in the room and a bartender to stand there and run the thing and sell drinks, beverages, whatever. So we need a dollar figure here to at least sort of play with. I’m thinking that based on just a guess, it’s going to be about $500. That’s what I’m thinking. So it’s possible it could be a little more. It could be less. Yeah. I would say I would like to recommend, and someone can make the motion if they like, No more than, I’m seriously hoping it’s way less than this, but a thousand for the reception. I’ll make that motion. I agree. I’ll make that motion. I’ll second. Okay. That’s the outer limit of our exposure. I mean, we’re hoping. That’s correct. That’s our limit of our exposure. Yes. All right. Fine. All those in favor? I don’t know if this is that, oh, you want to just take that before I address maybe what the price thing, but we’re going to take it. We’re going to do the price. We’re going to do the price. Okay, fine. Next. Price comes later. It’s a separate item. Okay. All those in favor of $1,000 expenditure, and it better be less or else someone’s going to have it. I’m kidding. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So we talked about a door prize and we thought, well, we should do the same thing that we did for the auction, which is the Zoom H4 Essentials with the two microphones and the whole thing, which was about Michael B. Do you remember the, why am I saying B? There’s only one Michael here. Michael. It’s his hip hop name. Sean calls me Mickey B. So, you know, whatever. Okay, Mickey B, I love it. Yeah, I think it was like 362 or 368, somewhere in that range. Under 400. Okay, so there was an ask? Yeah. Yes. So there was an ask by David to say, well, what do we do about those people who are remote? I have a thought on that. Well, the idea is this is an in-person event. Yeah. We already are contributing something to the auction, and we also have Amazon gift cards that is another drawing for people to register. I tend to agree. That is for remote. This is an in-person event only. Agreed. And we can’t accommodate everybody all over the place. The idea of this is in person. Okay. we’ll qualify for their concern about that too but with those qualifications i think it makes sense okay go ahead david also let’s move for this one um i’ll second this one okay uh all right um jeff even with the mics we’re talking like 375-ish Yeah, $362 was the total. For the auction, I thought we established a $400. I think it’s coming in under that. We did. But that was our maximum, including – Of course, I guess we don’t have to pay sales tax, so there’s none of that. Okay. And this is a hot item. Everybody – it’s a popular thing, and I think it will attract attention. I think it will spur more ticket sales. Correct. And I believe, you know, you get one ticket with your registration for the event, but you will be selling more tickets at the event. And hopefully we will, you know, raise plenty of money. And I’m going to buy a bunch of them. Yeah, I will too. But, you know, and then we’re going to have the thing there. And when the name, the winner is drawn, we will hand it to them and everyone will clap and cheer. Can we get AP guys, can we get Mikey B to do technical support at the convention for it? You don’t have to worry about it. I already do tech support at the convention. What are you doing? Okay. All right. Maybe if Jason’s there, Jason can hand it to them. We’ll figure that out. Do you need any help like brailling tickets or anything like that? And we haven’t gotten to that yet. Okay. Yeah, we’ll get there. You can put me down for that if you need it. Stay. Oh, God. Yeah. Okay. David, did you have something? I’d like to roll. If you have a suggestion, I’d like to roll it into the same motion. Okay. My suggestion was for the online registration that we offer that as well, a gift card at the value of the Zoom H4 package that we’re dealing with. So you can buy it on Amazon and have it delivered to you. I oppose to that because the idea of this is in person. It’s going to be in the auction. It’s in person. You can do that at the auction. This is an in-person event. I’m not talking about the in-person. I was talking about the online part, what we’re doing for the online. The 27th, 28th, 29th? I guess so, yeah. That’s another thing. You register and we’re giving away, like we did last year, two Amazon gift cards that are going to be drawn and given away. at the annual meeting. That’s a separate deal. We’re doing the $100 Amazon gift card like we did last year. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. tickets we’re going to sell tickets we’re going to sell tickets stuff like that and then of course the rolls of tickets we’ve got to figure out how to read them but we all have an iPhone in our pocket and there’s well we’ll have like I said I braille on them before too but again, we don’t, they’re small tickets. We don’t know how many we’re going to sell. Does someone want to just take this and own it and then expense it to the treasurer? I can do that. Okay. I’m going to assume it’s taken care of. All right. I’d like to talk about roles for the convention. Who is going to convention? Don’t all speak at once, please. I am going who else is going anyone else going yes who on the board is going Brad John are you going no I’m not you are not going I’m not either I’m in too bad a shape still okay all right do you know Brad and Michael Do you know how you have not had a chance to talk to Rick, correct? Not yet. He said he wanted to talk to us ASAP. And apparently that didn’t happen yesterday or today. Okay. Anyone in the audience who was attending convention, please raise your hand. Okay. all right um okay okay colby i think uh uh can she unmute I can get her You want You want Denise, right? Yeah There we go Denise Yeah, can you hear me? I can hear you So you are planning on being at convention Are you planning on attending the entire week? Yes Okay So, yes, I will be there until the following Friday. Okay, that’s fine. I’m not saying you will be, but we’ll get there in a minute. Would you be willing to serve as the alternative delegate? I can’t. Oh, you cannot. No, I cannot. She’s secretary. I have to call the roll. Oh, yeah, you cannot, can you? No, I cannot. Otherwise, I would. But you’re going to be there, right? Okay, all right. Anne is next. Yeah. We don’t have to have a person in person either. No, they don’t have to be in person. Okay, I am muted. Okay, and you’re going to be at convention? I will be there. Okay. All right. Okay. Anyone on the board who wishes to serve as the alternative delegate who is not attending convention? What’s going to be involved in it? I know last year I served as an alternate delegate and did absolutely nothing. Yeah, so basically here’s what happens for those that don’t know about this. So basically the delegate is called on the floor of the convention. If there’s any, you know, things that need to be voted on or discussed or brought up. Debbie has her hand raised as well. Yeah, I’ll talk, I’ll get to her in a second. Oh, okay. And, but if the delegate is not available, then the secretary would then call upon the alternative delegate. So which basically and mainly what this means is that the delegate and the alternative delegate would stay in contact. And, you know, if the president was going to go have a meeting, then the president or whoever would be would call the alternative delegate and say, listen, I’m going to be out of commission for two hours. So please try to attend the meeting, you know, and handle any convention related business. Mr. Chair. Yes. One of the things that we were told last night was that the plan at this point is to try to deal with all business during the, except for elections, during the virtual part of the convention. Right. And the only resolutions or kind of bylaw amendments that would be dealt with would be if there was some kind of an amendment made that we had to. Otherwise, there will be voting on elections at the in-person part, but most of the business will be handled during the virtual. And yeah, it’s the alternate. We want the alternate to be there and be available in the event, especially if the delegate hasn’t let us know that they’re not going to be available or something’s happened and they can’t get on virtually or whatever. We need that alternate available to ensure that the vote is going to be able to be cast. So the other responsibility that the alternate would have is that usually the delegate and the alternate work together to get your vote count for your affiliate. Correct. Okay. So I would like it to be someone who is not attending because I would rely a lot on the alternate delegate. I’ll give it another shot if you want. Okay. I want to make sure we have other people who want to. Okay, go ahead. Any other board members who have an interest in serving in the alternative delegate role? People are awful quiet. Okay. All right. So here’s what we’re going to do. I will serve as the delegate. I will be at conventions. I’m going to ask Diane to serve as the alternative delegate. Denise, are you writing these down? Yes, I am. Diane, you will not be at convention? No, I will not. You’ll be virtual. Okay. And John McCann will serve as nominating committee. Thank you, Jeff. I’m honored to serve, and I will not be at convention, as just stated, but I don’t need to be for that function. I don’t think that’s required for that. No, not at all. That meeting that takes place, strictly speaking, outside convention before it is even called into session. And Diane, just for your edification, Jeff too, if he wants to, we will be holding a call, a Zoom session for all the delegates and alternates prior to convention to get people up to speed on what really is expected of them. because there’s just been lots of concern and that’s fine just let us know where to be yes i do not need to email you then is that correct uh no um it said diane if you could send me your i need your um email address and your phone number okay and you have mine i have yours um no you didn’t need that ticket you have mine um john you better email me because i don’t know if i still have yours where where should we where should we email it to or are you allowed to probably thank well no it’s collie d uh can we do that send it to the board list if jeff on the board list no i mean if jeff has it i will i i’ll get it to you diane okay denise oh my goodness okay okay yeah i just need i need um Email addresses and contact phone number for each of you. John and Diane, send me your information and I will get it to Denise. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. Okay. Okay. I have one more item of business to discuss in reference to convention. And this one is a bit sticky. Just because I guess I’m asked. Some affiliates have provided a stipend for the delegate going to convention. Does bits, does bits wish to do that for the delegate this year? That’s it’s also generally offered to the alternate delegate if they were attending convention. And since Brad is going to be tied up with doing things for ACB media and then that was going to be something that I was actually wanting him to do, but I don’t know if he’s going to be able to, because we haven’t heard back from Rick and he’s going to be, uh, that there’s some monetary exchanging going on there. So I don’t know that we need to ask for that here. So, um, and I’m now going to be quiet and let the board discuss it because if you want to do a stipend for the, the, the delegate, I probably shouldn’t have a say in that. So I’m going to preclude myself from the discussion if it’s okay with all of you. So I’ll let the board discuss it. Let me ask a question. What kind of stipend are we talking about? John probably has the most historical context on this. Yeah, John. I don’t know that Bits did. I know that Arizona did, and I don’t want to get them confused. And based on that, you know, let’s get the ball started. And there’s a lot to, there is an awful lot to the role of delegate, more than might meet the eye. And so to get the ball started, I’ll say up to that we would stipend the official delegate up to $750. If somebody wants to second that for discussion. I’ll second that. Okay. Well, I guess it’s on the table. Again, you know, what I would say, and I know that this is all for Jeff, but, you know, there’s a lot to it. and we certainly have the funds. Of course, what can come up is that, you know, the idea of precedent, but I’m not really concerned about that. I think that’s why we look to having a robust fundraising effort and or key structure. That’s another discussion. But it’s a legitimate expense, And I don’t know that I can defend it or argue for it with any more greater degree of passion or persuasiveness. I’ve served in the role. You’re pretty much anchored to that chair. And it requires skills. I can’t. I couldn’t get away with any less. Like maybe five or six hundred dollars. Well, you know, by the time you, especially since we’re talking about going across the country in the case of the person who has, is going to be delegate, we’re talking about a significant plane fare. And the hotel now is like, what, a hundred bucks a night? Yeah. It’s going to cost me, it’s going to cost us about, well, plane tickets alone are almost 900. And then you have, no, no, no, no, no. this is not just you this is also your wife as well yeah yeah yeah but but then but the hotel bill you can’t just get a room for i know yeah yeah yeah yeah and so that’s that’s about $1,500 or so my point is there is 750 each stipend is really nominal amount of money it’s compared to what needs to be spent to go to this thing. That’s the board of the MF. It’s up to $1,000, but I really think beyond $1,000, we’ll set in the present. Don’t kid yourself. It’s going to cost $3,000 for all the bills. It’s Jeff. We can be honest about the fact that it’s Jeff, but I’ll even say $1,000 in this case because it’s a haul, man. You have little things that are expensive. It’s airfare. There’s hotel and you’ve got to eat. and eating costs more there than at home. So I can’t argue with 1,000, to tell you the truth. I amend my motion assuming that everyone else is friendly. I’ll second it. All right. So it’s now considered friendly or has been so amended. I don’t know that we need to make much more of a case for it. You probably should vote. I would ask that Brad run that portion of the meeting. Of course. So have we upped it to 1,000? Yes. Sounds like it, yes. Okay, and the motion is that we approve a stipend of $1,000 to the BITS delegate at the… To support the expenditures of the BITS delegate. And I believe, so Robin’s got that motion, John, and then we’ve amended it. Who amended it? Did I amend it? I don’t know. And did someone second it? I did, yes. Yes, David. it’s taking it so and as long as robin’s got all this straight that’s all i care about i’ve got it okay so thank you robin are we ready all in all in favor say aye aye any opposed aye crickets very good thank you all right that’s awkward okay yeah i know yeah like he’s always awkward what are we what what what kind of information would would i be entitled to get as far as reporting. I will get you receipts and then don’t send me anything until I get back. Okay. Because I don’t want any sort of mix-up with any of this at all. I want to prove everything. Plane ticket, hotel, you know. Yeah. Yeah, we’ll just itemize it. Your expenses will easily exceed the… I understand that, but I don’t want to do anything ahead of time. No, I agree. Your paperwork, it’s all on the table. That’s very good. Okay, all right. Thank you, everyone. Okay, we only have a few more things to talk about. I’m going to move because he is just going to say yes. That’s his new name. I know. The record will reflect it. Are you concerned about, and you may not have all the data in front of you, but I believe that we have to renew our year contract with GoDaddy in June. Is that correct? it is june i believe it’s the latter part of june and i will be able to gather all that information here shortly but i do believe his latter part of june i am not concerned that we’re going to go into that like i don’t think that’s going to be an issue i think we should be i think we should be good oh it’s our current setup for the website um and i will call you because i noticed you haven’t accepted your account so i’m just because i can’t find it Oh. Okay. But anyway, we’ll discuss that later. But okay. I look forward. I can’t find it. Anyway. By the way, I want to say briefly that Mike is doing a kick butt job on this. Yes. And it’s taking a little bit longer, but it’s really complex, guys. So please be patient. Oh, I can’t wait. I can’t wait to see it. I mean, I’ve gotten a sneak peek. I’ve even made one suggestion that he saw fit to take. But, you know, once it’s built out, it’s going to be very exciting. Yep. All right. And then I’m going to just mention one real quick thing here. And then we’re going to, we have one item from Diane unless people have more items of new business. I know what’s the past two hours and I’m sorry. We, John is going to get me a list of those members who have not renewed their membership after AMMS sort of updates and gets sort of percolated and all those, whatever it needs to do to itself. And we will be removing those people. we did send out a notice a week or 10 days ago that said, Hey, if we don’t, if you don’t renew by May 1st, we’re going, you’re going to be removed from the email list. And that got us 10 members easily. Yeah. So unless someone has an objection, we will take that action and we will do that on Saturday or Sunday, whenever John or Monday, whatever, whatever date I get data, I will take action to do that. unless the board has an objection. No. Nope. Okay. Diane, you have an item of business here about reimbursement of training for officers. Yes. Go ahead. I opened up a can of worms by signing up for Brian Hartgen’s Excel course that he’s starting on May 22nd. And I wondered if I could, you know, be reimbursed any part of it since I would be using anything that I learned as part of my job as treasurer. And we got kind of a, got, you know, we had an email correspondence going. I, and, you know, The board seemed to be kind of in favor of it, but somehow we got that it was a done deal. And as far as I was concerned, it was never a done deal. And it still isn’t a done deal because I’ve decided I’m not going to accept any reimbursement from BITS for taking the course after all that. But I would like to see us maybe make reimbursement for training available to officers, you know, if they can justify, you know, how it would help them perform their duties as officers in bits. So I would just like to see us maybe set up a committee or something that would decide what limits there would be, because there would have to be limits on it. So, you know, some kind of guidance as to how much people could request and, you know, what they could request it for and so forth. Okay. This is a brilliant idea. I think things like the ACB Leadership Conference is a perfect example of the organization should, and by the way, this is not a policy, so don’t assume this is, please. But this is something that the committee should look at. For example, if all of the board wishes to attend the leadership conference, it’s to our vested interest to promote and pay for our officers and even board members, honestly, to attend that conference from a leadership perspective. Here in Michigan and our affiliate, we just started doing that. And, you know, right now we’re limiting it to officers and it could trickle down to committees eventually. But we actually, I think, bought someone a laptop. Our treasurer bought her, you know, a laptop to use. And, you know, the technical committee is training her on how to use it. And, you know. Who would like to serve on that committee? I would. David, John, and Diane I’ll let the three of you banter that about I’ll save this particular type of thing for the committee I’d like to see BITS give back to our members and see if we could offer some sort of training scholarship for these courses, you know, X towards, not to promote a specific one, but X towards an accessible training course or whatever. Yeah, I think that that should be part of the committee’s work. And I would actually like to see the budget committee or the, yeah, probably the budget committee look at what we can do as a, as a organization in reference to the promotion of a assistive technology fund to assist with things like SMAs and, you know, that someone could then, you know, ask for assistance and it would be based on need and. It would be an application process. Right, right, right, right, right. But I would love to see something like that looked at and would love to see that, you know, maybe a cap. What are it? I don’t know. I don’t know. Would love to see some people thinking about that because I think that would be an interesting thing to see what we can do for the members. Okay. Anybody else have any other new business? All right. It’s time for us to take any questions from the audience. So if any of you who are here who wish to ask a question or provide a comment to the board, feel free to raise your hand. First, we never dealt with Debbie’s hand that had been raised. Oh, we never did, did we? Oh, I feel horrible about that. I bet you she was going to say she was going to be at convention, right? Yeah, I was just going to say I am working it out, or at least I’m doing what I can to work it out to be there. So I don’t know. Okay. You know, but we’ll see. Okay. All right. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Good to hear your voice. Yeah. Do you have any other questions? No, but I’m, I really want to go now that I know you’re going to be there. We’ll see what happens. That’s right. All right. Excellent. Okay. Thank you, Nikki, by the way. Thank you, Nikki. Any other questions, concerns, constructive feedback? Ann. Hey. Ann. I am new to this particular group, but I was wondering, since I will be at the convention, is there some thought to new people who have joined and giving them some information about this and the various committees? Because I see you guys have changed the committee list now, so I’m not sure where my- The email list. The email list, yeah. You’re right. Not the committees, but yeah, we can definitely provide that to you. Actually, if you go to the current website, bits-acb.org, all of our committees are listed there. So you can sign in, and none of those have changed. Okay. Okay? All right. But I guess my question is, is there some newbie kind of meeting that could be arranged at the convention if there’s time? I know you were talking about sending out tips and newsletters and all that to new people, but I’m just curious if there’s anybody new who has the time to meet with you guys who are. Yeah. Well, we’re going to be doing the Wednesday night event. I am not against setting up, you know, like, hey, if you’re coming to convention, That’s all meat for breakfast, you know, on Sunday morning or Monday morning, you know, something. I don’t know. Let me think about that, Ann, and we’ll, trust me, you’ll hear about it. Okay. We’ll see what we can do about that. Rosanna. Rosanna. Yeah, I brought this up once before, Jeff, and you wanted me to bring it up again at some other point. But now that we’re going to have a new website, I’d like to know if there’s a way that we could get a committee together or do something to create an angel wall that can go up on the new website to, you know, to honor those people who have passed, who have been loyal BITS members. I think that’s brilliant. I think talk to Michael about that and we can even let the publications committee own that part of the website and you guys can run with it. Rosanna, I’d like to help out with that as well. You would. Okay. Awesome. Pamela Francis. I’m curious. I’ve not heard any discussion at all about the Discord or the WhatsApp channels. How are they being used or are they being used? We were just talking about that earlier today. Michael Doys and I were discussing that. There’s more activity on WhatsApp than there is on the Discord channels. The Discord channels and WhatsApp groups will be reorganized with the changes of the email list to correspond with the changes that we made there. And that’s in progress. So you’ll hear more about that probably later in the week. All right. Good deal. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Jeff, I interrupt for a brief second. Sure. I have just confirmed that the additional nine people mentioned in my report have now been imported. So by the time my head hits the pillow tonight, we will have 19 people imported and updated. So what is our total membership? Well, that will bring us up to 750, and I’ll create two more records. Okay. I mean, $7.52 and $7.53 once the one person straightens out their dues deficiency. And if they don’t call me and I’ll pay the $5. All right. Okay. All right. I’m not going to quibble over it. I got to pay to play. That’s fine. I will pay the $5. I mean, if it comes down to it, I will pay the $5. I don’t think it’ll come to it. Bye. Okay. Okay. Debra Armstrong. I lowered her hand by mistake before she spoke, but I asked her to unmute because I know she had it raised. Okay. Debbie? My hand turned off. Oh, okay. It’s all good. Okay. Anyone else? Hey, Jeff, I had a quick comment. Yes? Since I’m not going to convention in person, I’m willing to help out with any Zoom or organization or stuff like that. I think the alternative delegate would love you to help because there’s going to be some work there to round the troops up and make sure we understand the counts of our members for things related to voting. So I will coordinate with you and Diane, and we’ll figure all that out, okay? Perfect. Okay. David and Jeff, I just wanted to say that I’m willing to help with any of that, too, because I’m going to be streaming and stuff. So I will be attending virtually. So, yeah. Okay. Virtually cool. Okay. So someone just help me remember who’s all players are there, please. Okay. Hopefully Robin’s got it. No, just look at her notes. Okay. No way. That’s good. Okay. Last call for any comments. Our next board meeting will be on June 5th. Thank you for the people who corrected my date on the agenda. And then we will not meet as a board in July, right? Is that correct? Correct. Okay. So July’s board meeting, we will not meet because we will all be at a convention. Technically, we won’t because it’ll be July 3rd, but we usually don’t meet in July. I think we’re all going to be pretty busy. Yeah, packing my bag and getting ready. Yeah, yeah. I think we’ll just pass. Yeah. Yes, I agree. We don’t meet in July. Jeff, I… Yes? You said it was June… I was attending my alumni reunion. Oh, okay. but i will you you have to tell us how many years you have to tell us how many years though first uh let’s see i graduated in 71 71 i was five it’s 53 yeah okay all right very good okay okay no no problem no problem as long as you have a charger support i don’t care yes i’ll get it okay perfect okay thank you everyone so very very much thank you for the people who have been listening on Clubhouse and on Community and ACB Media. Thank you, board. Thank you, all of our members. And there’s been about 50 of you here. Appreciate each and every one of you. We’ll see all of you. Our Zoom host and our streamer, moderator. That’s right. Absolutely right. That’s absolutely right. Thank you, everybody. We’ll see everybody in June. Good night, everybody. Good night. night Thank you. Thank you.