Present: Gil Major, Phil Vance, Doug Pilcher, Steve Sides, Jeff Marsuchek, Adi Kochav, Brad Davy, and Charles Lewis
Absent: Mike Karnes, Samantha McKinney, and Clark Hymas
Meeting began at 9:05 p.m. EST.
501 (c)(3) Discussion – Phil Vance and Samantha McKinney
Samantha has been looking into this issue and will get back with the BOD at next month’s meeting on what she has found out. Phil has looked into this with an attorney and has an appointment with them tomorrow. The lawyer is needing the paperwork that was used from PayPal. Phil has been told that he is not for sure if IMAC can get the 501 (c)(3). All the information that we have is the EIN number and that IMAC is registered with the Internal Revenue Service. Phil will also ask about incorporating IMAC. Samantha has mentioned that we will want to incorporate first before starting paperwork for the 501 (c)(3). This will be tabled until next month’s meeting.
2018 Worlds – Steve Sides
Steve advised that the advertising is approved and no other changes will be made. Phil mailed the 2014 World’s magazine to everyone last night. The brochure is published and has been approved. The current version is version 7. All contact information is in the brochure. Steve wants to keep a listing going to who we have sent information to and who we need to follow up yet. Adi gave us a link to look at the medallions. This is on the BOD forum. There is a front and back side for the coin. The price includes a standard design, but not for sure on the graphic. The price is between $7-10 each and depends on the quantity ordered. The consensus of the BOD doesn’t think the price includes the finished product. For a bag, it is .45 cents and for a box is $3.00. We are estimating on ordering 100-150 coins. Gil will take a picture of some of his coins and get it posted for everyone to see. Steve has been looking at some different items. The BOD needs to decided how much we are going to spend. Most of the display cases for coins accommodate the smaller coins. When we decide, Adi will have the company send him a price quote.
For judges, we have had a couple of judges out there that needs to be approved. They are on the current website under 2018 World Judges, Emilio a Spanish Judge, and Peter Bryner from Australia. Steve has a resume on the Spanish judge. Gil found some information on Peter Bryner from Australia. Adi knows the Spanish Judge. He runs the IMAC in Spain. He also judges the XFC and is a well-known judge in Europe. Peter has been an advanced pilot for 4-5 years and just recently moved up to Unlimited class. The consensus of the BOD is to go ahead with these judges.
Steve is going to start advertising and calling on the vendors for sponsorship. He would like the BOD to be in contact with the ones that they know and have personal contacts with. The tax deductibility is okay through AMA and their 501 (c)(3). We will have tents, carts, and the rest of the equipment that the AMA provided last time. The ones coming over from overseas will have a temporary membership to be able to fly on the AMA grounds. With the recent change with not registering with the FAA, our rules state that they must be FAA registered. Steve is going to confirm with AMA on this issue. If we don’t have to, Steve is going to post a bulletin on the World’s website.
The question was raised if the vendor wants to donate product and not cash. Their sponsorship level will be base don the value of their product. Red Bull is currently at a standstill. The only pictures that have enough quality is Adi’s and it is all freestyle. The one that Jenny offers is on the Flickr site. Even downloaded at the highest resolution, they don’t work for scale of production desired. We were going to try and put a splash video for Red Bull with a request for a sponsorship. Phil has a 30 second video with a Red Bull airplane in it from the Nat’s. Bill James has created them. One of the SC guys is strictly coming to the Nat’s to try and use some pictures to put this video together. Gil will also check with Ashley with Flying Giants.
Move Down – Possible Penalties – All BOD Members
The BOD has discussed in prior meetings about members asking to move down a class, due to health issues, etc. Gil has thought that if it is a World qualifier year, you wouldn’t be able to qualify in the lower class. Brad was thing that the year you move down that you wouldn’t be eligible for regional points. Phil has had maybe 4 people who has moved down. The ones that moved down were approved by the regional director. It is more to move down due to health conditions and/or flying abilities, instead of qualification and regional points. This does create a loophole for potential sandbag in a class. Many people have not moved down because they just move out. For members who are forced to move up, they can compete for the class they qualified in. This decision would be on the regional directors, but there needs to be consistency across the regions. This is not an AMA rule. The rules permit a competitor to move down with permission from the regional director. We as a BOD, should have a consistent policy for a competitor moving down. An idea was mentioned that the member couldn’t go down to Basic. A competitor won the region, because he showed up for contests every weekend. This competitor didn’t need to move up. Gil doesn’t think we should limit the move down to Sportsman class. Consensus of the BOD is that a competitor shouldn’t be able to move down more than one class per year. Only exception is the Nat’s, a basic competitor can compete in Sportsman since the Basic class is not offered and this is an AMA contest, not an IMAC event, even though RPS is awarded for the first 3 days. We are needing to establish an IMAC policy regarding this issue. This would potentially need added to the RPS policy, then when the rules are reviewed for the 2022 Worlds, it can be added there. Brad believes that more places it is, the more complex it is to try and change it. There are currently other rules and policies, such as for the committees, that aren’t posted on the website for the membership to be seen. Brad believes that everything should be posted on the website under “Rules and Guidelines” for the membership to see. Being consistent would help the membership. Brad will write something up on what he is thinking and post to the BOD forum to see what everyone thinks.
Website – Membership Search – Doug Pilcher
Doug brought up a suggestion to enhance and change the membership search. We are trying to make it easier for a member to find another member. This has been started in the forum posts and needed and wanted by membership. It is extremely hard to get a hold of a member directly or in an email. Many do not understand how to send a private message on the website. The only way the membership can find another person is to stumble across a post from someone. Doug is proposing a membership lookup button. Gil seconds the proposal to submit this request to the webmaster. “As long as he is a member of the website, we should be able to find him.” The old and new website allows members to use aliases and different avatars. There is a search function in the private message function. Doug wants the system to search for names and hopefully link the avatars when a name or alias is typed in.
On another note, the member’s lookup listing that the BOD has access to, on a smartphone, you cannot scroll right on the membership listing. The screen isn’t wide enough on Mobile version and you cannot scroll to the right to see the IMAC number. This is being used to check IMAC numbers at local contests.
Gil seconds the motion to add/change the membership search items. Motion passes unanimously.
NATS – Doug Pilcher and Phil Vance
There is a pretty good handle on the Nat’s. Skip Kixmiller and Alan Batts are the line bosses. Steve and Doug have been working on verifying which members had 3 contests in from April 2016 to the June cutoff before Nat’s as to being qualified to “World’s Entry” via Nat’s route. Steve has also been working on the judging matrix. The goal is 4 known and 1 unknown schedule each day except for Saturday. Gil believes we should be able to do more than that. These will be single sequences rounds with two lines. Announced on the Nat’s Forum, we will do the pilot pin draw Tuesday night. The remainder of the week will be compiled on an Excel spreadsheet and do a random pull of pilots. Then, the judging matrix will be posted earlier each day. Gil tested this process at Clover Creek’s contest. It worked really well. We only have site 3 for practice prior to June 26. We only have one day available for site 4, starting June 27. We currently have 39 registered pilots and had 4 registered on the IMAC site. We are thinking on a 50/50 raffle possible for regional trophies. No one stepped up and donated this year. Samantha had an idea this morning about each region kicking in $50 per region and do a 50/50 raffle and try to get the money back to the regions. Doug informed the BOD that there are no more golf carts available to rent. There are a couple of carts available for the IMAC officials. The late fee for registration has been waived.
Treasurer’s Report – Phil Vance
Currently in the month of June, our balances are:
Checking account $29,996.36
PayPal account $12,106.36
Total $42,102.72
Current expenses for the month is $1,280.95 and income of $910.29.
Gil brought up that we currently have a relationship that is free to IMAC. Diamond Cloud is being used from Doug’s company. This is where Doug is hosting all our files that have been needed to add to individual committees. In the Education committee, the documents come from Diamond Cloud. This website’s original design wasn’t to host large files, such as the educational videos, Redbook series, space for the Sequence committee, etc. Doug says we currently can go to 10 TB but can be expanded if need be. Doug actually set it up on the previous BOD, shortly after the new website was running. Doug assigned usernames for everyone on the committees. Everything unable to be housed on IMAC site, has been moved to Doug’s servers. Doug allocated a couple of servers to IMAC. Doug is not asking for anything monetary. We need to establish a contractual agreement with Diamond Computers to keep our server storage going. Gil is concerned that if someone buys out Doug, and we don’t have something in place it could cost quite a bit of money to maintain or get something else in place. This would protect Doug and protect IMAC. This will be tabled till the next meeting.
Phil advises that there are still a few members a month that are hitting the International region button for renewals.
Regional Report – All RDs
With the International region, Adi has been talking with Latin America. He has been asking for a Spanish forum. This way the boys can call and ask questions and have answers in Spanish. It could be a sub forum under the International region. Dan Carroll is from Australia and would like to nominate him to be the Asia ARD. The main benefit is his ability with computers. Dan is currently working on the score program and working on some changes. The main change is the percentage is added under points and percentage of perfection under every sequence. He would like to change the scheme, etc. It’s the same program we have now, but with the changes that he has. Doug showed the changes to the BOD. Dan knows how to write programs and update Score! and is more than willing to help us. There is also a guy from the UK that would like to be on the Sequence committee. Doug is wanting to create a test contest with the revised score program. We have found someone who is willing to work with the score program. Roy has got the script setup so that it look at these files that will update regional points. Steve mentioned that we might want to generate a listing of things that we would need to update the score program from Roy and Dave Smith. These would only be brought to the BOD and one person will be in contact with them. Then, once changes are made, we will test them before anything is done.
Manricco sent a file that lists all the countries flying IMAC. There is about 75% of the countries flying IMAC. Adi uploaded a lot of the contests from those specific contests and he also wrote an article about the country. IMAC is growing enormously in the International region. There were 69 International contests and currently 66 International members.
In the SouthEast region, there is 5 members in that currently live in Virginia. One sent a response and said that it doesn’t matter to them. We need to find a way to get more contests in Virginia. Changing the region boundaries won’t do anything. One recommendation is to allow as many out-of-region contests and this wouldn’t pose a threat to the members. We currently allow 2 out-of-region contest.
In the North Central region, Jeff has been speaking with Hitec and they have donated some stuff for their regional contest. He will also be talking with him on the Worlds.
Meeting adjourned at 11:16 p.m. EST.