Exec Meeting @ 2010-12-01 19:00:00
WSC Exec Meeting 1st December 2010
7.00pm in S1.69 – Social Studies
Present: Fergus, Sophie (from point 7 onwards), Nikita, Owen, Matt, Rob, Linas (until the end of point 7), Alex and Ed.
In attendance: Gus & Xinyi (Warwick Volunteers)
1. Welcome and apologies for absence
Fergus welcomed all those present to the fourth Exec meeting of the term.
Sophie has apologised for her absence at the start of the meeting – she is in a Japanese exam. Rob is taking the minutes.
2. Warwick Volunteers
Proposal from the Exec of Warwick Volunteers (WV) to bucket some of our more popular films. Ed recommended that WV bucket the end of an early screening and running straight into the beginning of a late screening. The WV reps agreed that they would follow the requests of the DM on the shows as to where they stand, what they do, etc.
WV proposed possibly having a screening where we would include a (e.g.) 50p increase on the ticket price, donating this excess to WV.
Also looking to collaborate on potentially running further events in Term 3.
Owen stated (on the proposal of possibly changing the Term 2 Schedule) that everything is now booked with the Troys and it would hinder the progress of the publicity which has quite short deadlines on production and submission to the printers in order to deliver for the start of Term 2.
As for Warwick Volunteers choosing their own film – we have previously added occasional Saturday showings. This coming term is likely to be difficult to staff shows with four midnight screenings.
For term 3, Owen could draw up a shortlist of films for WV to choose from for a fully joint event?
If and when any such collaborations take place, we would be willing to do an ‘advertising swap’, including WV’s logo on our screens and in our reviews booklet. WSC will need to decide how many screenings per year we would be willing to see bucketed by other societies.
WV’s representatives leave.
WSC’s mission statement includes: “2.3 WSC shall have no stance on any political or religious issues and shall not show films for any other reason than cinematic value.”
This does not prevent a screening with WV.
It was decided that we are willing to accept up to 2 films being bucketed per term, including the outdoor screening. We shall request that all people who bucket to fill in the appropriate films for collecting donations.
It was noted that as bucketing a film doesn’t necessarily warrant a full society collaboration, thus do we want to retain the wording: “in association with”? We are happy to retain this wording in the booklet.
3. Qualification ratifications
Rob put Liam McNamara forward for ratification as a fully qualified Duty Manager following his qualification at the Sunday early (Week 9) of ‘The A-Team’. (DM Committee gave a 4-0 unanimous ratification). Exec Vote: Unanimously in favour.
Matt put Tim Kaufmann forward for ratification as a fully qualified Projectionist following his qualification at Sunday early (Week 7) of ‘Inception’. (Proj Committee gave a unanimous ratification). Exec Vote: Unanimously in favour.
Ed leaves the room.
Matt put Ed McCutcheon forward for ratification as a fully qualified Projectionist following his qualification at Tuesday (Week 9) of ‘Killers’. (Proj Committee gave a 3-0 unanimous ratification). Exec Vote: Unanimously in favour.
Ed returns.
4. New ticket prices
Fergus, Nikita and Rob met Andy White at the SU on Tuesday (Week 9). He had no problems with our new ticketing and membership policy:
Memberships £1, Tickets £2.50 for all university members, 5-Film Pass £10.
Membership only required to be a member of the WSC Crew.
SU will probably be holding a vote on whether to continue with the £1 retained per society membership, or to increase the Societies’ Federation membership rates.
Do we want to go ahead with our proposed new ticketing/membership policy?
Major discussion was held over this, including consideration of potential changes to finances, membership numbers, morals over emailing non-members who have bought a ticket.
Fergus to continue to liaise with Andy White (SU Societies Officer) to determine exactly if and when the vote/changes to Socs Fed and/or membership retention are going to take place.
Initial (in meeting) sight of the term 2 & 3 audience figs appears to indicate that implementing the new prices would lose us money in comparison with continuing with the current scheme. We can reduce our losses by no longer promoting memberships sales on our tills. Ed will remove this ASAP.
Vote to keep the current ticket/membership prices rather than change to the newly proposed scheme: Vote was unanimous in favour of the motion.
Fergus to contact crew to inform them of this change to the previously advertised future changes!
5. Money rundown
Nikita reported that up until the late screening of ‘The Twilight Sage: Eclipse’ (Friday Week 8), we’ve made:
£2996.50 on memberships at shows.
£10493.50 on tickets and passes.
We’ve had a till difference of -£30.30.
£8081.71 on film hire (For the whole of term 1).
6. Advertising in booklet
We are going to have two spare pages in the booklet available for advertising (pages 8 and 9) and we have been unable to think of suitable ways to fill the space with our own content.
Fergus has contacted KPMG who are happy for us to sell advertising space to anyone who isn’t in their ‘blacklist’ of competitors, so long as we inform KPMG of the result.
The publicity needs to be completed extremely soon – submission deadline of the booklet to Emmersons will be Friday Week 10.
Fergus took suggestions of companies with local outlets to contact regarding the advertising opportunity. We will see what people offer us price-wise.
Sophie arrived from her exam at this point.
7. Summer schedule
Format: Sunday and Tuesday will feature single screenings of the same film.
Single film screenings on both Wednesdays and Thursdays.
Fridays to continue to feature 6:30 & 9:30pm double screenings
Possibly two midnight screenings on Saturday nights.
Possible ‘Lord of the Rings’ AllNighter one Friday near start of the term.
This would basically mimic the Summer 2009 structure.
Linas had to leave the meeting at this point.
8. Term 2 Sponsored event
‘Good Bye Lenin!’ has been confirmed as suitable by KPMG and is scheduled for Thursday Week 5 (10th Feb 2011).
Discussion relating to the additional elements (on top of the film) took place here, resulting in a general leaning towards utilising our Dominos allowance, getting in German beer (lager) and doing a quiz – possibly German themed?
9. AGM
This will be held on Monday 7th February 2011 (Monday Week 5).
Arrive from 7.00pm for speeches starting at 7.30pm. Last checking of university cards at 7.45pm for those wishing to vote in the election.
Nominations to open Monday Week 3 and close Wednesday Week 4. Precise details to be announced at the start of the Spring Term.
10. Marketing co-ordinator
Rob feels that the position was intended to be trialled in advance of the AGM in order to see whether or not it needs to be ratified as a new Exec position. Since Alex has now been elected as Tech Officer, Rob is concerned that this test is now distorted, since Alex is going to be busy doing Tech Officer and Exec stuff at the same time.
It was raised that perhaps Alex could see whether or not it was too much effort to do both roles at the same time. However, Ed points out that he was doing this prior to the formation of the role, hence its’ creation.
It was noted that any position in the society that has communication with non-members of WSC is currently an Exec role. Indeed, all nine of the current roles have external communication to various levels.
It was agreed that as there was only one other candidate to submit an application, Fergus will contact them, offering them the position up until the AGM, to further assess its role and responsibilities.
11. Exec office completion
Fergus has again contacted Vanessa Farrow from Estates. His last contact from her was 23rd Sept. He has tried again 27th September, 19th October and 30th November, to ask when the work in the exec office will be completed. Of particular note, the lack of the plumbed in water cooler that was on the job list and fully costed.
If Fergus has still not heard back within a reasonable period of time, then he shall attempt to retrieve an answer from higher up at Estates.
Further Exec office issues:
Do we want to spend extra money on the refurb, e.g. the trunking and possible replacement of all of the sockets.
Rough costing for the trunking is ~£350.
Vote in favour of the above purchase at roughly the above price:
7 in favour, 0 against and 1 abstention.
Away from the Exec office, but still on the refurb:
Alex raised the possibility of getting the emergency running man lights changed so that they are only on during emergencies, rather than permanently on. Fergus to get in touch with Estates.
Fergus to continue to contact Security relating to L3 keys.
12. L3 heating
There was an issue of the heating in L3 appearing to be fully off, but we now appear to not have an issue as the heating now seems to work.
13. Server issues
Sony has died – this resulted in a further killing of the website. Sony is one of our firewalls, so all of our external communication was lost. We had two firewalls, partly for extra security and partly for redundancy (as per now!), so it could/would potentially be good to replace Sony to have these safeties again. Ed says “it shouldn’t be too expensive… under £500”. Our one remaining firewall, Barco, is of the same age and spec as Sony, so could be at risk. Alex may be able to source a free replacement, though this would be a decommissioned server from elsewhere. Ed will go back to IT and discuss this further before subsequently reporting back to Exec on the email listings.
14. Website progress
Ed has been in touch with the web development team. They have met, but the new members of the team were unable to contribute, though they have now been trained. Matt Wilkinson has tentatively set a due-date of Easter 2011. The Exec should be given updates on a roughly fortnightly basis.
15. Christmas theme
Tim Davidson will hopefully be able to put the snow and green/red theme on the website.
The new red/green and the blue LCD slide backgrounds were shown to exec. We are happy to keep the red/green for the rest of the term. Possibly using the blue version come January when it’s still freezing cold.
16. Constitution
Several points in the constitution were discussed due to their being controversial. However, in general it was agreed that Fergus should go through the majority of the document and detail all of the changes that he thinks should be made. The Exec should look at their own job description on the constitution and then assess all of the changes that Fergus proposes, commenting upon them on the exec email thread.
17. AOB
i) Alex is still awaiting a response from Bell Theatre Services for the EQ. He is also in liaison with various members of the Chemistry department regarding the EQ and the levels of noise that it will involve. We are also still awaiting a full response on the purchase of the replacement cone for the centre speaker from both Sound Associates and Future Projections.
ii) The Christmas meal has been booked. The last bus back to campus is at 10.30pm, so we will want to organise either group taxis back to campus, or a group of people walking/cycling back to campus together at the end of the evening.
iii) Ed has been told that WSC should be able to get a carpark permit. Ed proposed that we could have the permit for the purpose of shuttling prints across campus, etc. Some debate ensued as to whom we would allocate the permit to and how we would decide upon for the permit. It was agreed in general that we don’t have a specific need for it, especially now that NFT have upped their game on the delivery front. Nonetheless, it would be useful for things like taking stuff to the tip. The main issue arising from this is that we don’t think there is a truly fair means of distributing it. It would almost definitely result in mutual loathing and resentment amongst large swathes of the Crew. It was decided that we would draw a line under this and move on.
iv) We may be able to get “New York I Love You” on 13th February as part of a double screening with “Paris, Je T’Aime”. Owen has already spoken to Linas about this and if it goes ahead, we would have a double review on a single page of the booklet already reserved for the latter.
18. Time and date of the next meeting
This will be discussed on the Exec mailing list, but is likely to be in week 1 or 2.
The meeting ended at ~11.32pm.