Town Hall Minutes- June 20, 2010

(Landowner) mark: been working on the roads, repaired dramatically. Much thanks for the fundraiser, received cash that they’re putting back in the property. Firetruck is still ensconced in the mud pit. Fuel pump is busted; it’s interesting trying to find a pump for a ’72 firetruck. Working with parks and wildlife to get wildlife mgmt plan in place, forestry plan, wildlife mgmt exemption—have to protect wildlife for human consumption—hunting or medicinal or recreational. “medicinal deer”? working w/ state to find matching funds to thin the forest, planning a controlled burn, things that are great for both wildlife and for campers. Shower houses are still in the plans, just have to figure out how to make them happen in the best feasible process—working on plan L (as in, way beyond plan B). not ruling it out for this year, depends on things go down. Stunned amazed: hippies will come out in the rain, and the snow, to camp, and listen to techno in the woods. Mark is stunned and taken aback.

Eeyore: geo is returning to LLC. Soccermom, eeyore, geo, and single malt bill will be the new LLC. Ratifying bylaws so everything will be more legal. Geo was nominated and seconded and fifthed as being a new LLC member.

Eeyore: batcave: wayward is resigning from batcave. Bama: What does batcave entail? Vern: community function so that when the LLC gets busy panicking about the event, batcave keeps everyone in touch with the community. Eeyore: batcave is a group of people who interface with the community and bring up issues that the LLC might need to deal with. Batcave will take FEG and lead nominations, new policy suggestions, existing policy review, etc, and any decisions they make function as an intermediary between the community and the LLC. Ideal number on batcave is 8, but it’s been a little loose. Sloan, simple, pegleg, wayward, mjr tom, landowners and LLC were invited on to the mailing list for input. Sloan: batcave members can also be leads? No conflict of interests? Vern: Yes. Batcave is mostly just showing up at a meeting and helping the LLC keep it moving. Try and generate interest in the community for things we need, schwag, etc. run it by the LLC , find a budget, LLC will go ahead and sign off on it. bama: really good opportunity to grow interest in mys. People know about FS, but if we can connect with those people, we could double our size this year. Dan is looking to head up batcave and be the main person in charge. Vern: at some point it becomes impossible to cover everything, you have to turn it into a public body, can’t govern everything w/ personal phone calls.

Eeyore: Need someone to put out firecracker, FB communication, etc. batcave needs to help regulate how much information to put out there. Too much publicity equals people showing up unprepared. Need to make sure we don’t put it out as a rave, but moreso a burn. Not just a campout, we have certain guiding principles that we try and live by. Vern: we were prepared for 500 people from the beginning, but if we actually accomplish that goal, we’re going to have to evaluate our organizational structure. FS went from linear to exponential really quickly. For batcave to be a really functional part of the community, it needs to be staffed and function better.

Leads: sam and mer are gate/greeter co- lead nominated. Still need site ops, city planning, procession, skill toy safety, parking, web team communication, ranger, PETs, FEG, sound. Geo is kindof heading up ranger, need someone else (experienced ranger) to help her out so she can sleep during the event. Sean volunteered to do sound lead, make sure sound camps aren’t pointed at each other, etc. that position will definitely dovetail with city planning.

Editor’s note: sloan looks good in a fez.

Perimeter discussion: wristbands we’ve never actually had to use because ticketless people stand out on their own. Do we need a perimeter team? There’s a safety issue on the lower field with rain and flooding. Can flood really quickly. Moving the event to a different site on the land? Crossroads, bacon strip. Between the bridge and the cross roads. Does that shrink the FEG size? Mark is thinking about opening up the space for an FEG. Possibly putting the FEG down on the main field?

Parking: might need to get more serious about parking this year. Last year was kindof an exception, since nobody could move their stuck cars. Rob: walking between parking and the main field was miserable last year. The walking back and forth in the mud, etc, sucks for the people who are camped up there. If you split the FEG and the camping, people won’t be walking back and forth for everything. Boarhead: this kind of thing needs to go to a vote. Really affects the core population. You can’t hold the event in two different places.

Mark: looking at widening the corridor through the trees, not necessarily the road, the road might take some development. But he could take some trees out and have the FEG at the bacon strip and the event at the crossroads.

City planning: want to have a decision on that by the end of next month. Will have to have city planning, have to have someone step up.

Sound: sean is volunteering to do sound lead, and sound liason for city planning. Still need city planning lead, esp important if we’re changing locations within the land.

Need people to step up for web team. Need to put finishing touches on the site, update content from the previous site, setting up new user accts and who can update and mod the site, etc. will also mod the email list a little. Have some creative control and decision—as long as you don’t throw a giant penis on the front page it’s ok—deedee: what about just the tip? (lolz). Also, ticketing is a big deal for the web team.

Two types of ntxb-subsidized training are being offered: mark is doing fire team training, people who want to play with hoses, and truck , put out fires etc, talk to mark and attending the training on august 14th and 15th—one weekend, then a few weeks later, one more day. In Dallas, just off mckinney. TX forestry dept: citizens wildland ecology specialist, or something. Certified by the state to evaluate the boundary between wildlife and fire potential. $50 certification. Can take up the 30 people in the class. How many people do we need on the fire team? Had four people, hopefully we can get them back up here with their suits. Need four people on fire team and one fire team lead. 6-8 people ideally. Not going to have fireworks shooting into the crowd this year. Boarhead is not coming to mys if that happens. Lost a rocket mortar into the woods last year, if it wasn’t so wet we could have had a serious problem with all that. LLC is looking at sponsoring fire team training, so it wouldn’t be an out of pocket expense.

PETs training: need to have CPR for healthcare professionals. We have very few people who are actually professionals. When you have three people on medical that means it’s unstaffed and you can’t find them when you need them, and that’s the decision about whether to call an ambulance or not. everyone needs to recruit more healthcare people. LLC can sponsor half-ish of CPR certifications. Definitely want to take care of people on that.

Boarhead: ranger tent demolished, anybody have a line on a ranger tent, etc, carports? (yes).

Eeyore: Working from the consesnsus that we’re trying to grow the event. How much information do we want to put out there? People who aren’t prepared, etc. what info are we putting out that tells people what we are, who we are, reinforce the principles so that people know what to expect?

Communications lead—need to broadcast to various boards, etc. major tom is temporary communications lead.

Community board: ntxb.org/community. Several options—email lists, tribe, paying for a ning or something, smashy is willing to run a new board, organizing and moderating etc. eeyore wants to integrate our web comm into the site. Droupel (sp?)—allows people to push their feeds into their other networking sites. Want to avoid FB overlap to protect people with corporate jobs. Keep drugs off. Having posted in ntxb, means that we have consistent branding that we control as a community. In terms of msgs we want to send and ones we don’t. if we have our own site then if something goes wrong, we can take responsibility for it. we have consensus that it would be best to work on ntxb.org, but we need people to step up and run the boards. Need people with experience with simple machine thingies. (editor’s note: wtf are those?)

Scouting team mission for people to look at moving the event. Atrium obscurum is the wkend after the fourth of july, would be a good time to have people scouting the land to see what the land looks like when being used up around those areas (i.e. crossroads and bacon). Go to the event, have fun, set aside an hour or two to scout around. Tickets are 20-25 bucks. No free entry.

There was talk of moving mys back one weekend so as to not conflict with art outside, but overwhelming majority voted to keep mys on Columbus day weekend. Austinites, please come to our event instead if you really care.

Theme suggestions:

Walk a mile in my shoes

Carnival of dreams

Fortune 500 geriatric campout

Abomination vacation

Unintended consequences

Whatnot.

Burners of the lost ark.

Voting outcome:

Whatnot was eliminated. As well as fortune 500 geriatric campout. Runoff between carnival of dreams and burners of the lost ark.

Sam and sean both think we should let the theme dictate the effigy, and everyone agreed that an FEG is more important than a theme at the outset.

SO:

Need to have a major effigy proposal in two weeks, decide on the FEG, and let the FEG design dictate the theme. In one week we need batcave solidified. People who are interested in that need to step up.

That’s all, folks.

Combustible love,

Mer aka cmdr awesomepants aka CAP