Meraki Notes from July 12, 2016

Attending:
Jim, Polly, Natalie, Keita, Kiara, Bart, Blair, Dave, John

Notes:

Fall Retreat - YES! 
Meraki decided to go ahead and make a deposit for the fall retreat at Camp Wavus for the weekend  of Oct 14-16.  We received more than 30 positive responses. We have more than 10 people who are willing to help organize the retreat.  The location will be the same as our previous retreat, and we anticipate a larger cost for the event in general due to insurance, increased food costs, sound system rental, etc.  The next round might be as high as $250/person.

WIZ Report
We expanded the expectation that the end of dance opportunity for people to "check-in" will also serve as the opportunity for dancers to make suggestions as a formal part of the wiz's end-of-dance announcement.  The Wiz will determine how to share feedback with Meraki.

Keita requested that we have a suggestion box put out, and she said she would consider how to set such a box up.

Literature Table
The Meraki voted to simplify the literature table by providing a table at dance but letting people know that literature at the end of dance will be "recylced."

Thursday Evening
We decided we need a Thursday night dance Wiz.  Polly and Dave agreed to put together a group that will serve as a Thursday night wiz.  Others who expressed interest in participating are Nev, Eva, and Oracle - but they were not present at this Meraki.

Greeter Coordinator
We thanked Sarah Lawrie, in absentia, for voluteering to be the new Greeter Coordinator.  We discussed ways to increase enthusiasm to attract people as greeters, including: making service an expectation of membership, putting together a phone tree, more consistent announcements with some fanfare and skits.

Potluck
Previously, Meraki agreed that PCD would hold a quarterly potluck at Avant.  Kiara reported out that she will likely wait until Sept to arrange a potluck.  She seems to be coordinating this event.

Money after Greeter Time
Rather than telling people to see the DJ after the greeter leaves the table, we will now put a basket out after the greeter leaves with a sign reminding people of the suggesed donation $10.  We will not offer a discout for late comers.  The Wiz will set this system up, yeah!!

Financial Report
We are sound and on track with our $7-10K buffer.  We are at the upper end of our buffer now and anticipate higher costs for Sundays with our earlier decision to increase pays for DJs.

Retreat Mission and Announcement
We asked Kiara to work with the retreat committee to put together a mission statement of sorts for the retreat and a section on what people noticed on previous retreats.   We asked her to bring it back to meraki so we could all consider how the retreat gets communicated to the PCD community.

Our Next Meeting
Thursday, August 30th, location TBD.

The Winner of Meraki was Kiara.  Dave Grant lost when he malapropped.

Wizengamot (Operations Committee) Meeting 7/3/16

Here's the notes from our meeting.

Attendance: Jimmie, Kari, Cherie

Sarah Lawrie nicely agreed to attend as one of the topics was Greeter Duties.

 

Greeters Duties

Cherie offered to do a walk-thru for the Greeter  protocol, just so's we'd all be updated.

Bart DeCristoforo happened to still be at Avant, so he joined us as well, since he would be

greeting the following Sunday. This took most of our time but was worth it as it was VERY helpful.

**Good suggestion that the Greeter also check in with any new folks at the end of the dance to see how their experience was.

 

Literature Table

Tabled but with a few comments that it needs to be really examined as to who should really be doing this.

 

Suggestion Box

Not addressed

 

Thursday Night Dance

Tabled but also with a few comments that there should be a separate group that oversees this dance