Annual Membership Meeting Sunday November 20; November 15 Meraki Meeting Notes

Participating: Kari (Facilitating), Lori, Shelagh, John, Rudy, Deb, Mellen, Lindy

Spring Retreat update (Rudy)

• The contract with Ferry Beach is signed and ready to go.
• Dates: May 5-7 2023
• Next steps:
• Send deposit check (John)
• Hand the contract over to the retreat committee to begin planning
• Firm up committee membership
• Develop a list of tasks and a timeline (committee)
• Publish a "Save the Dates" announcement (Mellen)
• Deb to write up a handout ("if I get my act together") to post at dance

New Dance Venue (Lori)

• Barring a miracle, we won't have a new facility (other than Waldorf) for January.
• Lori and others are pursuing many leads, which we discussed.
• Next steps:
  
• Continue reaching out to facilities on the spreadsheet
• Reach out to Portland Public Schools and Portland Rec. Dept. to see what facilities might be available.

Annual Meeting (Mellen)

• We'll set up tables in the room next to the dance hall for the post-dance potluck
• We discussed agenda items
• Next steps:
  
• Add potluck and meeting summary to next dance announcement (Mellen)
• Publish meeting announcement details with agenda to the membership Friday-ish (John)

Facebook Group Administration and Group Membership Approvals (Deb):

• It's not clear who all has responsibility for vetting new membership requests to the group, and what the criteria are for accepting or rejecting.
• We do have some automatic approvals, if the person is in the Portland area and has one or more friends in the group
• Beyond that, it's not clear.
• Nor do we have published guidelines for group posts and conduct.
• No one present at the meeting was keen to take on responsibility for the Facebook group administration.
• We discussed a response by one group member to a dance announcement post, that we decided to leave be.
• We need a Social Media secretary/coordinator to take on the responsibility for our Facebook and possible future other social media presences. (Right now, Facebook is it.)

Meet in Person (John)?

• We discussed the possibility of meeting in person at future Meraki meetings, and there were mixed feelings. The convenience of Zoom makes it easier to attend meetings, but the possibility of meeting in person, especially after such a long time meeting on Zoom, is appealing.
• Deb volunteered to host the January meeting at her home; we'll see how that goes.

Closing Business

• Next meeting dates after the Annual Membership Meeting: December 13, January 17
• We spent about 15 minutes in meeting evaluation