August 2020 Minutes
Amber calls the meeting to order at 7:00 pm.
Sarah Arpin, John Cassidy, Sheila Minor, Preston Forsythe, Christopher Morris, Sean Vanderhoff, Ben Tobin, Pat Kambesis, & Christopher Redmon in attendance. Minutes taken by Christopher Morris.
Announcements:
- Preston noted that the NSS has a work weekend this weekend and will the 3rd weekend through the end of the year.
- Sean noted about the annual meeting announcement. Amber announced that it would be at 7:30 pm eastern on Tuesdays in September.
Reading of the Previous Meetings (Christopher Morris)
- Christopher read the minutes.
- Sean motitioned to pass them, John seconded.
- Minutes passed
Treasurer’s Report (John Cassidy)
- We started with $12,934.62
- $229.32 membership fees came in and we have a total of $13,163.94.
- Two commercial requests are near the 2 month period.
- John noted that he still needs to get the new names to the credit cards.
- Sean noted that a member renewed for a year, but was already a life member.
- John noted that he could send a check and that way it is in his ledger.
Data Committee (Sarah Arpin)
- 7 new data requests.
- 4 commercial
- 3 from Bob Roth
- Sean noted that a commercial request from 2018 sent in that they had found 4 additional openings that we need to check out. They sent in the coordinates and a short description of them.
- Preston asked what county it was in.
- Sean noted it was Grayson County.
- Sarah updated on the Regional Coordinators.
- She stated the regions and the 4 people that would take over them.
- Josh Brewer, Kevin Zachary, Howard Kalnitz, & Sean Vanderhoff.
- There would be county coordinators under them.
- Christopher Morris, Sarah Arpin and Ben Tobin would help out on a technical level.
- Discussion ensued on adding new data to the database.
- Amber asked about letting the membership know about the Regional Coordinators.
- Pat said that we might want to wait to hash out the details.
- Discussion ensued.
- Will make an announcement on the 15th of September.
Emergency Response (No Report)
Membership Committee (Sean Vanderhoff)
- 2 new members.
- 1 life member and 1 annual member.
- Total of 90 members.
Grant Committee (Amber Yuellig)
- No report
Annual Report Report (Christopher Morris)
- No report
KSS Expeditions (Amber Yuellig)
- On hold due to Covid-19.
- Unless someone would like to start thinking about ridge walking in the winter while social distancing.
- Pat noted that would be a good idea and has a particular idea in mind.
- She will report back in October.
- Ben might have some ridge walking to do in January and February.
- He is working on access.
Annual Meeting (Sean Vanderhoff)
- The poll that we put out, didn’t really go way one.
- So he chose Tuesday’s at 7:30 pm.
- He has reached out to a number of people for presenting.
- He has 2 confirmations with 1 that wants to.
- He has a couple more interested in presenting.
- He has been asking for 20-30 minutes per presentation.
- He thought an hour would be a long time to ask someone to talk.
- Pat asked who he had so far.
- Sean noted Jeff Hamilton was going to present on some stuff in Breckinridge County.
- Josh Brewer wanted to present as well.
- Sean noted that we needed some more discussion on what are appropriate things to present on.
- Pat noted that we are 2 weeks away from September.
- Sean noted that he will finalize it all by the beginning of this coming week.
- Sean noted that he could get a presentation from the NSS library if needed.
- Amber said that Howard has a good LiDAR presentation. That Sean should ask him about that.
- Pat said that we should record the presentations.
- More discussion about recording the presentations ensued.
- Sarah asked how we are going to formalize who is presenting and when.
- Sean said we will do it over email.
Old Business
- NSS Internal Organizations (Amber Yuellig)
- Amber reiterated about why we were looking into this and asked Ben to discuss his conversation about this.
- Ben talked to the former and current IO committee heads about this.
- The biggest benefit that they have is in event insurance.
- There is no data ownership in their legal purview.
- It would give us better access to the NSS archives, which Ben noted that we do not really need.
- He is waiting to hear back from Nick Anderson on more details.
- Amber noted that full members would have to be NSS members.
- Discussion ensued.
- Ben said we should lay out the pros and cons of joining and letting the new board that is voted in decide.
- KSS Interns (Ben Tobin)
- We are down to one intern.
- He is trying to find out how much funding we have left for her.
- She is still working about 5 hours a week.
- She has keyworded over 1000 digital files!
- There is a lot to be done.
- Christopher noted that we should give her a note and/or flowers when she is finished working for us. Amber agreed.
New Business
- Election Committee
- Discussion about the committee and the process.
- Ben noted that he would be willing to run it if no one else would.
- Amber asked if Sheila would be willing to be on this committee.
- Sheila said she would be willing to help.
- Sean said he would look at the membership list and come up with a few names.
- Amber asked if there was any other new business.
Pat motioned to adjourn at 8:01 and Ben seconded.