Minutes

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.