Yankee Board Minutes

Yankee Board Meeting Agenda

Monday September 10, 7:30pm

Location: Media Room, Zesiger Athletics Center, MIT, Cambridge, MA

Confirmed Attendance:

Board: Jonah, Sam, Jay

At-Large: Jeffry Powell, Chuck Blake, Daniel Chen

Guests: Don Cohen, Dave Castanon (late)

Accept Minutes from last meeting – done via email before posting to Yankee.org

Unanimous Vote to Accept Minutes

Start time: 7:50 pm

End time: 9:00 pm

Treasurer Report

*No updated financials, spent money on AVP and haven’t spent any money yet, fiscal year ends Aug 31^st

Registrar’s Report

*Online form is live

*1^st tourney is Sep 23

NERVA Report

(Dave will be late)

• Registration Online, and there ARE bugs in the system
• Our fiscal year is diff. from USAV, there is a couple months lag; our memberships do not renew until Nov 1 for USAV
• Insurance is not an issue, as new members are added immediately
• You’ll get an acknowledgement you are a member until ’07; and then another in November that you are a member for ‘08
• Can sign waiver online using your license number…but you don’t have to as Yankee will still require hand-written signature on code-of-conduct
• Next year will likely be able to do all electronically (including sign-up and payment and waivers)
• USAV National meetings are coming up Columbus Day Weekend
• Dave will bring up any of NERVA’s concerns regarding online sign-ups
• Interested in 2010 Nationals but can’t get a bid package from USAV
• Need to find out the information that we need to eventually be allowed to bid to them
• Tried approaching Atlanta to see what they had to do to get their bid
• Dave will confront USAV about it at the National Meeting

Ratings Report

*Helen Taylor is the new head rater

*Reports out every 2 weeks

**Will expand raters per last meeting’s vote

Newsletter/Email Report

*Moved to a blog, 2200 views, 1300 uniques

*Jonah updates almost everyday

*Using Constant Contact as Email

**468 Email addresses (250 from AVP)

**1^st email re: scramble – 50% open rate, 18 click-throughs to Yankee website

**Jonah can make blog and email stats available

Web Editor Report

*Read by Sam as submitted by Tom via Email

**Our domain has been moved from readyhosting.com to dreamhost.com under Joshua Wachs account there. We've changed from a windows based server to a linux based server. This should prove to be faster and hopefully we'll have less of the support issues we've had at readyhosting the past year. Also the cost will be a lot less. The move went relatively well. The two unplanned hitches that we've run into:
***Casing is important in directory names on Linux. A number of our links were failing as the new server thinks www.yankee.org/DIRECTNS and www.yankee.org/directns are different directories and the old server thought they were the same. I believe all of those have been chased down.
***ASP pages are not supported. We've used ASP for the schedule pages, roster system, referee tests, clinics, accred tests, voting, etc. Almost every page that requested input from the user. However, the new site supports PHP and that tends to be more widely used. I've converted the time critical pages to php (schedule and rosters system), still have a few more to go. Of particular import, I've got to change the TD roster printing page and the TD reports form. Both should be done by the end of the week.
**The fall schedule was posted to the site on Friday night. The registration/roster system was converted to php and loaded up over the weekend, opening up Sunday evening.
**The NCAA/PAVO referee tests are cranking along. The USAV referee tests have been coded up and are being tested. The USAV scorekeepers test just came in recently and will also be webified shortly. All of the USAV tests should be up on 10/15.

GRC Report

*Committee is: Daniel, Jeffry, Jonah, Mark

*AVP, 5 scrambles, 1 clinic

**Scrambles every 4-5 weeks

**MC, WC, MB (may change MB to RCB)

*Giving out postcards at scrambles (leftover from AVP)

*Collecting email for Yankee mailing list

*Don Cohen: What is GRC doing for upper level players?

**discount for college teams

**Yankee is not reaching for – or retaining higher level players

**Go through coaches or NECVL to let their players know of our opportunities

**Also promote refereeing opportunities to college players

***Need to put together a list of coach’s email addresses – Jeffry will do this for NCAA varsity/club women’s teams and then men’s club then men’s varsity

• Old Business:

1. Yankee Presence at AVP Recap

• 2500 promo items given away; collected 250 email addresses
• 25 volunteers worked over the weekend
• Didn’t get PA announcements, didn’t get water at booth over weekend
• Jonah won’t pay until he hears back from Fenway Group
• What will we do next year to drive players to our booth?
• Get JO’s involved (sam)
• Get AVP player’s involved in our booth (Don)
• Get there early to choose booths, they were not assigned (Jonah)
• Ask for an original, better location – perhaps by players tent for next year

1. Logo Update

• New logo up on website/blog, check it out.

2. Storage Unit

· Keys will go to all board members that want them

· In Brighton, balls, shirts, etc are in there now

• Jonah motioned, Jay Second,
• Motion Passes YES: Chuck, Jeffry, Dan, Lynn, Sam, Jeff S

3. New Ratings Chairs and Committee Members

· Helen Taylor accepted

· Helen appointed Dana Levit is new to the committee

4. Tournament Reporting

· TDs must enter all their completed tourney info into the system

· Create a new tag for RCO tournaments; handle cancelled tournaments differently

· Jonah talked to TDs at draft

5. Updates to Yankee Rules and Regulations Documents

· Historic

· New Uniform Change Rules

· Jonah will forward 2005-2007 meeting notes to Sam

6. ByLaws Committee Update

· Sam will send out wiki link to board members; uname/pword

7. Yankee Mailing List Update

· See above

8. Raters

· What will the minimum number of tournaments attended be for a rater to stay a rater? (Jeff S)

o Raters/System is not in bylaws and is available to be changed

o Person in charge of changing ratings should be at those level tourneys (Jeffry)

o Having one person in charge helps provide a pathway and order (Jay)

o Raters have no power except to report back to head rater; they can only do instant re-rates on new players

o Head rater must be more administrative (Don)

· People want more raters because there have been zero raters at many tourneys (Jeffry)

· Will table this until next meeting when Jeff is here

· President is free to reform this as he sees fit

o Don suggests head rater at each main level

Any New Business:

None

• Next Meeting: Lasell College, Room 101, Newton MA - 10/15 7:30 p.m.