FITS Excom Conference Call 2/11/2016 10:00am-11:24 CST (call continued after secretary had to disconnect).

Attendees:

Julie DeFilippi

Jeff Kopaska

Jeff Ojala

Andy Loftus

Nicole Eiden

Nick Sievert

Rebecca Krogman

Jodi Whittier

Discussion:

• Announcement Email (Jeff O)
  • 4 Items
  • Should we do a newsletter?-Jeff
    • Probably want to get this out asap, might not be ideal to wait for member submissions due to the need to get some of the items out.-Julie
  • Website has fallen a little out of date, needs to be updated.-Julie
    • Jeff O, volunteered to give it a look over
  • The scoop it item on the homepage is not updating automatically so everything is getting really out of date. Probably need to do something with this. –Julie
  • How do we address timeliness of newsletter-Julie
    • Rebecca- Need to have items go up as they are received rather than being held up and delayed until a newsletter goes out. Probably be better to have people alerted every time a new item is posted.
    • Nick- It seems good in practice but could be difficult to execute a more continuously updating blog.
    • Julie- Would really like to see it move more in a continuous blogging direction
      • Jeff mentioned he doesn’t have experience with this
    • Rebecca- Would like to see this move in an RSS feed direction, also in favor of allowing submissions to automatically become draft posts that then can be approved by the editor.
    • Julie-Mailchimp can be set up to automatically send out draft RSS feeds.
    • Rebecca- Setting up the autodrafts can probably be done, but she’s not sure how to do it with drupal but there is probably a way.
    • Julie- We should consult with Thom to see if we can set up autopopulating draft submissions
  • Annual Report
    • +$64 2014-2015
    • $1,998 Income
    • $1,943 Expenses
    • Next year need to pay attention to the dues payment to make sure the membership glitch regarding dues did not impact the dues income.-Julie
    • Andy- Expect in the future that our income will decrease or go negative. The overhead we had on our federal grants are what built up our accounts. Dues and software not likely to increase in time. We don’t spend much, but should be thinking about revenue streams in the future
  • Finances
    • Software Sales (Nick)
      • FAMS 1.0: 2 sales, 250.60
      • Fish BC: 0 sales
      • Slipke’s Fish Aging Tools: 0 Sales
      • FAMS 1.64: 83 Sales, 16,148
    • Loan
      • Additional $660 from direct sales paid to loan in July
        • 16,808 paid
        • $8,192+Interest unpaid
        • We are fiscally capable of paying this off from our accounts, should we do this?-Andy&Julie
          • Will we get future profits once it’s paid off-Rebecca
            • Yes we will-Jeff
          • Rebecca- Seems like we should pay it off if we have the money for it, no reason to pay interest on loan if we don’t have to.
          • Julie- That makes sense, but the downside is if sales never reach the 25,000 we are out whatever money isn’t made back within five years. Will we sell the 40+ copies we need to get up to the 25,000 threshhold?
          • Jodi- Is there anything we can do to drive up the sales, are there groups we would expect to be purchasing this that haven’t yet?
          • How many copies of the previous versions were sold? ~500 copies-Andy
            • Sounds like we should be pretty safe in selling enough to cover the loan, so it would make sense to pay off the loan-Julie
            • Rebecca suggests that the adoption may be slow because many offices still have some older computers that they use with the old versions of the software on those computers, but eventually will need to buy the 64 bit version
            • Andy-Approximately 800 copies were estimated to be sold.
            • Julie vote on whether we should pay it off
              • Rebecca, Nicole, Nick, Jodi, and Julie all vote pay it off
              • Andy abstained from the vote
            • Nick will contact Aaron Lerner and make arrangements for paying off the loan.
          • Financial support for AIFRB/Fisheries Blog symposium-$200
            • Julie, should we help financially or just help get out the word? Benefit would be prominent display of our logo in announcements and at the symposium.
            • Jodi- Disappointed they didn’t get our name right, how much impact will $200 get as far as travel goes.
            • Julie- This does fit within the umbrella of what we do, but how much value do we get for our $200 dollars, how much visibility does this get us?
              • This could be a replacement for being involved in the student poster award, in regards to doing something at the national meeting.-Julie
              • Rebecca- Does this symposium work towards FITS goals, if yes give them the money since it’s pretty minimal, if not it doesn’t make sense to give them money.
                • She appreciates that it’s looking at whether social media is effective, not just hey cool look at this.
              • Jeff, the money is such a small contribution it’s not a big deal to him one way or another.
                • Would like to see the money going to someone who really needs it (travel not funded through employer or grant) if we do give.
              • Julie- Topic does seem to fit with what FITS is interested in, appreciates that it appears to be a thoughtful review of the role/value of social media. More critical than many other social media symposiums.
                • Money will be used to bring in key-note speaker, this is to help get a prominent speaker or two.
                • Julie thinks it aligns with FITS objectives and the price tag is low enough that it seems reasonable to her.
              • Rebecca- How do we get connected to more people and market ourselves.
                • Propose that the materials from the symposium be hosted on our website.
                • Draw people to our website
                • Add resources to our website
              • Julie- If they are planning on putting the materials on their website is a copost on our website sufficient, or do we need to have the material exclusively, and if we are going to have to offer more money should we offer $500.
                • Jeff K- Let them dictate the amount, ask if it is possible to host materials on our website, if they say no we can negotiate whether giving them more money would get us more opportunity.
              • Mid-year report (Julie)
                • Got information from the governing board meeting, Julie will get back to us with more information soon.
                  • When are they due, mid march?-Rebecca
                  • Julie- not sure
                  • Discussion about online reporting-Julie and Rebecca
                    • Rebecca suggests we should use the new tools that have been developed
                  • Fisheries Article
                    • Edits from Julie and Andy
                    • New Deadline-Mid March
                  • FDX (Julie)
                    • Update- Core group will be meeting again.
                      • Going to have a webinar, but Julie isn’t sold on that course of action.
                        • Further sharing of success stories might not get us anywhere
                        • We need to have an evaluation of what the next steps are moving forward, what value would it bring?
                          • Core group needs to discuss next steps
                          • Rebecca- Happy success stories won’t get us very far in freshwater. We need to discuss practical applications, and identifying standards for metadata.
                            • Ex: How do we record species names, develop a standard system.
                            • Ex: List of standard gear names, etc.
                          • This could be existing standards or developing new standards. Put recommendations online.

Nick had to leave call while the discussion was still in progress 11:24am central