Board Meeting – January 24, 2019

The Board met on January 24, 2019.  Thirteen board members attended.

For a complete list of the officers and committee members that comprise the Board, see the following: 2018-2019 Officers and Committee Chairs

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Committee Chair Reports:

Treasurer – Bruce Schaefer presented an updated budget as of January 24, 2019. Due to higher than expected expenses for our website, he projected a deficit of $124 by year’s end. The result will improve somewhat because of increased revenue from member dues. The budget included 83 members. As of January 31, the membership fee for the rest of the year is $35.

The Honor Fund has a balance of $659. We have another charitable shoot for the Shepherd’s Table coming up and Catherine Honigsberg will approach David Blass to find out its status within the Honor Fund.

Programming: No Report

Year End Celebration date: We agreed on June 13 as a suitable date for this Year End Celebration. Tanya Riseman holds the overall responsibility for organization and a judge has been selected. Catherine Honigsberg volunteered to be responsible for printing the certificates, Lisa Auerbach for handling the food as it arrives, and Larry Gold will be away for the final competition, but will find a replacement for collecting the prints. A planning meeting on the Year End Celebration will be announced.

Cable Release: Dennis Freeman has three articles in the pipeline and other inputs for publishing the Cable Release, which he expects to finalize by the end of next week.

Field Trips: Phil Boyer informed us about the recent field trip to Union Station, where nine persons participated out of which two new members. Below are his upcoming field trips:

In addition, Phil is planning field trips in both April and May.

Website: Catherine Honigsberg read from Mark Paster’s Technology Draft and a discussion followed. In an effort to secure and standardize how photos will be visualized at SSCC’s Speakers and Judges Nights, the best option is to store images on flash drives and use SSCC’s laptop and projector as it is often difficult and time consuming to calibrate our projector to external laptops. Michael suggested another option is to use the Power Point slide with a color wheel to fine tune colors. Mark Paster will revise his draft to reflect the findings of the discussion

 Meetup: Michael Koren warned us about spam new members on the Meetup website. He advised us to refrain from clicking on pictures of attractive young persons as those are often spammers/scammers.

Nominations: Larry Gold and Bruce Schaefer are members of the Nomination and Elections Committee and will search for candidates for Club Officers and Director(s) at the regular meetings. The Slate must be presented in April. Following presentation of the candidates, the committee shall solicit and accept nominations from the floor. Elections will take place during the Speaker’s Night meeting in May.

The Social Media Meetup had no responses for the position.

The position as CR assistant will be advertised in next Cable Release.

Competition: Larry Gold led an interesting discussion about some of the technical rules for competition such as file name and size, pixel size, etc. He stressed that the PSA rules about limited pixel sizes of images. He also discussed the necessity and importance of how, where and for how long time images are stored. Standards and transparency are necessary, not least to avoid that competitors submit the same images repeated times. Larry will discuss with David Terao.

 Membership: Mark Auerbach has contacted guests and noted that three of them will return for our meetings in February. Andrew Rein contacted Meetup attendees and Lisa Auerbach have been in touch with members that have not paid their dues this year.

Lisa Auerbach who organized the Winter Social that took place on December 6 noted that it was well received both by “old” and new members as well as guests.

Honor Fund: Catherine Honigsberg will approach David Blass to enquire about the status of the Wider Circle Project within the Honor Fund.

PSA: No update.

Communication Standards for the Club: Michael Koren has drafted an outline and is awaiting first comments from Dennis Freeman, Mark Paster and Catherine Honigsberg. A broad discussion followed about the necessity and importance of standardized procedures for how the Club communicates and works. This is important for transparency and future members, officers, committees and directors who will continue the work. Michael will select a few of the items in the proposed outline and the committee will work on those.

Other Topics:

Maryland Photography Alliance: No report. .