AGA Management Changes

[Erik Olson <erik@thekrib.com>]

Karen, Dorothy, David, and myself met during the convention (along with my
wife Kathy Olson, TAG production manager Cheryl Rogers, and contributing
columnist Scott Heiber) to resolve some AGA business:

1. Membership.  Cheryl has volunteered to take over membership, effective 
the day the next TAG ships.  I (Erik) have tested a replacement 
SQL-backed web-fronted database for the membership roster that I will 
import Jack's final form excel spreadsheet after the next set of labels 
are generated.  Cheryl and others on the management committee will be able 
to access this database directly via the web.  Thanks Cheryl, for taking 
on this 2nd duty!

2. Vendor Relations.  We are in great need of a point person to maintain 
contact with advertisers for TAG, donors for the contest, and booth 
sponsors for the convention.  Further, we learned that nobody has billed 
the actual advertisers!  (In the ACA, this is the job of the treasurer, 
as are all money matters).   We talked about approaching Dave Gomberg, but 
Kathy volunteered to do this particular ugly job.  It was more or less 
unanimously decided that it would be far better to have someone without 
Dave's "history" talking with the vendors, and so Kathy was bestowed the 
honor.

3. Convention.  An extensive discussion on formalizing the process for 
bids and future conventions.  Erik is obtaining the appropriate paperwork 
from the American Cichlid Association, and Dorothy the rules from CAOAC, 
to help us draw up our own set of bid guidelines.  One interesting idea 
brought forth as an incentive to local clubs to host the event was to 
allow them to have their own auction (in addition to the Plant-only 
auction) in which they take all the profit.  Darlene Walder was appointed 
to interview Charlene, Valerie and Luis & obtain as much data on how they 
ran the convention this year.  The plan is (I beleive) to integrate all 
these pieces into a set of guidelines, to be written up by another 
volunteer TBD.  Scott mentioned to me in the car that he might be imposed 
upon to write up the guidelines once the research is completed.

3a. Charlene will not be planning next year's convention.  David can 
perhaps fill in some of the details, but it sounds like she is OK with 
this.  I have also removed her from this list.

  - Erik

-- 
Erik Olson
erik at thekrib dot com