YPT Boston Chapter Board Meeting
CTPS, 10 Park Plaza, Suite 2015, March 10, 2015
March 10, 6:00PM – 7:30 PM
Meeting Minutes
Board Members Present: David Baumgartner, Sam Piper, Jennifer Slesinger, Tegin Teich Bennett, Mike Tremblay. David Moyer and Jared Fijalkowski joined by phone.
Others Present: Alex Smith and Natalie Raffol
Call to Order – Tegin Teich Bennett
Deputy Chair’s Report– Tegin Teich Bennett
Federal taxes have been filed
There is no update on Chapter coordination meetings from the International Chapter.
Treasurer’s Report– David Baumgartner
David presented the monthly finance report. The membership check from International and two sponsorship checks are expected soon. Tegin asked whether we expect the costs for the Distinguished Speaker event to be in the same range as what is on the budget and David confirmed the estimate is up-to-date.
Old Business-Matt Moran
Tegin reported Matt’s updates, received by email.
The annual report was sent to the addresses that we had.
The thank you letter for the Green Links lunch and learn was sent.
New Business
Admin Items – Matt Moran
Green links lunch and learn memberships have been sent
emergency center tour. This will be rescheduled for later in the year, and when it does, we will need to send a thank you to the people. No immediate action
Annual Report mailing receipts to David B. Matt is going to send David receipts for the stamps
Annual Report – Mailed to All Sponsors and Most Speakers
Membership Update - Sam Piper
Sam talked about how the use of electronic sign in sheet was successful as the Doug Most Lunch and learn
It was decided that we will do electronic sign in for all future events
The process for electronic sing in is below:
David M to export registrant list to Sam P. If Sam cannot attend, someone else will be designated the list recipient
Registration desk is set up outside the event
Two YPT Board Members Staff the Desk
The two people should have a laptop, square devices, and pen and paper in case lots of people come in at once and the person with the computer needs help
One person uses a laptop to check people into the event. If the person has not registered, record their name and email.
The other person at the table will run square charges and assist with recording unregistered guests if a lot of people show up at the same time.
Send the registration sheet to Sam after the event
Jen is going to find out if we can export registrant membership status so that we can have this on hand when we sign people in
Sam went through statistics of registrants and who showed up.
Doug Most L&L Stats
Number Registered: 32
# Reg Attended: 17
Unregistered 2
Total Attendees 19
% Registered Attend 53%
% Unregistered 11%
Discussion ensued about the 53% registration attendance rate
Do people get reminder emails in advance of the event.?
Only for the technical tours do we remind people
For all the other events, people only get an email confirmation when they register
All agreed it would be good to find out if there are trends about the number of people attending. The statistics highlighted above will be track for future events.
We all agreed that we should send a reminder email to the zipcar attendees
David going to send email reminder tomorrow morning
Square memberships – Sam didn’t realize that for cash square payments we owe national $5 per membership. Sam will determine how much we owe international and report this stat at the next board meeting.
David B asked Sam to print out a list of members with their company?
Mike can take this and see if they can get sponsors
We take this list and encourage people to attend the meeting
Export participants and their company by the end of the week
Sam to export list to David B
Sponsorship Update – Mike Tremblay
Expected contributions from PB and Cambridge Systematics
PB = $1500
Cambridge Systematics = $500
Although these contributions have been confirmed, we do not yet have checks in hand
If we do not get the check by then we will remove their sponsorship materials from our event stuff and from the email signature until we get the check
Bowling Event – Give David the banners and other stuff
Alex is helping us get contacts with VHB. Likely going to get a nice contribution from them
Programming Update– David Moyer
Zip Car lunch and learn is tomorrow, Tues March 10th
David B will get squares for the event
David B will staff registration table with a laptop
Sam will send him the Doug Most excel sheet so that he can copy the format
David M will send David B list of registrants to use for sign ins
Bowling Event
Things we need to bring to the event:
Pizza, Napkins and Plates
Natalie is going to get an Uber to get the pizzas to the event
Legion L&L will be occurring March 24th
Transportation Camp Happy Hour
We need to find a venue to hold the happy hour
Requirements for the venue:
Section of room
70-80 people
Starting at 5pm
no fee
paying for apps and there would be cash bar
Sam is going to contact flattop Johnys
Natalie is going to contact other bars in Kendall
YPT International April 11th – What is our involvement in the event?
See if they want to put some money towards it
South Station lunch and learn – no date set yet
We need to make room reservations if a room is no longer available. Sarah can help us if we need to get into the room
Communications Update- Jennifer Slesinger
Communications
Next email to include:
Bowling, Legion L&L, Transportation Camp and Jeff Speck Event
Jen has made updated to the website
Board Photos:
We decided to do individual head shots for the board. We need to upload photos of the board.
Jen emailed cara to change the email address
Website sub-committee – we are meeting next Monday.
Website survey to gauge how people use it – how do we do the survey. Reminder emails and announcement emails. People see what is coming up next and don’t read the rest.
March 24th Event IS Happening – Pedestrian Modeling Software. Legion.
Jen is going to tweak the event notification email format a bit. She is going to put bullets at the top of the email to help people identify what events are upcoming. We think people don’t read much past the top of the emails.
For bowling event – The liquor store across the street isn’t the best one. Let people know this in advance
At Large Updates – Jared Fijalkowski
Jared working on tracking of the speakers. Jared will be starting to pull this information together
Trying to determine how to plan for board members once they move on. How do we encourage people to be part of the board?
Every member is invited to our board meetings – but people don’t usually come. Having more members comes to board meetings is good because it helps explain what each of the positions are.
Idea #1: Before the summer – we have a special email to people who have attended an event in the last couple months asking them to join board meeting
June makes the most sense – this is closer to when elections occur.
Closer to the elections makes sense, but we also loose people because of the summer months
Organize as many people as possible to go out with beers after the board meeting
At meeting - Talk about what positions are available –
Everyone in agreement that we should do this.
Jared – this is a way for us to recruit people to become board meetings
People might enjoy learning more about how YPT operates
Idea #2: This is the 5 year anniversary of YPT Boston – We could celebrate an anniversary event. We put together some info-graphics on what we have done over the past 5-years
Make this a marquee event
Have a short program –
Maybe involve past board members
How do people want to celebrate? Talk more about this at next board meeting
Jeff Speak Distinguished Speaker
MIT agreed to co-sponsor and provide the room
Who should we provide free memberships too?
In the past we have provided free tickets to our members, but not to non-members
In this case – MIT was asking for all of their students to get in free. A requirement for them to give us the money/room is that their students get in free
To verify a person is an MIT student we can check their student ID
MIT may require us to select from a small list of caterers – which could be more money
When there is a free event for MIT students, students may be less likely to RSVP and rather just show up at the event. This makes it difficult to plan the event, and could lead it to being a more expensive event to put on (more heads means more money). There is some inherent uncertainty with how many students will sign up in advance.
We need to ask MIT if we can cap registration (based on room limits) so we can plan on a fixed number
We need to figure out a way that MIT Students can register on the system even if they are not members
Best way to do this would be allow them to sign up as if they were members on the registration page (click the “I am a member” box” and then verify their school status at the event when they enter
Is there a limit for how many people the MIT room will hold? David M. asked for a room that will fit 100 people
David M. will call MIT Wednesday and ask them all these questions
Jen has a room reserved at Mass DOT.
She has not confirmed that the security fee of $200 can be waived but she is working on it and will let the board know ASAP.
Even if we did do it at Mass DOT, MIT would require all MIT students to attend for free
One argument for having it at Mass Dot – we’ll likely get a wider variety of registrants and we’ll reduce the likelihood of walkins. This will make planning for the event easier.
How many People should we expect?
We got 40 last year for the event. Davey was closer to 100
Overall, board is inclined towards having it at MassDOT
Capacity issue – we have to cut off registration at 100 people.
The policy should be that you must register in advance
If we can get the security fee waved, we should plan on having it as MassDOT
Has anyone else communicated with any of the other co-sponsors?
We should be accepting registrations for the event as soon as possible
We need to confirm the location before we sent out the event invite
We need to figure out how to handle the MIT registration.
This will be a member only event. We need to figure out how to allow MIT students to register even if they are not members.
Overall – we need to start looking into caterers
Discussion about increasing the budget for the event. There might be the case where we bump up the budget for the event.
Catering requirements could be more at MIT
We can move some of the website money that we are no longer going to spend to this event
Just keep this in mind in case we cannot wave the Mass DOT $200 fee
Adjournment
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