Minutes of meeting of the Board of directors of The Autscape Organisation Meeting date: Sunday 20th October 2013 Meeting time: 2.00pm BST Meeting Chair: Martijn Present: Alastair, Debbie, Elaine, Martijn, Stephen, Yo Apologies: Trish, Liz 1. Ratifications 1.1. The board ratified the decision made on the board list not to appoint Kalen as Company Secretary. (6 for) 2. Key positions to be filled (Handled out of order during a closed part of the meeting, as per the decision made under 2.1 last month) 2.1. Honorary Secretary (clerk to the board) The board decided to appoint Debbie honorary secretary (5 for). 2.2. Company Secretary Alastair agreed to contact a solicitor he knows, with Autism experience, to see if they would be willing to be interviewed for the role. Stephen reminded the board to check if our indemnity insurance would cover a non-trustee company secretary. After further discussing options for a permanent company secretary, the board decided to appoint Yo interim company secretary until the end of the 17th November 2013 board meeting (5 for). 3. Follow-ups 3.1. PO Box and change of address (see Appendix A) A discussion ensued about inconsistency when addressing mail to us, confidentiality, and a non-geographically linked solution. Debbie volunteered to research and propose options for a PO box or permanent address during the month ahead. It was confirmed that the current PO box runs out in April. 3.2. Treasurer (Handled out of order during the closed part of the meeting) Peter has stated he is willing to be co-opted at the meeting on 17th November but not before. Stephen agreed to continue in the interim. 4. Subcommittee chairs (Handled out of order during the closed part of the meeting) 4.1. Formal Programme subcommittee (Programme Coordinator) Candidates: Martijn Martijn was elected Programme Coordinator (no objections). 4.2. Alternative Programme subcommittee Candidates: Trish Help was offered by Stephen, Alastair and Elaine. Trish was elected chair of the Alternative Programme subcommittee (no objections). 4.3. Publicity and Publications subcommittee Candidates: Alastair Alastair was elected chair of the Publicity and Publications subcommittee (no objections). 4.4. Research subcommittee Candidates: none Debbie was elected chair of the Research subcommittee (no objections). 4.5. Fundraising subcommittee Candidates: none The current chair, Elaine, agreed to resurrect her fundraising strategy (completed but still to be presented to board). It was agreed to defer the appointment of a new chair until Liz had been approached as a candidate. 5. Key position progress reports (matters not covered earlier) 5.1. Interim Treasurer (Stephen) (Handled out of order) "Not much progress since last month, although not much has accumulated since then, sorry about this. The insurance company has given us an invoice for the correct insurance now, and that's in the process of being paid (payment still needs authorising by a second party, my fault it hasn't yet been - I forgot to e-mail the other person with access to our internet banking)." 5.2. 2014 Venue Coordinator (Elaine) "Nothing to report yet." 5.3. Web systems (Martijn) "Nothing really to report, things are the same as last time. Continued incremental updates to the website, technical maintenance and slow familiarisation with the technical intricacies of the system." Martijn confirmed that 'IT systems manager' and 'Web systems' are just different terms referring to the same job. 5.4. Chair (Martijn) "Major issue at hand is we need a company secretary (who does legal stuff) as well as a honorary secretary (who does things like agendas and minutes). They may or may not be the same person." 6. Any other business Company secretary and honorary secretary job descriptions Yo proposed that we adopt the separate drafts as posted to the Board list as alternatives to the current Company Secretary job description. There was concern that the new Company Secretary job description was excessively complex, but it was decided that the descriptions can be tweaked later. There was also concern over indemnity insurance if the company secretary is not a trustee. 6.1. The board decided to adopt the current draft Company Secretary job description (5 for, 1 against). 6.2. The board decided to adopt the current draft Honorary Secretary job description (6 for). Yo stated that until or unless the board makes a firm decision about splitting the role or not, we should keep the existing one too as an alternate. Meeting closed 4.14 pm.