Minutes of meeting of the Board of directors of The Autscape Organisation Meeting date: Tuesday 27 February 2018 Meeting time: 14:00 GMT Meeting Chair: Martijn Present: Elaine, Heta, James, Jenny, Jeremy, Martijn, Peter, Trish Observers: 1 Meeting opened: 14:07 1. Approvals 1.1. Final Minutes of the January 2017 meeting posted to the list on 25th February 2018 Deferred pending amendments. 2. Ratifications No ratifications. 3. Proposals 3.1. The Company Secretary proposed that the board approve the revised Complaints policy posted to the list on 26th February 2018. See Appendix A. There was a discussion around Appendix 1 relating to the recording of complaints and disclosing the outcome and the relevance of Appendix 2. It was decided that these areas should be looked at again on the list before the Policy is approved. Action: defer to list for amendments. 3.2. The Company Secretary proposed that the board accept the delegations for running the Autscape 2018 Conference as shown in Appendix B. There was a discussion around the Programme section regarding the delegation for choosing the presenters. It was clarified that the section ‘Presenters accepted/declined’ referred only to informing proposers and not in selecting the proposals. The decision regarding whether choosing proposals is delegated was deferred. The proposal was changed to The chair proposes to accept all delegations except for those under programme; only the CfP delegation will be delegated from that section. (7 For) A meeting was arranged for Tuesday 13 March at 14:00 to discuss this and approve the remaining Programme delegations. 3.3. The Event Manager proposes that the board approve the text of the advertisement for Autscape 2018 to be published in Asperger United as shown in Appendix C. As this needed urgent approval to meet the publishing deadline the proposal was changed to The Chair proposes that the board delegate the task of creating and publishing the Asperger United advert for Autscape to the organising team. (8 For) 4. Follow ups 4.1. Discussion with Autistic UK Heta reported that she had messaged Autistic UK board members to request a discussion with them. She believes that the response will be positive and she is waiting for final confirmation. 5. Role reports 5.1. Chair (Martijn) Martijn said he had received a response from Autspace about the similarity of their new name to Autscape, which had been forwarded to the board. They had politely declined to change their name to be less similar to ours. 5.2. Company Secretary (Elaine) Elaine said that the first draft of the annual report will be sent after the meeting. She also intended to amen the complaints policy so we can move on to other things. 5.3. Honorary Secretary (Elaine) Nothing to report. 5.4. Treasurer (Jeremy) Nothing to report. 5.5. Event Manager Autscape 2018 (Kalen) Nothing to report. 5.6. Membership Secretary (Jeremy) Nothing to report. 5.7. Fundraising coordinator (Jeremy) Jeremy reported that Autscape had received two payments, one late in the month of January and one in the month of February, both for roughly £10. This appears to be an average of earnings from Give as you Live at the moment, as there is more money pending. There are no other avenues being pursued for fundraising at the moment 5.8. Tech coordinator (Martijn) Martijn said that the transition to the new operating system for the server involves redesigning several fundamental components, and had stalled completely for a few months. However, following a very productive in-person meeting with Peter a few days ago they have agreed on a way forward. The idea is that transitioning to the new system is now no longer going to be dependent on decommissioning the old system, so that we don't get blocked/demotivated on things getting too big and complicated. This does mean the old system will need to be maintained for longer, which he will personally cover and Peter will be in charge of the transition to the new system. The Call for Proposals and the conference registration will run on the old system until further notice. Elaine asked if people will have any idea that we are using the new system - will it make any difference that we can see. Martijn replied that we shouldn't notice a difference, it's under-the-hood changes (but they're essential so we can keep developing and securing the system into the future). 5.9. Lists coordinator (James) James said that following the appointment of David Benito and the return of Kelvin Hanratty, we now have a team of 3 moderators. He was hoping he could now step back and let the moderators make most decisions. David is still learning the role, but is enthusiastic to do so. We are continuing to learn how to implement the list guidelines in practice. 5.10. Venue search coordinators (Peter and Debbie) Nothing to report. 6. Any Other Business 6.1. James said that he was concerned that because we're not fully involved in planning the event we collectively aren't putting enough time into the list and things are already backing up. Martijn and Elaine both said this was partly due to them not having the time to inject new things recently. Martijn suggested we double our efforts to keep on top of things on the list and reminded the board that we have some important decisions to make soon. Meeting closed at 16:16