Randonneurs USA

Minutes - there was no action item on separating treasurer from board member. (Rob) Treasurer has to be board member. A board member could be the treasurer, but have someone else do the work. Rob is concerned about continuity. (Mike) Mark will serve if needed. Since we have a volunteer we have several meetings to discuss this and need not take action right now

Rob moves to approve, second, unanimous

(Spencer) - Greg - Quad Cities, Iowa ok. There is an overlap w/Great Lakes Randonneurs; who start all their rides out of Delavan, WI, 125 miles from Richland. Rob Welsh from MN is ok with this, but concerned about dilution. Jim w/Great Lakes, also concerned about dilution, expects the Wisconsin rides to stay in the SW corner of state, and coordinate dates. Dan Diehn in Black River Falls WI works w/Rob Welsh, the MN RBA. Spencer spoke w/Greg about it "no one doing brevets in WI". Talked to John Lee, and Ian Hands, ran stuff by them about updating the route and ride search to find routes which pass through a state.

Rob - ridership in regions. putting something in the middle would dilute the surrounding regions. Does candidate have plan for building ridership? Spencer - he anticipates ridership will be low initially. Would work with other folks to coordinate.

Would he work to run a satellite series under another RBA's auspices?

Spencer will suggest he (Greg Smith) run rides under an existing RBA. Revisit after that. He would find out if he could draw a crowd that way, as well.

SW Wisconsin, paved, hilly (lots of dairy farms) Beautiful area

An apprenticeship would not dilute other regions, and could see if brevets in that region would increase ridership.

Rob - Let's not decline the application, but have Spencer chat about dilution and understudy instead.

after all the email discussion, the decision is to leave it in English

Are there photos from Bill on 600k? Bill - a bit unrealistic to think I could do that while also being the organizer.

Send pictures we have to Mike Dayton for the document.

Mike mentioned the upcoming reflectivity guidance in the American Randonneur.

At the printer; in the mail by June 17, 18.

Keith will not be helping on the next issue. Asked his intentions; he'd help out unless things got frantic and he'd let us know. Mike - this is not a huge help. We need a volunteer to commit. He will talk with Janice C. about this. Recommends for the next one, that we use an outside designer to keep us on schedule; advertise on the usual channels to get another volunteer. He has spoken with a designer he works with, has a name, about $2500 design cost per issue. Janice is doing a great job on the newsletter. Most important part of the team.

Bill is reviewing it now. To the printer by the end of this month, printed, mailed, about a month out. Still have 80 handbooks left. We may be without for 2 weeks to a month. Cost when he knows it. Will print enough for a couple years. Printer in Raleigh stores them in his warehouse. The quantity should last for 4 years. Jennifer has 15 in RI, if needed.

The further we get away from Jim Kuehn, at some point we need to modernize our site. Things that should be simple have to go through 2 or 3 people. They are volunteers and have lives. But we are talking about small text updates.

Mike likes Wordpress. Claims it is less complicated than Blogger. Has tons of plugins and add-ons. The way the store operates is awkward, but to fix it is expensive.

Store software is ad-hoc. Expensive to update (says Eric)

Add meeting minute highlight approval as a future ongoing agenda item.

Eric - nothing exciting, just paying bills