Action Items

• The board discussed the format of the upcoming annual business meeting at the Columbia Convention and various tasks were handed out for inclusion in the final presentation. A new format was agreed upon where the President will begin the meeting with a state of the society briefing followed by individual board members giving reports for their respective departments.
• A Motion made by Pres. Bell for the IPMS/USA to be a corporate sponsor for the 2017 World Model Expo in Chicago. Seconded by Treasurer Oberholtzer. Voting was five affirmative votes (Bell, Morrissette, Oberholtzer, Pearsall and Tennant), enough to pass the motion. This is a prestigious, internationally-known model show and our $500 sponsorship will support their show and get our name in their program, website, entryway banner, t-shirts and allow us to have informational materials on their Show Information table.
• In recognition of his service to the society as Treasurer and for his extraordinary help during the transition to a new office manager following the death of MJ Kinney, the board unanimously granted John Shimek a four year extension to his membership as acknowledgement of the role he played during that time.
• Also, the board granted a one-year membership extension to Don Schmitz to thank him for his role in setting up a marketing committee to collect ideas and data to help the society grow.

Officer/Staff Reports

Ron Bell, President

• I have started working on a project to update the Constitution and By Laws. They are hopelessly out of date, disorganized, either repetitive, contradictory or vague in places and in a bad format. I have reviewed, re-organized and re-written them so that they are more in line with actual practice and allow for methods of operation, such as email, that did not exist when they were written, I have had some past presidents look at them as well as the members of the Eboard for suggestions and have made many alterations. The next step is to get it in the format of a constitutional amendment. If all the changes were submitted as separate amendments, there would be literally dozens of them varying from entire sections being deleted to just a word or two changed. Instead, I propose to submit the new documents as one large amendment to be either voted up or down in its entirety. I have started getting the signatures required on the amendment petition and will submit it when I have them. It will then go to the Constitutional Review Board for their comments and will appear in the Journal before the vote is taken on it. Every member will have a chance to see all the changes and the reason for each before he or she casts their vote. Given the necessary lead time, I don't think this will occur until next year sometime and it will, hopefully, be on the ballot for the next national election.
• In a rather smaller matter, we have moved the link button for the Forums to the top of the web page and my last column in the Journal was all about promoting its use. It will be interesting to see if there is any actual increase.

David Morrissette, 1st VP

• Manufacturer dinner at the National Convention has been scheduled. Reviewer Corps get-together at Nationals has also been scheduled.

Mike Van Schoonhoven, 2nd Vice President

• Columbia is down to one tour (Patriots Point) for conventioneers to attend.
• Working on the updated Convention Parameters information packet.
• Five bids have been received so far for the 2018 and 2019 National Conventions.
• Our new CMS contractor is working our great. He's been very responsive to our needs and has been quick to fix any problems that pop up. The CMS is working fine and is in the hands of the registration staff in Columbia.

Mike Oberholtzer, Treasurer

• All accounts have been reconciled through June without issue. Will have financial report for annual business meeting.

Dennis Tennant, Secretary

• I'm pleased with the amount of use our shared Dropbox folder is receiving. We're using it to hold all kinds of info we need to either be archiving or sharing among ourselves. In the interest of transparency, I want everyone to know that I have upgraded my personal Dropbox account to give me more storage to handle all the data we are now sharing. To date, the shared folder in Dropbox contains about 2.5 GB of data securely stored on their servers.
• I'm a bit disappointed with the level of member participation in the new Local Hobby Shop database and map project. To date, we have less than 20 shops added to the database and haven't seen any new submissions in the last two week despite sending out emails to all the RC and Chapter Contacts announcing this new membership tool. I think writing a Journal article is the next step to get the word out. I'll be crafting and article in the next few days and submit it to John Heck for publication. Hopefully, this will get things moving.

John Noack, DLC

• Would like to announce the new Region 1 Regional Coordinator, David Schwab.
• The Board's answers to the questions from the Ocala club in Region 11 have been returned to the club and will also be published in Journal and on our website soon. We have not heard back from the Ocala club confirming receipt at this time.

Jim Pearsal, Historian/Publication Dir.

• Nothing to Report

Marie Van Schoonhoven, National Office Manager

• We have 18 new members so far for the month of July.
• To save money, we're putting corrected address labels on the new tri-fold brochures MJ had just reordered in large quantity last year.
• Ordered a selection of special products to take to the National Convention to sell, will have business cards on hand with the information for members to order from the online store.

Eric Aitala, Webmaster

• Nothing to report.

Submitted by Dennis Tennant, Secretary