Meeting Minutes, Oct 12 2008

[kristin]

AIC General Meeting
Sunday, October 12, 4pm, Whole Foods

Attendees: Kristin F, Asaf R, Shawn L, Jessica A, Frank W, Matt P, Susan

AIC Restructuring.
Main focus last week was restructuring meeting. That happened this morning 10 people in attendance. Question: Is the AIC doing what it should be doing? Right now we’re production/support, there was talk about how we should move to just support. We’re going to have a monthly restructuring meeting (different than general) focused on creating a new proposal. Agreed upon:
- service organization for all improv in town
- minimize production to production of special events (Wafflefest, out of town performers)*
- going to define membership/sponsorship options
- individual suggestions will be created and brought to meeting
- be as open and inclusive as possible, but make it easy for people to get involved, and make it clear how to get involved

*theaters will have their own ownership to staff, schedule, change, etc. existing shows

Question about the grant funds. This is an ongoing process and will take some time to implement, so the grant money can still be used for the existing shows, because they aren’t immediately going away.

Austin Coop Festival
Friday, October 24th. We’ve been offered a booth at it. There’s going to be entertainment, and a bunch of booths for all the coops in town (cultural, etc.). Held at the French Legation Museum. There’s a $30 booth fee (willing to waive for us). From 6-10pm. Interested in us being there. Also interested in us donating an Emcee. A bunch of other organizations there. Who comes to it? Not sure. Asaf going to ask the organizer for some more information.

Kristin to organize. We’ll hand out free stuff. If troupes want to sell stuff they can, but they have to be there.

Flash Mob Austin.
Wants to co-link with us. We don’t really have a links page right now. They aren’t necessarily umbrellaed under the AIC, but we can be affiliated with them, and could list them as such, once we have the technical capability.

Texas Book Festival.
Asaf to follow up with them. Open to have improv performance as part of their festival. (FTM is already doing this for the kids tent, there are two more.) At the Capital. ~November 1st.

Hideout Update.
Agreement with Sean is fine. Still not sure if the owners will want to sign the lease over to the new group. Wednesday is a deadline they should know by, but it could be moved. Have been considering contingency plans. The Hideout will continue in one way or another. Working on the best way to make that happen.

Marketing Update.
Newsletter: Google calendar has been created. People scheduling and producing events have been invited to enter events into Google Calendar. Now Shawn can go to the one calendar to get information for the newsletter.
Follow up to this: Do we want to use the Google Calendar to automatically update the austinimprov.com website. TBD.

Shawn created a “fanâ€

[smerlin]

Thanks for posting this, Kristin.

How does one get access to the AIC Google Calendar to add events? Or does Shawn want to use the existing Merlin Works Google Calendar for my info?

[Matt]

We're trying to come up with sneaky and creative ways to market Cochise to a broad audience - one idea that I'm kicking around is to have a flash mob tie-in to Cochise. Example: a hundred people randomly show up at a public place in 70's attire and Cochise busts a perp

P-graph might be able to pull something similar with one of their awesome format types.

Would this fit into what flash mob does and how we want a relationship with them to proceed?

[Jeff]

We're trying to come up with sneaky and creative ways to market Cochise to a broad audience

For the next couple of weeks, Lucy in Disguise will be teeming with people getting last-minute Halloween costumes.

I think there's still a space on Elizabeth (that's more spacious than the Congress sidewalk) where they help Halloween customers. If you spoke with LiD, maybe they'd let y'all make some kind of live Cochise tableau.

Like a 70's action nativity scene in full costume. Like with flyers available. Seems like that might attract people to both LiD and the Cochise shows as well.

Just some freaky idea that crossed my mind at nearly 5 in the morning. Now I'm going to bed.

[Matt]

I like!