Board Activities

Timber Framers Guild Board of Directors
Monthly Conference Call

Rudy Christian and Joel McCarty open the called. Curtis Milton, Leon Buckwalter, Dick Schmidt, Will Beemer, Tim Chauvin, John MacFarland, Sandy Bennett joined right in.

Two brief office reports, written from Will and oral from Joel. Both places are exceedingly busy with the day to day activities. Will feels comfortable leaving the Becket office in Cynthia's hands while he and Michele run the French Tour which departs on Friday.

TTRAG will most likely be in Portsmouth, NH rather than in Boston, MA, March 2004. John agrees to take a supervisory role in finding a location for TTRAG, by calling Arron Sturgis and Dan Boyle and getting that process up to speed. Will would like to export the entire TTRAG management timeline, and Will will write a schedule of accomplishments, to make that happen.

Will returns on 21 May from France.

Will and Nancy have been having conversations about the Resource Guide, and the politics thereof. We will all be more sensitive to the political issues next time around.

Brief detailed discussion of the financial reports (attached to the web report) followed. Curtis is growing into his role as Treasurer, asking good questions and paying good attention. Financials are a bit behind last year at this time, specifically in the areas of Membership and Advertising income. Not a lot behind, but enough to bring to your attention.

Ken Rower, Joel and Doug Anderson of Winter Panel have divided up the list of all non-renewed members from 2002 and the first quarter of 2003, and calling every single one of them. Early returns indicate that this is just the nudge that most people need. Labor intensive, but a good way to stay in touch.

Long and detailed discussions followed regarding the training partnership with our Rottweil brothers. (I will attach the three Rottweil documents to the web report of the minutes.) The ultimate goal is to use the structure they have to develop our own program in the log view. It's just the stand alone three week program that we are trying to fill for January 2004 that we are trying to fill.

Rudy and Joel will communicate immediately with Oliver Amandi about what it is that we're actually trying to market.

Joel and Will presented a short report about their traipse (last Sunday) over a piece of land as a potential home for the Guild. Almost 400 acres in Monterey, Mass., that now belongs to an NPO. Joel is going to New York State in June to look at another piece. The Guild is moving slowly, but moving forward, on this project. Joel will make a simple check list against the criteria list that we developed about the perfect piece of land during last year's blue sky period.

We talked about conference locations for eastern 2004. Will and Joel propose Halloween weekend, at the Seven Springs Mountain Resort in Champion, PA. This a big facility with plenty of room for on-going demonstrations indoors and out - much talk swirled about partnering this conference with our brothers and sisters at the International Log Builders Association. Robert Savignac is presenting this same idea to his board next week. Stay tuned. The Board was polled and agreed unanimously that we are ready again for a joint conference, and that this site will work for us, either way.

We talked at length about the School of the Building Arts in Charleston, SC. Curtis and Will did a conference call with them a while back, and they are sending two folks to Heartwood to meet with interested Guild leaders to explore workshops and other kinds of partnerships. They see themselves as a catalyst for trades education in traditional building arts. An institution in search of a program. We can provide that. Will and Curtis will be meeting with them in Massachusetts during the week of June 16th. Folks interested in participating in these explorations should contact Curtis and or Will.

A brief discussion followed about the tool crib. Joel will e-mail an inventory around to board members before the next week is out.

Will is off to France. Joel is headed for the White Mountain National Forest with Curtis Milton to do logistics for the USFS Visitors Center project in September. Then down to Manchester NH for the NH Preservation Alliance Old Barn Expo over the weekend.

Leon reports that progress is being made in the development of a prototype of the old Millers Falls boring machine.

Curtis asks for more lead time on projects and event.

Next Board meeting will be June 4 8pm edt Agenda deadline June 2nd.

adjourned 21:37:33