NatOrg Discussion Monday June 11-Sunday June 17.

This week has been a hectic one in the land of the NatOrg. For those of you who haven’t kept up with all the emails (I have counted that until mid morning Friday there were some 110 of them) here is a rough summary of what was discussed. Should you want further details Norman and I have kept records of all emails from this week. We have decided that the proposal and the constitution shall be altered in tandem and as such are indicated in this summary.
•	We discussed NASF and got the story from Frank Macskasy (a member of NASF who posted his answer to the list via Norman) of how and why he believed NASF ended. The NASF discussion was ended at this point with an agreement that the new NatOrg name would not be NASF.
•	The name and other issues of last week were set aside for discussion at a more appropriate time. We set up an agenda which we are now working through. The major points of those discussions are listed below.
1.	We discussed the second version of the proposal (NationalBodyv2.rtf) put up by Norman (also known as Big Bad Norman – BBN for short) and after yet more discussion Norman has put up a third version (NationalBodyv3.rtf) of the document which is now available on the NASF website. www.nasf.sf.org.nz.
Major points from version 2/3 were:
•	Norman made a case for not waiting until the next convention to incorporate the NatOrg as we could do many important things before then. Some argued that we wouldn’t be able to canvas fans well enough, but Norman argued that many people are on email and it would not be costly to get comments from people who are on the fans database. 
•	It was noted that fantasy was not mentioned in the document and this has been rectified.
•	Membership of the NatOrg was discussed with the idea that committees have at least 1 South Island member as a representative. And that restricting the membership of the NatOrg to con members would be a Bad Thing™ as there are a number of people who for various reasons can’t make it to cons who may wish to be involved.
•	Kevin MacLean suggested that we form another document giving guidelines to natcons:
I suggest that one of the first documents to be 
thrashed out would be the rules and guidelines for NatCons
and the awards. This should probably be split into three sections:
Requirements: that there _be_ a business meeting and awards, and that these be conducted in professional manner.
Guidelines: what we expect of a NatCon.
Advice: what we think it would be useful for them to know.

•	
We discussed the constitution some more and Simon Litten (who kindly wrote it for us) has been changing it based on concerns raised by the list.
1.	A combination of email and postal voting would be used to get opinion from fans about the constitution and to vote when we are ready to bring this idea to the populace.
2.	The constitution would be kept as broad in terms of actions and simple as possible so that the NatOrg could cover a wide range of tasks as it saw fit without having to refile the constitution.
3.	It was agreed that the constitution can’t be set in stone until such time as the discussion of the national body document is finished, but as stated earlier Simon is making necessary revisions as we go.
4.	After some discussion the constitution set out our aim :
•	The object of the Society shall be to encourage the study and
 appreciation of Science Fiction and Fantasy form in all their aspects.
5.	There was concern over the clause stating how much power the NatOrg could weild over a natcon which didn’t perform or was in financial difficulties. Norman pointed out that because the NatOrg was giving a natcon money there needed to be some level of control, whether before the NatCon bidder bid at the AGM or during their run-up to the con. It was pointed out that it was unlikely the NatOrg would take over the running of cons not performing without a large level of discussion with the concom in question. The clause in the document has been changed and this issue will be discussed further.
6.	We discussed the need for a physical address for the NatOrg and the requirements for the organisation to become a non-profit/charity organisation and how IRD would look at us.
7.	We need to make it clear in the constitution what the bidder would do with the surplus funds from a con.

This is the end of the summary, if there is anything else you think I should have mentioned, please feel free to email me (lrhowell@ihug.co.nz) and I shall change it accordingly.

See you all next week.

Lynelle.