May 2025 Board Notes

Date:

05/13/2025

Attendance:

Board Attended: Alli Cassel, Kevin Ehrler, Alyssa Johnson, Hope Kronen, Christina Kramer, Bruce Levine, Nick Nelson, and Jeannette Wallen
Board Absent:
Observers: J.C. Horvath, Lori Fischer-Fairbanks, Jeremiah Keohen, Makaila Kozitza, and Michael Anderson

Notes:

Anime Twin Cities Board Meeting Minutes

May 13th, 2025
7:04 PM

Board Present - Alli Cassel, Kevin Ehrler, Alyssa Johnson, Hope Kronen, Christina Kramer, Bruce Levine, Nick Nelson, and Jeannette Wallen

Board Absent -

Public – J.C. Horvath, Lori Fischer-Fairbanks, Jeremiah Keohen, Makaila Kozitza, and Michael Anderson

Agenda is available in the link in the description of the livestream, these meetings are counted for attendance for voting rights please comment your name in the chat and fill out the google form in order to gain voting rights.


Agenda

  • Recap off cycle board actions and votes
    • Voted to allow J.C. Horvath to work directly with legal counsel regarding a specific Anime Detour matter.

Motion to ratify the vote
Hope seconded
All in favor (All present board members voted in favor)
Motion passes
 

  • Planned Discussions from scheduled visiting parties/ATC Partners
    • None

       

Coordinator Updates
 

  • Coordinator Position Open: Charities
     
    • AUSM: Steps for Autism Event
      • We will have a table there.
      • Starts at 9AM this weekend, May 18th.
         
    • JASM Drawing Online Workshop on 5/29
      • There is a fee to join the workshop, the class is open to all, including beginners and children over the age of 10.
      • Link to the workshop: https://bsky.app/profile/animetwincities.org/post/3lohh7ab75c2k

         
  • Coordinator Position Open: Special Events
    • We attended the Cherry Blossom Festival
    • We will have a table at Twin Cities Pride at the end of June.
      • We may have a new tent in time for that event.

         
  • Anime Detour – J.C. Horvath
    • Not too much to report, just had the con. The new cycle is starting up and we are having our first staff meeting for the new cycle at the end of May.

 

    •  Saturday, May 31st at 2:00 PM, Eden Prairie Library, 565 Prairie Center Dr, Eden Prairie, MN 55344
    •  The meeting is in Bluestem Room 120
       
    • If you did not get an email about this meeting, please email J.C. at "Chairman (Anime Detour)" chairman@animedetour.com
       
    • We will be going through a few new items for this cycle, we will be broadcasting on the Anime Detour YouTube page, you can watch there live, or later you can catch the recording.

       
  • Finance – Jeannette Wallen
    • Dollar amounts:
        • Business Checking: 321,971.08
        • Education Fund: 3,098.40
        • Business Market Rate Savings (Community Fund): 14,507.38
           
  • Communications - Makaila Kozitza
    • We started the Newsletter; we plan to have that posted every month
    • We are now posting updates on the public discord channel through ATC so we can get more people involved with ATC in general.



 

Current Month Board Topics
 

  • Coordinator Reviews and Goals – Nick Nelson
    • J.C. Horvath – Anime Detour Coordinator
      • Review
        • J.C. did a great job running the convention as a first-time chair in the wake of a tumultuous transition period. With J.C. the positive energy and staff morale did a complete 180 and it felt like a great change for the current staff and our partners. He clearly cares a lot about the convention and had several ambitious ideas to improve it at multiple levels. He led with a calm and steady presence and was levelheaded when dealing with issues that arose and he gave a good amount of autonomy both to the chair teams as well as to the departments. He was open-minded when it came to receiving feedback and he was easy to communicate with. He treats issues no matter the size seriously, and he was supportive of even the departments that are less front facing and not as in the limelight. He did a good job and took the initiative to improve interdepartmental communications and he tried to identify and remediate issues from previous conventions. He was very organized, and he kept the planning meetings focused and efficient plus the PowerPoint presentations were a helpful framework.
        • For areas of improvement it seems there were still some communication issues (interdepartmental and other) as well as vice chairs overstepping their bounds and acting before getting feedback from the rest of the team. J.C. also seemed spread pretty thin with responsibilities and was over invested in certain initiatives like the spy game, where he can get tunnel vision, he should try to look at the bigger picture more often. Delegation is a major area to work on but this is also an issue with the chair team broadly. Staffing should be less of an issue organically next year with more holes in staffing and in leadership filled, so this should be improved. While the ambitious ideas are appreciated the implementation of some of the ideas can be improved on (like the global calendar). J.C. should focus more on areas/departments he has less experience/interest in and he should improve his level of investigation and documentation when it comes to issues that arise and their responses. J.C. could work on adapting his management style depending on the specific needs of those who are seeking his feedback and direction.
        • Overall we feel like J.C. did a great job as a first time chair, with a difficult transition. We look forward to what he and the rest of the chair team can do for Anime Detour in 2026 and in the future.
      • Goals for the next cycle
        • Fill Leadership Roles
          • “I want to have a Head in every department, rather than having any Chair Team members also performing as Acting Department Heads. I also want to have a defined Admin in each department whose job it is to make sure emails are getting answered, tasks are being completed on-time, and information is being sent and received to and from other departments effectively. I also want to recruit/select a fifth member of the Chair Team.”
        • Create Department Task Lists
          • “I want to have each Head (with Sub-Heads as applicable) meet with their Division Heads from 2025 to review feedback and then generate a task list with deadlines for the 2026 cycle. This will include forms, any information that needs to get to or from any other department or source, and a listing of who is primarily responsible for each task.”
        • Additional Items?
          • There is but he will go more into detail on it at the staff meeting near the end of May. We have lots of time to understand it and figure it out.
          • Another goal not mentioned in this list is to have a lot more information living in the all-staff drive, because a lot of things get expanded upon and explained at the staff meetings but if you didn’t attend that staff meeting, or it happened a long time ago it can be easy to lose that information. So, he wants to have more of that documentation that will be more accessible and readily available.
          • Hopefully it’ll be clear in time but for right now no one needs to worry about any of that.
             
    • Makaila Kozitza – Communications Coordinator
       
      • Review
        • Makaila has gotten up and running ATC’s different social media accounts and even setup additional ones (BlueSky). She has a very positive attitude and presence and is professional in her timeliness for ATC Board meetings. She has a great foundation to achieve the goals she has set forth with the first draft of her digital monthly ATC newsletter which looks great.
        • The one area of feedback would be to post about upcoming ATC events and partner events through our socials (this is covered in the newsletter, but it would be also good to place that information in the other appropriate channels).
        • Makaila in the short time in the role has done a good job and we look forward to what she can achieve in the next operating cycle.
           
      • Goals for the next cycle
        • Create monthly newsletters for Anime Twin Cities that highlight past, current, and future noteworthy events or memorandum.
        • Publish/post information regarding upcoming events and updates happening within our organization and our partner organizations to all available communication outlets in a timely manner
           
      • Additional Thoughts-
        • She would like to share more information about our partner organizations and our community events and news that is going on a bit more. She’ll plan on posting more on social media and discord as well.
           


Open Session (up to 30 minutes)

  • Any members of the community can bring new business to discuss with the board
    • Nothing
       

 

Open Board Projects/Future Meeting discussions
 

  • Policy Updates
  • Board Training
    • Still on the books to standardize
  • Rental Requests
    • We still need to go over and review this policy again
  • Charitable Giving (June)
    • We would like to work and go over that likely next month


Motion to adjourn
Seconded (Hope)
All in favor (All of the present Board)
Motion Passes
 

7:23 pm meeting adjourned.

 


Anime Twin Cities Board Annual Meeting Minutes


May 13th, 2025
7:23 PM

Agenda

  • Financial Report – Jeannette Wallen
    • https://youtu.be/p58SDzU0_pI?t=1161
    • Amounts are from Last Fiscal Year October through end of April this year, 2025.
    • Promotions include: Merchandising, Themes, anything with our brand associated, Marketing, and Photography. This year Video Production was included in that balance.
    • Events include: What it takes to put on the event Technology/Tech Services, Programming, Cosplay, Video Gaming, and Tabletop Gaming
    • Support: Hotel, Volcon, Operations, Accessibility this year had Staffing which was new
    • Industry: What we do in the community: Artist Alley, Exhibit Hall, Guest Relations, Registration, Room Parties
       
  • Elections to commence after the meeting.
    • If you attended enough meetings to gain voting rights the voting email will go out shortly after this meeting. It will last 24 hours and then we can get the results out.
    • We did hold interviews and a Q&A with the 3 candidates so if you did not get the chance to view that yesterday you can watch that recording before you cast your votes on the Anime Twin Cities YouTube channel.
       

Meeting finished at 7:28 PM

Please contact atcboard@animetwincities.org or atc_secretary@animetwincities.org if you would like to be added to the agenda for discussion items.