Minutes of BMFA Midlands Committee Meeting (CM1) 23/04/02
Present Neil Byrne, Chris Anderson, Steve Mason, John Collister
This is the first Midland Committee meeting held via Skype, NB as chairman hosted the meeting. All present agreed this format of electronic virtual meeting worked well. Meeting started 1300
1) The BMFA are proposing a change to the way area budgets are allocated. The NW area have objected to the proposed change which they claimed was unconstitutional. More information should be forthcoming in the near future.
2) The BMFA are considering developing their own forum for discussion of matters of interest, carrying out questionnaires etc.
Committee members, while agreeing the principle is a good one, expressed concerns that social media discussions can very quickly descend into unpleasantness. Moderators can not be watching the forum full time so they will not always be able to react in time when any discussions start getting out of hand.
Committee members discussed how this could be managed, it was suggested the forum be limited to members who are either Area committee members or club officials. Open entry to all Midland club members would not be manageable.
3) Retford club have requested a budget for improving disabled access to the club site. This has now been passed to the relevant BMFA officials who will reply to the club’s request. The BMFA are investigating the setting up of a charitable arm of the business which will have a significant impact upon such things as funding for disabled access.
4) Committee members discussed the use of Skype and how this could be rolled out to include Area meetings. Agreement Skype works well for the smaller group, however SM mentioned the BMFA have just trialled the use of Zoom for meetings of larger groups. The free version was used and nothing happened when the 40 minute limit was reached. However this may be a Corona crisis concession, many communications networks have eased restriction of use for the duration. The BMFA are also considering purchasing the professional Zoom package and will then investigate whether areas can piggyback their membership for theor own meetings. At present suggestion is Mids stays with Skype while we await developments.
The procedure for running Area Meetings using electronic conferencing was discussed and the process by which it could be used to ensure all clubs were aware of and had access to the meetings.
For the Area Meetings the procedure will be; Area Secretary to contact all area club secretaries informing them of date/time of Skype meeting and giving details of how they can join the meeting, If they wish they can nominate a club member to join the meeting in their place. It was decided not to throw the invitation open to as many members as wished to join the meeting.
Meeting closed 1345
