Agenda
- 7:00 – Informal conversations as people join
- 7:30 – Opening remarks and agenda – Shiv Verma & Antoinette Gombeda
- 7:35 – Digital Interclub Competition – Cindy Gosselin
- 7:45 – Speakers List – Dennis Goulet
- Open Discussion
Minutes
The meeting was convened by Shiv Verma, NECCC President. He briefly outlined the agenda changes.
Digital Interclub competition:
- Cindy Gosselin, one of the co-directors of the Digital Interclub for NECCC, talked about the digital Interclub competition. She pointed out that the first Interclub competition is the upcoming Saturday, being held in person at Greater Lynn Photographic Society. Susan Mosser sent a Zoom link to those clubs that had images in, asking the reps to also send that link to those members who had images in. The competition was going to be recorded and sent by either Susan or Pam to all the NECCC clubs, which is new this year.
- There are 41 clubs participating with three divisions this season: Color, Nature and new this season is Monochrome. When there were issues the clubs were notified and had a chance to replace an image. The next competition is going to be on February 10th, and the images will be due by January 26th. There are three competition classes now, Color, Nature, both have clubs in Class A and class B. Monochrome this year is one size fits all. What’s also different this year is if an image has placed first, second, third, or received an Honorable Mention they cannot be reentered, but any other image that didn’t receive those can be put in again. Both Pam Litner and Susan Mosser are checking that so that clubs can correct any errors, what Cindy called the front end. Cindy manages the backend, takes and sorts the scores, and sends out the ribbons, similar to an international competition.
Picture size:
Then Cindy asked if anybody had any concerns. Various picture sizes have been discussed and Cindy suggested Antoinette Gombeda who sends out questionnaires, maybe, one of the things in the questionnaire could be “what is the resolution the club is using”. If all clubs are in fact using a higher resolution, NECCC competitions could be taken to a higher resolution as well.
B&W in the Nature category:
The next topic of discussion was B&W in the Nature category, pros, cons, and historical precedents. The topic was brought up by Liz Champeon from Eastern Maine Camera Club. The ultimate decision might be that B&W is gonna go into Monochrome, whether it’s Nature or not, but it’s important that we’ll try to be consistent.
Nature images in Color:
Matt Collen from Milford Camera Club brought up the issue if Nature images can be submitted to Color. This issue is going to be finalized before the next competition.
Speakers list:
- Dennis Goulet, one of the NECCC Honorary Life Vice Presidents, spoke about the NECCC Speakers list, http://neccc14.neccc.org/speakers/NECCC_Speakers_List.pdf, in detail. He is taking care of its information currently but it’s a big work in progress, especially given that he is expanding information, not only adding new speakers. As speakers reply to his inquiries, Dennis color codes their entries as described in the beginning of the link above. Dennis will be also asking club presidents and NECCC representatives for speakers recommendations. That topic was discussed later in the meeting in greater detail. Dennis also asked for updates on specific speakers from the list if people know, if someone is still doing presentations. Dennis’s email is dennis.goulet @ comcast.net (please remove spaces before and after the @ symbol)
- Gert from Charter Oak suggested a column “Willing to do Zoom meeting”.
- Fred Boucher from the Merrimack Valley Camera Club suggested to gray out speakers Dennis doesn’t have a confirmation from. Also maybe Dennis could ask them, how far are you willing to travel. Also Fred suggested elaborating on the meaning of Techniques, Showcase and Travel columns in the beginning of the list.
- Dennis also suggested developing new speakers from within the club, say, for a half an hour presentation. He would be interested in knowing about such speakers as well.
- Shiv Verma suggested a section for speakers that would follow up with a workshop. Liz Champeon from Eastern Maine Camera Club confirmed that their club members are indeed very interested in workshops as per their survey.
- Speaking from his PSA experience, hiv Verma suggested considering international speakers as well.
- Deborah Cohen from New York Metro Area Camera Council spoke about one of the ways that clubs can afford somebody when the speaker is offered “if you run a workshop the next day, you can charge the group whatever you want, and you keep it”. That way they get the money that you can’t afford to give them. There are also a lot of clubs who took advantage of the NECCC conference presenters who were brought under the auspices of the NECCC conference, and were willing to stay on another day or two to do incremental presentations to various clubs. Hunts stores do a lot of educational programs and they invite speakers. If you live nearby and follow their educational schedule and you feel that there is somebody on their schedule that you might want to have at your club you can contact them.
- Dennis Goulet also mentioned a speaker application form on the http://www.neccc.org/p/speakers-and-judges.html page which club representatives can share with good speakers.
- Fred Bocher suggested that clubs might be willing to defray speakers’ travel costs by spreading it over three, four clubs, several presentations in one week.
- Matt Collen from Milford Camera Club discussed small club speaker problems. He is also willing to learn how to handle those from other small clubs’ experience.
- Later on Silvana shared her experience about a small club in California where she presented and instead of charging them she got a full year of guest membership which allowed to attend any of their meetings for a year, for mutual benefit.
Membership discussion:
- Deborah Cohen shared an experience of a club in Pennsylvania that charges for every meeting, but every time a person pays, it goes towards membership until the person becomes a member. They have over 370 members.
- Shiv Verma suggested that maybe during the February meeting or March meeting, we could have a discussion on how to attract new membership.
- Silvana Della Camera of Stony Brook shared an experience of instituting a 30 day free full membership and that they gained a lot of members that way.Also, anytime they have an outside speaker or even internal speaker they send out a publicity to the local papers and they put it on Facebook. Club members from around also put a post in their community Facebook group. “And you’d be surprised how many people joined us that way”.
- Shiv Verma suggested Silvana to head up the February session on membership. Antoinette, Silvana and Shiv could further discuss it. If participants have membership ideas please email Silvana at: silvanadphoto @ gmail.com (please remove spaces before and after the @ symbol)
Judges’ list:
Nicole Mordecai from Newton Camera Club asked about a potential similar update to the judges’ list. Antoinette Gombeda has some plans to address it in the future.
Conclusion:
- At the conclusion of the meeting Shiv thanked everybody and announced that we will not be having any meeting in December, but we will have the next meeting on January the 18th, which is the third Thursday of January. The topic for that particular meeting is going to be on travel photography and more. Antoinette has kindly arranged for some wonderful people to come and talk to us about it and discuss the topic in detail.
- Anna Golitsyna of the Boston Camera Club inquired about a quick summary of the meeting and thereby got this job from Shiv.
Respectfully,
Anna Golitsyna
Boston Camera Club
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