Doug Whitfield

Doug Whitfield at

Probably most of the comments will be at https://mastodon.social/@musicman@beige.party/113149743415695883 but for those that prefer pump, here's the text:

I just sent all of you this marginally edited via email (plus some others) but figured in case anyone preferred to respond here they could. Plus, there is no reason not to get input from the rest of the #ccmusic community.
I really would like to get someone with some festival creation experience in Europe on the call. Maybe that ends up being Josh from Louis Lingg. Yesterday, we spent a small bit of time talking about maybe having our big meeting in November next year and how that would be pushing things back too far.And for those that haven't seen it:
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwfwIwVGYW0

Part
2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32UQw0vIspM
Upon reflection, I am thinking that July is not ideal as well.
Being in the same room will solve a lot of problems, but only if we are actually all in the same room, which Sam has already said he is not going to be able to attend.Part of the whole "retreat" aspect of my plan is to get away from, in my case, the 5 cats (the big guy is the Black Panther, after all) and focus but I - and all of you, probably - can do that without leaving town. For me, I will probably go into my day job office, as no one will be there on the weekend.
I am thinking Jan 11 to give us time to get this out to everyone in the community. That is a Saturday instead of a Sunday to avoid NFL playoffs (although maybe they do some playoffs on Saturday too? Idk), and may help folks in the middle east attend, since their weekend is Friday and Saturday. My wife isn't on call that day, so she can take care of T'Challa.
One thing that we get out of separating the "retreat" from whatever Ryno ends up doing in Jackson is that it makes the thing in Jackson more of a "CC USA" event. This was always sort of the plan, and things got kinda jumbled up because we needed a global kick-off as well. But doing it this way allows me to get out of the way. We still have to worry about the how does (the as of now non-existent) funding flow from the global org to the regional orgs, but we can put that on the agenda. And there's no reason why a CC USA event can't bring in a band from France, but it really simplifies the invite process and maybe makes that go away entirely.
One thing I really want to do though is try to get the future global summit leaders there. This means we need to save spots for Monk Turner, Yuk MC (and the rest of the PUCK Crew), and Josh, but that brings our invite list down from 50 to 14 (including me, Brent, and Ryno plus those band members). That's a scale where Ryno, Brent, and I can have the conversation though.But back to Jan 11 (which will be the placeholder date until someone says find a new one)....I am not entirely sure if my card works the same hours in the office on the weekend, but I think 8am is safe. That's 10pm in Japan, at least this time of year. I think that's probably reasonable. And then I can stay there until 8pm which is 10am in Japan. I think that probably gives pretty much every timezone some sort of option to stop in. We could try to adjust what we are working on at certain times based on who can show up.We shouldn't stop working on things until then, but given everything there is to do, there is likely to be a lot to cover.Topics to be Covered:
Articles of Incorporation
IRS filing status   Ryno and I spoke a bit about this. I think 501(c)(3) is the only real choice though there are some other options worth thinking about.
Steering Committee Membership   My initial thought was these would be the heads of the different stakeholder orgs, but other than Jason leading the "Curators" I haven't gotten any bites.
Stakeholder organization (Musicians, Podcasters, Netlabels, Fans, etc)   One of the things I would like to see is some sort of Musician Guild or union or whatever. I had hoped David Rovics might be interested in leading that, but sadly he was not.
Elections   We decided that for now we don't want to do this, but at some point we need to make this happen.
Website   I haven't gotten any commentary on the site design. Idk if people like it or not.
Logo   We need one.
Fundraising   I really know nothing about this at the type of scale we are talking about. Years ago, I ran fundraisers start to finish for student orgs and was, at that scale, hilariously successful. We were able to buy every tickets for a show AND had enough left over for an ice cream party!
Regional Orgs (CC HQ disbanded this model for reasons I don't know about, but CC has revenue of $9.5 million in 2021 [https://apps.irs.gov/pub/epostcard/cor/043585301_202112_990_2023031021080150.pdf] so modeling our behavior on theirs wouldn't make a lot of sense)   So far, we only have CC USA
CC Community Music Awards   Right now, I am kinda waiting to see if Dom is going to actually take this over. He talked about it years ago, but really hasn't done much with it.
CC Community Music Hall of Fame
   This is an idea that got put on hold when we start Friends of CC Music, but we should talk about it
Friends of CC Music Brand Shows
   Currently, it is just Obsidian. Maybe @musicman@metalhead.club should be its own thing. Maybe we should add more shows. Global Summits   I still think making an effort to move about the globe is important. Doing that is not going to be a problem for me. My dog likes his home away from home, which is https://dogwellness.club/ for the curious.


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