Fly Tying Group
2010 Annual Board Meeting
August 25, 2010

(first posted March 16, 2011; last updated March 16, 2011)

The Board of Governors (BOG) met on August 25, 2010 at the FFF Fly Fishing Fair Conclave in West Yellowstone, Montana. Board members present included: David Nelson (chair), Gene Kaczmarek, Jim Ferguson, Bob Bates, Al Beatty, Gretchen Beatty, Oscar Feliu, Russ Forney, Steve Jensen, Mike Stewart, and Leslie Wrixon. FTG members and visitors present included: Sherry Steele, Frank Johnson, Bob Sager, and Dave Roberts, and Mr. Eagleson.

The meeting was called to order by the Chair, David Nelson, at 8:00 AM. A welcome by David Nelson was followed by introductions of the BOG members present. The agenda was presented and some re-ordering was suggested to accommodate some scheduling conflicts.

Election of Officers

David Nelson identified the officers willing to run again for office, and as no one else volunteered for the positions, they were running unopposed: David Nelson, chair; Gene Kaczmarek, vice chair; Steve Jensen, treasurer; and James Ferguson, secretary.

Nominating Committee report and seating of Board Members

David Nelson reported the results of the Board election: Bill Sargeant, Larry Nicholas, Gretchen Beatty, Russ Forney, Sister Carol Anne Corley, and Dave Roberts were elected by the membership. The Board approved their election.

There were further openings on the Board (our bylaws specify 21 members on the Board). There were nominations from the floor: Al Beatty nominated Sherry Steele and Dave Roberts. David Nelson, in the role of the nominating committee, stated that he had spoken with both candidates, felt they knew what they were volunteering for, and would be good Board members. James Ferguson nominated Jerry Criss for a board position. With no further nominations, nominations were closed.

Gene Kaczamerek moved, 2nd by Al Beatty, to accept the nominations for the officer

positions and board positions as presented.

Motion passed. The officers and board consist of the following:

Chair: David Nelson

Vice Chair: Gene Kaczmarek

Treasure: Steve Jensen

Secretary: James Ferguson

BOG members in addition to the above officers: Al Beatty, Gretchen Beatty, Oscar

Feliu, Sister Carol Anne, Bob Bates, Leslie Wrixon, Peggy Brenner, Don Von Buren,

Mike Stewart, Dennis Reed, Bill Sargeant, Larry Nicholas, Russ Forney, Dave Roberts,

Sherry Steele, and Jerry Criss.

Review of Minutes of the 2009 annual meeting: The 2009 Annual Board Meeting minutes had been distributed on line and they were approved during the first of two conference call board meetings that occurred previous to this meeting. David reviewed the content of those conference meetings and summarized the discussions the BOG had on our Web Site, News Letter, and Google Group method of communicating to our membership. The reports of the Chairs of all committees that had been submitted prior to Conclave for inclusion in the FTG Annual Report to the FFF was passed around and are attached to these minutes.

Action item: Mike Stewart volunteered to stand in for Peggy Brenner, Communications Chair, who was absent. Mike was asked to provide our membership with directions on how to receive the Google mail list. In addition, our membership needs to be informed about what an e-mail list group is, how and when to use it, and how to avoid the problem of mass responses to everyone's e-mail.

The Charges of The Fly Tying Group: David briefly reviewed FTG's and BOG's origins. Reference was made to the FTG website for people to get more detailed information about FTG and BOG involvement with FFF. This information is in the minutes of previous Board meetings and conference calls, all listed on the website.

Committee Reports:

Fly Tying Instructor's Resource - Jim Ferguson reported the progress on the Resource over the year. The domain name, www.ftgFlyTyingInstructorResource.org, has been bought for two years and the hosting has been purchased for one year. The web site went active on 8-19-2010. David has provided a link from the FTG website to the site. The 'Resource' website is a project of the FFF Fly Tying Group. The site should assist any Council, club, community group, or person wanting to teach a fly tying course by providing some guidelines and resources to help them achieve a quality course. This is an ongoing project and will continue to grow each year. Hopefully, FTG members will view and critique the site. Suggested content is solicited. At the present time, Jim will act as an editor in deciding what goes on the site. All suggestions and critiques should be funneled through him. Some 'next steps' in the resource development include: refine what is on the site, expand on the present items, provide materials for other links not yet activated on the Home Page, and identify 'missing links.' Specific items needed involve ideas on the physical class setting and the various class formats for small classes to large classes.

Standing Fly Tying Committee - Gene Kaczmarek described the committee's structure. Gene is the Standing Chair, and this position oversees the demo tying from year to year. There is an Ad Hoc Tying Chair, who is selected by the Standing Chair and who runs the tying for any particular year, including soliciting tiers, choosing tiers, and administering the demo tying program during Conclave. Leslie Wrixon will be the Ad Hoc Tying Chair for 2011. Gene has written a booklet for providing guidance to running the fly tier portion of Conclave with emphasis put on providing continuity to the Conclave's tier program. Leslie has a copy of this booklet. The Standing Fly Tying Committee will continue to update and expand this booklet, for the use of future Ad Hoc Tying Chairs.

We need someone local that knows what the community has to offer to meet our needs. We have about 400 tiers in the tier data base, including approximately 80 - 90 international tiers. Gene expressed the need for better communication with FFF Councils to get tier names. Many Council Presidents are not forwarding tier names to the Conclave Tying Chair when requested.

Treasure's Report- Steve Jensen reported that we are responsible for our own budget, both raising funds (we do not receive any funding from the FFF budget) and spending them. The funds are in an account administered and controlled by the FFF national office. We started the year with $11,940 and had expenses of $3,394.50 leaving us a balance of $8,549. This balande includes the money in two dedicated accounts (the Evergreen Hand Fund and the Web Site Fund) but NOT the Dick Nelson Memorial Fund.  It should also probably be stated that the balance doesn’t reflect income derived from the bucket raffle at the BBQ nor the expenses of holding the BBQ. Steve has worked out a communication procedure with the national to get the financial data for the FTG.

Action Item: Sherry Steele suggested listing currently funded projects and projects that need funds on the website as a way of getting money donated to our group. There was support for this suggestion.

The treasurer pays the Group’s expenses by authorizing the FFF national office to pay invoices.

Steve made a motion that any expense of $500 or more should require approval of the FTG BOG; expenses below $500 should be approved by the Executive Board but would not require approval of the FTG BOG. David Nelson and Steve Jensen both spoke in favor of the motion. The motion was seconded, there was no further discussion, and the motion passed unanimously.

Membership fees are one source of funding. Russ Forney asked about how many Conclave tiers are FTG members. At present time, we do not know actual answer to that since FTG membership is not a requirement to tie at Conclave.

International Committee - Hans Weilenmann, the International Chair, was not present. David reported in his stead. Despite Hans offering many tiers an invitation, the international recession and the cost of traveling to the Conclave was prohibitive and no one accepted his invitations. Oscar Feliu reported he traveled internationally this past year and knows why overseas tiers are not coming to USA (our Conclave). Two main reasons were identified: (1) There is no FFF money committed to getting International tiers to the US for our conclave, and (2) There is a sore point resulting from the Certification of Casters. Oscar related how some of the international fishers use different techniques of casting and have done so for a long time. Some of their methods are not looked on favorably by the US casting certifiers. According to Oscar, there is a need to work on this relationship. Another reason given for low number of international attendance involved the downturn of the economy. Oscar expressed a need for hosts for the international tiers.

Action Item: the Ad Hoc Chair should attempt to arrange for local hosts for the international tiers.

Evergreen Hand Committee – Jesse Scott, Chair of the Evergreen Hand Committee, was not present. David Nelson gave the report for Jesse. David gave an overview of what the Evergreen Hand is and for whom it is designed. Norm Norlander is involved with building these 'gratis' with Gene Kaczmarek helping. The goal of the committee is to have online engineering drawings available so people can make the "Hand" (these drawings are already online, along with photographs to help guide people to build their own), to provide continual improvements to the original design, and to provide an Evergreen Hand to tiers who cannot build one themselves. The Committee is also looking for (non FTG) funding to build Evergreen Hands for such tiers.

Framing Committee - Steve Jensen stated that on the positive side, he is doing lots of framing for Councils and FFF. On the negative side, he hasn’t made progress on getting the framing guidelines on the FTG web site.  Steve noted that we need to start planning for my eventual replacement. We need to put the framing procedure on the website. Steve is in the process of trying to identify and begin training a successor.

Membership Committee - Mike Stewart reported we have 95 members. He will be working with Gene Kaczmarek to send out membership solicitations. Membership renewal notices are being sent out. We were working with national to coordinate membership renewals for FFF and FTG in hopes of retaining memberships. In an earlier 'action item' comment, Mike will be working to get the membership communicating using the 'Google Groups' method. He will be working with the Communication Committee to get people to understand how to use a 'Google Group' properly.

Youth Outreach Committee - This committee needs a chair to get the program going. Bill Sargeant agreed to take this on and was appointed committee chair.

Digital Archive Committee - Leslie Wrixon and the eleven people working on the Digital Archive Committee have digitized several thousand images of flies in Phase I of the project. When completed, an online address will be distributed by which the flies can be viewed. Phase II will involve making some decisions on what flies to dispose of and which flies to keep. There are many flies that are un-identified as to tier and source. The crew is involved in trying to identify who, what, when, ...etc. to preserve as much of the history of fly tying as possible. The goal of Phase I is to provide on line access to the flies possessed by FFF. A digital picture will be available as well as the recipe. This will result in an on-line museum and should help make the flies, their history, and recipes available for public use, especially since the physical FFF museum has been closed and the fly collections moved to various places. Phase II will include fly plates. Restoration will also be involved. Steve Jensen informed the committee he has a collection of US flies, including about 50 Buszek flies and several hundred other flies.

Communications Committee - Peggy Brenner was not present. David Nelson presented in her absence. One of the goals of the communications committee was to get a newsletter published. Volume 1, Number 1 went out as an e-mail newsletter on March 1, 2010. During the year, Peggy and David had e-mailed the Board requesting each Board member contribute a short article or statement about what project they were working on and its' status. Peggy has set up a site, http://groups.google.com/group/fff_flytyinggroup, to send out notices of happenings of the FFF FTG. The e-mail newsletter will be posted to the Pages section of the Google Group for easy delivery. Response from board members could have been more numerous.

Other Reports - Frank Johnson had previously requested permission to address the Board. He is a Fly Tying Group member as well as a Buszek winner, it seemed appropriate for him to address the Board, and he had been placed on the Agenda. Frank presented a prepared statement concerned with what we are going to do next and where are we going with the FTG. He called attention to the projects FTG is working on and stated the importance of each project. Frank expressed concerned with the lack of publicity on what we are "really all about?" He is especially concerned with the FTG Bylaws and expresses a need for "a plan, a definition." His major point is that the FTG does not seem to have a quick accurate answer to the question "Why should I join the FTG? What can this group do for me?" Frank suggests we develop a program to increase membership and include a brochure handout. The role of the FTG sponsored BBQ, as he sees the event , is to reach out to new members, so he questioned why only FTG members were invited. He made suggestions about sponsoring a fly tying seminar or class. The statement suggests several "must do's, should’s, and consider’s" the FTG BOG needs to tackle. Frank supplied a copy of his statement paper for the Secretary's official notes. The secretary will keep a copy in the official BOG minute notebook.

Review of Accomplishments for 2009 -10: The following items or events were noted as the accomplishments of the FTG:

(1) We have our own website, including a grant/donation to maintain the site for multiple years;

(2) We had a successful Tiers’ and Liars’ BBQ at Loveland and a BBQ again this year;

(3) The Fly Tying Instructor’s Resource went on-line;

(4) We participated in the selection process for the Buszek Award (we provide input to select a nomination to forward to the President's Council, which accepts or rejects the nomination);

(5) a newsletter was established; and

(6) FTG has taken a positive lead in the promotion of the 'Evergreen Hand.'

Review of Failures for 2009 - 2010: As noted on the Agenda, improvements need to be made in the area of getting the majority of Board Members participating actively in a project. David noted a difficulty in getting email responses from Board Members. We still need some project descriptions for the FTG BOG projects page of our website. Project reports have been slow in getting in or non-existent. Several projects did not move ahead as quickly as hoped.

We cannot get nominations for tiers to demo tie at Conclave from Council Presidents. We need to develop a workable process to get nominations for BOG positions from Councils.

Committees for 2010-11: The list of committees, their Chairperson, and identified members was presented as written on the Agenda sheet. Additions to the list include Frank Johnson, who volunteered to be the raffle/auction chair at the FTG BBQ in 2011. David emphasized the need for being involved, setting some committee goals, and submitting quarterly reports when solicited.

Action Item: Gene made the suggestion for quarterly reports from the Board members as a way of addressing the problems cited by Frank Johnson and David Nelson. There was support for quarterly reports to be publishing in the quarterly newsletter. Gene Kaczmarek suggested a "no report" tag be used in the newsletter for missing reports.

Budget Item Discussion: The next discussion was regardingfundraising and an attempt to identify our main sources of income. The FTG BBQ is hopefully paid for through bucket item raffles at the BBQ and meal ticket sales. The sale of membership FTG pins is another source of income. The other source of income for the FTG is the sale or auction of fly plates specifically designated for FTG income.

Action Item: Gene Kaczmarek suggested we consider a new pin design that would incorporate the FFF recognition on the pin, and this suggestion was supported by all. David will coordinate the redesign and will submit it to the Board for approval.

Expenses incurred by the FTG are the BBQ costs, pin purchase, and flex-a-tops for the flies given away at the demo tiers tables. This year the flex-a-tops were donated by Al and Gretchen Beatty .

Senior Advisor: The concept of having a designation "Senior Advisor" awarded to certain individuals to provide recognition of an accepted recognized historical flytier was discussed.

A motion was made by Gene Kaczmarek, and seconded by Dave Roberts that: the FTG create the designation "Senior Advisor" within the FTG to recognize that person as being a flytier who has made important contributions to the art of fly tying. Motion carried.

The meeting was adjourned 11:00 AM

James H. Ferguson, Secretary BOG FTG