Fly Tying Group
Conference Call
Minutes from November 2, 2009

(first November 18, 2009; last updated November 18, 2009)

The Board of Governors (BOG) met by way of a conference call on 11-2-09 at 6:00 PM Pacific Time. Board members participating included: David Nelson (Chair, Gene Kaczmarek (Vice-Chair), Steve Jensen (Treasurer), Jim Ferguson (Secretary), Dennis Reed, Bob Bates, Bob Jacklin, Al & Gretchen Beatty, Sister Carol Anne Coreley, Frank Flowers, Mike Stewart, and Cliff Sullivan.

The Conference was called to order att 6:03 PM by the Chairman, David Nelson. Identification by roll call was used to determine a quorum was participating.

1. David Nelson started off with summarizing the role of the chair, to clear up the BOG's understanding of the chair role. David emphasized the Board’s activities and agenda are BOG-driven. The chair cannot make motions and the chair does not vote unless a tie occurs. The chair acts as a facilitator to guide the efforts of the BOG.

2. David gave a brief review of the Conclave events involving the Fly Tyer Group. There was an open FTG BOG meeting that went quite well. The minutes have been distributed and reviewed; minor changes have been made. The Tyers’ & Liars’ BBQ was a success socially and was almost a success financially. The social time between flytyers was appreciated by all, the auction was a lot of fun, was the reason we did not lose any significant amount of money, and Steve did a great job running it. The consensus of the group was to do the BBQ again. Attendance at Conclave was challenging because of the location in Loveland, the distance from the home office, cost, and the economy. The next Conclave will be in West Yellowstone, August 24 -28. The time this conflicts with back to school activities for students and teachers, but was a compromise in light of the change of leadership and lack of advance planning. It is understood that all Conclaves in the future will go back to a time that does not conflict with school.

3. The realization of our group being a relatively new subgroup within a larger organization makes it important that we create a vision for the FTG. David emphasized that the BOG must realize how important its role is in determining the Group’s vision and what we will accomplish for our membership. Comments were made from BOG members about their vision for the Group. Cliff Sullivan stated we should provide some guidelines for the teaching of fly tying. David agreed and stated that our main project addresses this precise need. It is called the” Fly Tying Instructors’ Resource”, with Jim Ferguson as Chair. We are using the term “Resource” instead of “Guideline” to be sure that the membership realizes that this is not regulation or certification, but only a resource that can be used or not, as the teacher sees fit. Sister Carol Anne Corley stated that we need to realize that different techniques and procedures are needed to teach different groups, eg, youth vs adults vs seniors. David replied that this concept has been fully embraced by the Fly Tying Instructors’ Resource Committee and will be implemented in the Resource. Dennis Reed suggested that we need a list of tyers available to tie at regional conclaves and make this list available to tying chairs. This is already in progress. Gene has a list of tiers, segregated by Council. This list is being expanded and will be available to tying chairs. Frank Flowers observed that we need to work on recruiting younger tyers. There was agreement on this concept. Steve Jensen stated we should continue supporting Leslie Wrixon's Archive Project involving the works of good tiers. Discussion took place centering around our concerns about fly archives in the museum, especially the storage and access issues. Sister Carol Anne Corley suggested we should find a way to make good reliable equipment available to councils for running tying classes. Al Beatty suggested we enlarge the demo tying data base. Al also suggested we get an archival place for fly resources that is in FTG control.

4. The Fly Tying Group is a volunteer group, with no paid staff. If anyone is going to accomplish the vision just stated, it will have to be done by the Board members. There is no one else to do it. Board member need to propose projects that reflect their vision for the FTG and then execute them. The Board also has to communicate this vision and the various projects to FTG members, or they will think we are doing nothing. David, in conjunction with Peggy Brenner, the Communications Chair, has discussed the idea of forming an email list and quarterly electronic newsletter and distributing it via Google Groups. This idea was supported by the Board, which agreed that each Board member should contribute one article per year minimum, which should create adequate content for the newsletter. Execution of this idea will be left up to the Communications Committee, under Peggy Brenner.

5. Status Reports were asked for from participating Board members. They were urged to propose a project that reflects their vision for the Group and that they would like to work on. Gene Kaczmarek, Chair of the Standing Conclave Tying Committee, reported the Conclave tying invite letter had been written but he is in need of feedback from Councils concerning who to invite. Many Council presidents do not answer letters requesting nominations for tiers to be invited. Not all the Councils have a VP of Flytying. Gene feels he needs to increase the number of tyers on his resource list. Jim Ferguson, Chair of the Fly Tying Instructors’ Resource Committee, reported that the Resource is still being fleshed out in terms of what it is going to contain, materials are still being collected and evaluated, and the properties of the site appearance are being looked at. A meeting was held at conclave to do some work on the content headings. Only two people were involved in the meeting. He has worked on the outline for the web resource and asked for Board input, but little has been received. He will send out an email in the near future for Board again soliciting input. Cliff Sullivan volunteered to help Jim on the Resource. Frank Flowers is working with Boy Scouts in his local area on providing instruction to help them meet the requirements for their merit badge in flyfishing. His goal is to develop an outline for how to get a youth program up and running for flyfishing. A suggestion was made that for this to be a good Fly Tying Group project, he should contact other clubs doing youth outreach, find out what works and what doesn't, and this could be placed on the website as a resource for other clubs who have not done a youth outreach but would like to develop one. Gene Kaczmarek reported on the Evergreen Hand Project, Chaired by Jesse Scott, the inventor. The Everegreen Hand device can be used by persons having only the use of one hand. Gene informed us Norm Norlander (Nor Vise developer) volunteered to build 100 Evergreen Hands and is working directly with Jesse Scott. The committee is also working on engineering improvements for the device; engineering drawings are already on the FTG website. The Dan Vise was also mentioned as a vise helpful for one handed tyers. David Nelson solicited e-mails from all Board members regarding their projects, to get Board input, and when finalized, volunteered to put them on the FTG web site. This will publicize what we are doing and enable FTG members to volunteer to help.

6. Time was given for an "Open Discussion" on topics BOGs wanted to bring up. Steve Jensen relayed the importance of the framing program to help raise funds at FFF, FTG, Council, or club levels. The procedure used to determine the Buszek Award recipient was discussed. The motion passed at Conclave was referred to and discussed in terms of our actual role proposed in the selection of the Buszek Award finalist. There have been several e-mails on this topic and we needed some clarification. As reported in the letter to Philip Greenlee, Chairman of the Board and President FFF, from David Nelson, we are asking that the nomination process remain with the Awards Committee, that the Awards Committee forward qualified candidates to FTG BOG , and that the BOG would select the recipient, to be forwarded to the Council Presidents for their approval.

A motion was made by Gene Kaczmarek, 2nd by Dennis Reed, to accept original BOG procedure proposed in Loveland (as reflected in the above description) to select the Buszek Award recipient. A role call vote resulted in 10 Yes, and 1 No vote (Jacklin) on the motion, the Chair abstaining. Motion passed.

Bob Jacklin emphasized he would like to see the political aspect taken out of the Buszek selection, noting that sometimes it seems to be a popularity contest, with Council Preseidents advocating only the candidate from their Council. All agreed with Bob that it should be based on merit, not politics.

A motion to adjourn was made by Cliff Sulivan, 2nd by many. Meeting adjourned at 7:15 PM

James H. Ferguson, Secretary BOG FTG