NatOrg Discussion Extended Period 31 July –19 August

After what seems like a long hiatus (and some discussion about viruses) we’re back to discussing the natorg with the membership issue coming into full view again.

• Wellington recently had a social get together where we discussed the issue and decided some things, minutes of that meeting are available on the nasf website. Essentially we came down to two membership options, AGM/con to AGM/con or a fixed yearly period of an as yet unspecified date. We also discussed the intangible benefits to fans of joining the organisation.
1. Peter came up with some suggested workings for our suggestions after the meeting and they have been the basis for discussions of late.
• We established again that expiry dates at Christmas are not a good idea.
• We discussed at length the fact that with membership dates there could be a lot of work for the natcon to do rather than the natorg and that there could be a lot of flicking back and forth of information which has the potential for problems.
• A question arose over if you are already a natorg member, and natcon membership gets you natorg membership, do you get a discount from the natcon? We could treat it as those at the natcon are members of the natorg for that weekend only.
• Norman has called for questions to be asked during the voting on memberships and has gone ahead and written up some questions. They are now being voted on and can be checked at the website.
• We talked about why a fixed membership date away from cons is more preferable to tying it to a con, and James pointed out that we don’t want to give fans the idea that most of what the Natorg does is the convention, that we plan to do other things as well.
• There was concern over how much administrative work is involved in each of the membership options both for the natcon and natorg.
• Discounts again came under discussion. Are they something the natorg should get into? The general consensus was that this would attract some fen to the natorg and also increase the profile of SF books and the SF community in general.
• There was concern raised about paying membership fees and perhaps we should be looking for sponsorship for the organisation. If we can get the sponsorship why not make it free? But if people pay something they have a vested interest in how the organisation runs. Also people were concerned about using sponsorship (which can be fickle) for base expenses, when really we should rely on membership fees for the base expenses and use sponsorship for extras.
• But in order to get sponsorship we decided that we needed a name and some members first, which brought up the inevitable discussion about names again.

Some suggestions were:

1. NZNBSF: NZ national board of science fiction
2. NZSFF or NZSF&FF? :New Zealand Science Fiction Foundation
   or New Zealand Science Fiction & Fantasy Foundation
3. SFFANZ (which has come up before and is generally well liked). However, it could get confused with sf fans.
4. NZSFFF (NZ Science Fiction & Fantasy Foundation
5. NONZSFF or NOSFF (pronounced nunzf or nussf)