Yeah.
You know adopted both of them or just one of them or?
I've only met the partner, twice, I think. So, no.
And forgive me for eating, I'm having a low blood sugar moment.
There's Nick. Nick.
Nick, I've told you, when I make fun of your name that way, it's from Monty Python.
Yeah, I don't know why Americans are so obsessed with Monty Python. We've kind of gotten over it here.
Huh. Well, I.
Yes.
Okay.
It was, it, it was formative to us of a certain age because it was the only weird cool thing that we did is nerdy people that Wasn't mainstream at the time when we were doing it and it did become very mainstream, but yeah
It also in my defense, it was important to me and my cohorts. At the same time we were memorizing band music so we were memorizing anything we could come up with.
And Monty Python skips was one of the things, so. That's where that came from.
And I was a science fiction nerd, well I am still and For some reason it was big in the sci-fi community and we used to And it was like a art house movie thing you could watch and yeah.
Yeah. I had one more aside. The kids in the hall came to San Francisco and did a concert and it was years after they had been.
Popular, but they had such a following here that they forgot some of their lines and some of the crowd was chanting out what some of the lines were that they were missing and they were just amazed that they had fans who knew their material better than they did.
Yeah.
And welcome, Clark. This is your first time. Glad to see a new. Not a new face but a new name.
You're on mute by the way if you're gonna say anything
Hmm.
Hi, yes, thank you. One moment. I'm getting my cat out of my space. So I will present in just a minute.
Yeah. That's kind of the theme of this group is My cat is climbing my. SETI or whatever.
Nor my dog will start barking.
It's it's not a zoom with without a cap but
Yes.
Yeah.
I've got lots of agenda items. Today. Nick, I have international as the first item you had mentioned in a text message that You had some funding thoughts and you're also the one that often.
You're running off to some magical thing, so. Anything you want to report on the international front.
Okay.
Yeah, sure. So we were talking, we're talking last time with importance about like getting some Look, pockets of funding for different initiatives that we might want to do.
So I was, I'm still minded about accessing Les's archive at Cornell and Les.
I did see your, your message about that. So you're kind of like stopping anymore. Submissions there but I think it so I've put together a few kind of, potential areas of funding based here in the UK and like unfortunately that that is kind of my area of knowledge I don't really know what's on the ground in the States.
And but I've put together a few kind of potential funding routes which are again because I'm an academic they they are again because I'm an academic they they are primarily kind of academic funding sources but they're very very actively encouraging of kind of joining academics with community research projects like Beer History projects.
So I think they'd be a very good fit for this. And there's a few of them at different grant levels, some of them go up to something like 300 K, which is obviously not what we're going to be looking for at this point but there's a bunch of much smaller ones as well.
And I think it might be worthwhile putting together a little kind of This will, this will please you, Phil, a little subcommittee.
To
Oh.
Yay!
So I thought if we're kind of like sticking with the archives as an initiative to develop and I can't remember if the guy who was here from the bear, this or the the leather museum last time, what was his name?
Gary Wston.
Yeah.
So, Gary, I think would be useful to potentially bring into this project and try and think about right what is it we actually want to do how can we budget for this and then put in a bid for it?
The bids that I've identified are all due around kind of midsummer time, which might seem like a long way away, but I know from experience how long these take things take to put together.
So yeah, I guess that that was my kind of main proposal if we can have set up a little committee of maybe me, Les, Gary's and Leather Museum and anybody else who might like to get involved.
And we can think about a small kind of mini project as part of Bay history project about First of all, access and then making use of letters are existing archives and then using that to kind of springboard into developing a larger, more international archive with the partnership with Ledi Museum.
So that's kind of what I was thinking.
Hmm.
Yeah, that sounds great. And my main question was going to be. I know you're busy.
No, I, I'm in my whole night.
Hi.
You're on volcanoes and with, you know, 8. Good for you. So I didn't know if you wanted help.
So I think a subcommittee is a great idea. Doesn't need to be, I don't think it needs to be very formal, but.
I think it needs to be not just you and it needs to be. You know, somebody needs to like take notes and that kind of stuff.
So great.
Yeah, yeah.
Great. That's good to hear.
Okay, that says in that case, I might contact Lay's and Gadi independently and we can maybe set up our own little Zoom Meeting and have a chat and I can explain what the parameters of the funding and stuff are.
I am also I have set up some alerts for US based funding. But the the issue that I find with that is that I'm generally not eligible to be the kind of first name in the application for because I'm in the UK.
So those ones that potentially might require LEZ or somebody else to kind of stick the name on it.
But I'm starting to investigate more US based stuff as well. But yeah, for the time being, let's going to stick with these UK based ones.
Great. That's great. That's a lot of, lot of updates and by the way, I'm, when I look to the side and appear to be, NOR, and you folks.
I have a computer off to the side where I'm taking notes. So that's why I'm over here as opposed to over here.
Okay, great. Thanks Nick. I wanted to mention, on the interview and podcast front.
We are Les and I are hard at work. On your people's behalf.
Interviewing folks we've done 2 in the last 2 weeks. I think we've done about 8 of these less.
Hello. Yeah.
8 or 9? I gotta go back to the spreadsheet and I wanna use the power of Excel and really be able to mark easily which I kind of have a little progress report but I want to be able to easily look at them and say of the 78 people I think we've identified as people we want to interview these are the 6 that we've done and these are the 3 that are scheduled I want to be able to
Yeah.
look the list easily. And do that. So kudos to less again for leading those for people who haven't seen any of the raw material.
One of the ones we did this week was again somebody who cried during our interview. I mean these are really important.
People are very honored to be asked. To contribute their material and talk about their life and obviously talk about the coming out and talk about being a bear.
And so that's either the second or the third time someone has cried during one of these interviews.
They're really going well. People are really sharing a lot of information. So that's great.
And then I turn to Mel because Mel is kind of the head of our. The journalism arm and hopefully Mel can help turn some of these into more.
Finished materials. I know Mel has some different ideas about You know, let's slice it this way of let's put the coming out stories together or You know, how are we gonna do this so that We don't get ahead of ourselves where we've had enough.
Material in the can that we can create a steady podcast. You know, realm, but You know, we need to get started at some point on that arm.
So we've got some great raw material. That's all I'm gonna say there.
Okay, have we been doing this with Zoom or have we been using this podcast?
These have all been zoom. So we have a good transcript. Usually just in zoom, unless I forget and record them wrong, and then we're using, the script to actually transcribed but then the script doesn't know who is speaking.
It knows the voice changes, but it doesn't, it can't, they're not in channels, so.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. They're they're all like they're all like pretty much like that if we could do squad cast.
Yeah.
If we can master that, that would be so much better because the sound quality and zoom just is just abysmal.
Yeah, we need to we need to practice that so. Anybody who wants to volunteer that do a little training session, I've taken a couple of the classes and those are those are good and they're all breezy on how fabulously easy it is.
I've learned some skills which is great. But we haven't done, we haven't successfully done any in squad cast.
And load them into the script, so.
I have a little more bandwidth now that Our audio producer is on maternity leave, so we're not doing any projects for the San Francisco Public Press.
Great.
I just have to manage the radio station and I have a couple of projects to work on myself, but I will have more bandwidth and we could actually do some local interviews in our studio.
And we could also do recordings from there. So why don't we why don't we play with squadcast?
It's really not harder from the user perspective. From the people who tune in than it is to use the Zoom.
Right.
They don't have to download anything. Sound quality is just light-years better than what we're gonna, what you get out of one of these.
Yeah, as I look at the even just the editing, it's just, it's the capabilities are amazing and you know, we're paying for it.
So we're paying for the one seat license right now. So. I look at the next item on my agenda.
Is nonprofit status. So, that's kind of the next leg up is Mike's been working on that.
And, once we have a nonprofit fully established, then we could bring in some money and it'll help us with things like.
Additional seats for Squadcast slash the script. So yeah, thanks. No.
I checked this morning in our status is still pending and they'll send me an email. So I'll let folks know once that's in.
Okay, I just wondered whether something was gonna show up in my mailbox.
Let me. Yeah.
No.
My hunky postal delivery person. Oh.
No, it's online, so they've got particular rules. I'd attached a copy of the articles that less signed.
And they were like, no, if you want these for viewed, you've gotta send it by mail, which is a pain in the ass.
The magical portal.
What they'll do is they'll contact me through the through the filing. Portal and then I'll get a copy of the articles and we'll be able to start doing that.
Yeah.
Great. Great. And thanks again for your work. On that and thanks again for.
You know the advanced funding of that file and you know we'll get you that money back but
Oh, great.
It was 35 bucks, so you know what? It's not a big deal.
Okay.
Yeah.
Wonderful.
One other thing I wanted to add to that. I think the next step is that I'm supposed to appoint the.
The founding board and we still need someone with a Treasurer skill skills to be among those people.
Right.
Oh, so we need we need to find someone for that all to happen.
Maybe that's why Clark is here. But. No, I don't, I don't wanna put him on the spot, but.
I did mention that in the agenda, that's something that we're looking for is someone to be treasurer.
It shouldn't be at a very intensive. Job. We're not spending much money now.
I mean, hopefully we'll get some funding and we'll have to manage that but it is something we're looking for.
So we'll put the word out again. On our. Facebook channel and see if that we can troll for people that way.
Yeah, thanks, Les. So I don't think we need anything more to say about fundraising at the moment.
I don't see Gary T about merchandising. I've contacted them several times.
Mike, I know you bought something through the store. I don't know if you got it yet.
Yeah.
Hmm.
No, which was incredibly disappointing because the plan was to wear it at smoke out. So if if our store can't ship stuff.
We need to go with somebody who can.
Yeah.
Yeah, I bought a couple of things and I bought them and February. And, Gary, and I haven't seen them yet.
And Gary said, oh, he thought the t-shirt is probably ready, but I bought a tank top, which they would have to produce, but I still have asked Gary several times and haven't heard anything back so let's take it down
Yeah, I've also had the same experience I bought. Several items including a a t-shirt that I'm planning to wear that P town bear wheat, but.
I haven't heard anything since the order was placed.
Yeah. Okay. I'll ask Gary that.
See if I get push back from here from him. I think he, you know, Gary is very meticulous and will want to.
Have 700 text messages about it, but we'll talk about that because Yeah, I think we need it available and we just need to not advertise it if people are trying to buy stuff and it's not happening.
Yeah.
Might be if we can get a more reliable source it might be willing it might be useful for us to order in bulk I think back to bears of San Francisco the way we generated our first Enough cash to launch a rendezvous was that we just all pitched in.
I think, 40 bucks each and we just bought. Ton of t-shirts and we sold everything.
Yeah.
We're at one event. So if we, if we had enough of these to, if we had tables at some of the events, we hope to.
To do, that would be great.
Yeah.
Yeah, we should we should have a planning. Meeting for all of the events we're gonna go to and we should look into doing a story course sort of thing where we do interviews with people there about Beardom too.
Yeah. Great. A kissing booth. Oh, sorry.
That's just me. Okay, next item. Less will appoint the first board. I mentioned that we're looking for someone to serve as I call the title financial bear So we need that role.
Oh.
Yeah, yeah.
Unless otherwise you think you're good with a founding board. Okay.
The other item is. Boy, I wish I could type. Less reminded me to remind people.
We also, we thought we had a volunteer to help us. Kind of convert. Let's call it Les's personal website into the bear history project.
Website. Less bought the domain name. And we have it, but we need someone who can.
Yeah.
Build a website around. The history project. I can continue to build out our Wiki, but People have you know people just don't think of the wiki as a website and we have some more needs that it would be harder to do in a weekly than it would be on a website.
So we're looking for someone to build that. And really to help with the technical. Of the, you know, the domain name.
The CC name blah blah blah to point the right records at the right website once we build it.
So doesn't need to be a very big website, but we need to. Liberate less is personal.
No.
Yes. And.
Content from the bear history project content. Bear history project international. Content. By the way, speaking of the international word, our disclaimer, our waiver just talks about bear history project.
So I'm gonna make a version 2 of the waiver and add the word international to that. And I'll distribute that around to folks.
You're gonna say less.
Okay, yeah, one thing I'm not sure if everyone understands. The bear history, the history.org domain.
I could not get it and after consulting with. You know, various people. Would not like kind of go public or if you Google it it doesn't turn up.
So it has been, you know, it's space, it's a shell over. My personal website.
So when you click on bear history.org, it's actually taking you. To my side and they need to be separated.
When we have a you know, someone to oversee that and I could move it out of my personal.
Oh, ownership over to the BHP.
Right. Right. Or PHPI. We are now the BHP I.
Yes, yes.
Great. Okay. Thanks, Les. Website.
Merchandise, board.
Okay, those are all the agenda items that I had left that covers the 2 things that you texted me about this week, right?
Yeah.
The Financial bear and the website. Anything else that you need us to cover?
Well, just kind of 2 things briefly one. I, forwarded an email from Jack Fritzer to Mike and And you, were scheduled to interview him.
Next week, but there are some changes. That he is required that we make to the waiver before he will do it.
Primarily that he wants to hang on to at least or share copyright with us. Anyways.
It's in his email and I can resend it if you didn't get it.
Okay, and, I don't Mike, I don't know, you probably haven't seen that, but.
Off the top your head. Do you think that's gonna be a problem that we have a variation on the waiver or it's just informal enough we're okay with him keeping a copyright on.
His shared materials or is that going to get us in trouble when we get to the podcast?
Yeah.
I don't know, I'm gonna have to take a closer look at the email and figure it out.
Okay.
Yeah.
And that email went out recently.
Okay, I definitely have not seen it yet.
Oh, this morning. Yeah. Okay, well and I could resend it if If you don't get it and you know and I also included Jack on that explaining that I was forwarding it to you because You were the person who knows the law.
Yeah, great. Hello, go ahead. Yeah.
May I, may I interject? So if it's a podcast. And we're going to monetize it.
That's 1 thing. The truth is we're not going to monetize it. To get any money out of a podcast requires so many downloads that this is Even though this is an international project, it's just not gonna generate any money.
So it's it's a journalistic tool. Or it's an educational tool. So I'm not sure.
We just shouldn't care.
That us having absolute. Yeah, I just don't know that it's that big a thing.
I think it's I think it's probably wise to if it's just another step and people are willing to do copyright and we could we could work with Fisher and say since he's got a name and he is a published author just as less is.
We could say, look, we may use this in the podcast. If we do, we, will contact you and let you know under what circumstances that's, that our plans are for it.
Yeah.
And, If that's your concern.
I'm looking at the. I'm looking at the email now and what he's basically proposing is that there be a joint Copyright he's allowed to do whatever he wants to do with the interview.
Yeah, great.
We're allowed to do whatever we want to do with the interview. I don't see an issue, and I can modify the the waver just for him.
And then if it comes up again in the future with somebody like Jack who does have a name and cares about it.
Then we can we've got something we can use but that's not gonna that's not going to create an issue.
Great. That's good to know. But
Okay, great. Yeah. We'll have we could so effectively we have There's the raw interview.
He can he has the right to do whatever he wants with elements of that interview. We have the right to do whatever we want with elements of that interview and it doesn't, we don't have to.
Talk to each other about it after that. That sounds like a good idea. I don't know, maybe that's just.
Yeah, that's great. I will remind us that
Maybe that's just a better policy overall for everybody. No?
No. Now.
No, can I, interject. I, we ran into this. A similar issue.
With our oral histories with the lavender effect and what the what our attorney suggested was that we maintain copyright.
And that we give that person full rights of usage. And what that does is it simplifies the copyright.
Because dual copyright can get messy down the road if anybody wants to use it in a documentary or whatever.
So that was our attorney's suggestion. I'm not saying that should be the only way, but they suggested holding on to copyright and giving the the person rights to use.
I will remind us, You know, we have 77 people on our list of who we want to interview and Jack is number one on that list.
He's literally the person we want to interview the most. He's the most senior in terms of age.
He's the most senior in terms of experience. Here's the number one, he's the number one get.
Yeah.
We really want his interview. In the can and we wanna make use of it. So.
Mike, you want it?
May I suggest since Frischer is here in San Francisco? I could offer our studio. On Page Street near Venice and Market.
And we could have a interview with him live in a studio. So we'd have the very best sound quality available.
Okay, so that doesn't really help with
Yeah.
No, not with the copyright issue, but I'm saying that we could do that rather than. Zooming it.
Yeah.
Sure. Okay, so. Unless you think we're ready to go back to him with that suggestion or Mike, you want to think about it some more or.
Well, I mean, he's already said in his email that he doesn't sign away copy, right?
Yeah.
So I think he's not going to want to do. Well, Andy proposed even though you know, that's a i appreciate Andy speaking up.
Yeah.
So, and I don't know enough about. Copyright to address the joint usage.
I can reach out to an attorney who wants me a favor in San Francisco. And pick his brain about it next week.
But if, you know, how, how, quick are you planning to move on Jack?
Okay, that's next week.
The eighteenth is when he's agreed to be interviewed. So the Next week, yeah.
Okay.
Alright, let me see what I can do to get a hold of the guy this weekend. And kinda sort of figure out what's gonna be best so you don't have any impediment to moving forward on the eighteenth.
Great. Thanks, Mike.
No. Jacket. Jack is very particular in a stickler about these details and he has been for decades.
And
Yes.
So when the today show comes calling, will know what to say. Great. So we have a couple Sort of people who are typically at these meetings welcome Bill and is that Beau in the background say hello to Beau or and then Clark, we mentioned you earlier, welcome.
Anything in particular you wanted to and you're on mute at the moment, Clark.
Anything particular you wanted to contribute or expected from this meeting.
Hi, Clark.
I click.
Yeah, so hi everybody. I'm Clark. I'm doing libraries soon and I have a few skills kind of around archives and I have some questions about kind of the website and what folks want out of that because it sounds like you guys are generating digital materials that we're going to need to have to figure out how to preserve those things long term.
Yeah.
And I've thoughts about how to, but I want to hear first from you all what you want this website to be and look like.
So that we can kind of parse what you want this website to be and look like so that we can kind of parse what the best way to do that might be.
Huh.
Hey, somebody find out where he lives, lock him in his home. And make him available to the history archives for all forever more.
Yeah, so Clark, there's The quick answer is, Les has a, number of materials that are at Cornell.
Which we're going to leave there and on our wiki you'll see a list of Basically, you know, boxes of material, 70 boxes or something of materials of his past.
Academic work and collection of bear related. Materials going forward the Leather Archives Museum headquarters in Chicago and I'm thinking of going to international mister leather next year.
Maybe I would visit the archives and we could set up a time, talked about having an exhibit for us and co hosting an exhibit and you know a bunch of stuff.
So the archives is interested in hosting our materials going forward. And we haven't talked to them about Would we have a list or they have a list or how would that how would that be done?
And then Nick has contributed to the Wiki in terms of list of what some of the like the academic articles are that we've been we point to we haven't really been collecting but we point to so, you know, even though we're in our third year, We're kind of just getting started about.
What to collect going forward and how to do it. So welcome, Clark. You're arriving at a good time.
We've talked to the, The The GLB. I think the GLBT.
GLBT, yeah.
Yeah.
A heritage.
Archives in San Francisco. What's their official title? The GLBT. Okay, we talked to them Yeah, and that hasn't really gone.
Very far. They have physical materials and you know, I've seen them they've got some amazing stuff.
You know, they have the dress that Sylvester wore, you know, all they have amazing amounts of stuff, but.
We haven't, we haven't made inroads with them about they would, they're not interested in our materials going forward.
So we've talked to them about co hosting or whatever and that hasn't gone. Very far either.
So
Yeah.
Yeah, they collect only Northern California material. So bear, yeah, bear history would primarily be San Francisco.
Although they do occasionally do kind of programs that are international in scope. And I don't know how they sort that out.
Oh, they, they do have fried fishes. They did an exhibit on France stuff so they owned, see, they had a lot of Fran stuff.
Oh, good. Yeah. Yeah.
So.
So we've kind of been between like we point to things that we find of interest. And you know, less has a lot of things collected.
And we've got like we interviewed somebody this week who has a lot of bear rendezvous and other it got you know videos from their events which we're interested in we're just kind of at the beginning of what are we gonna do with it going forward.
So Clark, welcome. And if you're, you know, I don't want to put you super on the spot, but if you are interested, as Nick would say, I'm interested in subcommittees.
Hello.
So if you're interested in kind of helping with the archives. Realm, then you're arriving at a great time for that.
Yes. I would love to do that. I'd be super interested in that. It sounds to me like there's like three-ish things going on, there's a physical collection of physical items.
Am I hearing that?
Yes, yes.
And it's housed at Cornell.
What's been collected so far? Yes, but move.
And that's gonna stay at Cornell.
Yeah, and what's collected from this point forward is going to Chicago.
And the rest of the stuff is going to Chicago. So we have a place where physical collections are hosted.
That's good. There's a collection developments policy that is going to need to be created.
It sounds like because it sounds like we're nearing the scope. Sorry. Narrowing the scope of what we're collecting.
Yeah.
No.
Do we have like a written collections policy yet? I I can work with folks on writing one up because I've written them before.
We're trying to I do work with the sexual minorities archives in Holyoke and we're trying to do one for them right now we being like the board and other folks who are involved with that project.
So we need a collection development policy, so we can definitely work on doing that. The last thing I'm hearing is that there's digital materials that need to be hosted and there's a website that's been created, but I wouldn't assume automatically until I get in there and look that the website has the preservation capabilities to host the material that we need, longish term.
And the truth of it is that like digital things can't ever be preserved indefinitely because we don't know how to do that yet in the field.
Right.
But there are vendors that exist that charge more or less money to do that. And we can Look, we can shop around for vendors who we think have the capability to present the materials in the way that folks and those want them presented.
So. Immediate steps, I'm thinking, collection development policy is maybe number one. Number 2 and 3 is kind of figuring out the website stuff.
I'm not super I'm not like a coder I don't do any programming So we need someone who does to kind of look at what that would be.
And also kind of figuring out like what folks what folks want that to look like. Cause Do we imagine that the website is a place where people can go watch the interviews?
No, yes.
Yeah, maybe. Yeah, we don't intend at the moment we're collecting the raw interviews as raw material for podcasts.
That's the plan. Although we that's part of where we have the waiver is because we expect to be able to reuse these in various formats.
No.
So, Mel, back to the subcommittee idea. Mel is the journalist among us and he's gonna lead the effort on what we're gonna turn these into and are they gonna be variously, you know, we do we divide them into let's do a podcast with all about coming out stories.
We now have several bears of color, so do we do one which is about discrimination or bears of color or come, you know, we now have less is probing probing.
When someone has been in the military, is that an aspect of are we gonna have enough that, yeah, we've got 77 people we want to interview so far.
And we've done 6 or 7 of them. So we're kind of kind of just at the beginning of that.
So. Great. I think there's a subcommittee in your future, Clark. So.
Another one, yes.
So, so what I would, what I would envision, so those, those interviews are also a value in and of themselves.
They're part of the idea is to preserve the history of this community. So that future academics can look back.
And see these interviews because the one of the great impetuses was that we saw We lost people that we should have interviewed, but never got interviewed properly and never got their stories to get properly archived.
Right.
So the, so I think the forward facing website. Is something that will want to make sexy and interesting enough that your average bear will want to engage with.
So I modern looking website very visually. Compelling. The modern style, which is usually large, large for those obviously is also designed to be a something what you read on your phone.
It may have some embeds of video clips from some of the short in some of the interviews, some short little clips and then it will have embed.
Players where you can listen to the podcasts and then there will be a podcast feed at some point and as we develop a critical mass of the of the stories we collect.
That's when I'll look at that with everybody else and we'll figure out where we go.
And it could be a historical thing. We could start out and do it historically. We could do it in the subcategories, however we do it.
And then maybe publish a podcast series of indeterminate length based on the materials we have. But each of the interviews will still be there intact in and of themselves.
They won't be particularly interesting, I think, to listen to. All the way through for somebody.
Yeah, there.
But we could use clips of that for social media too, you know, if we have a really beautiful section where somebody's crying about.
How being a bear save their life or something we can. Use that as part of our social media feed.
Yeah, Les.
Yeah. Yeah, 2 things I wanted to add on that. Before I forget, yeah, one is some of the interviews.
I will be including. Probably fairly likely parts of them in bear book 3 so they will be available in print.
And the other thing. Again, 2 things. Digital preservation.
I've spoken with the folks in Chicago. And they also are having an issue with. You know, how do we do this for the leather community?
And the other is as people send me. You know, links to YouTube shows and stuff like that.
I put them into the VHPI on Facebook because I, I can't store them anywhere.
So we've got a record starting to build up of these. So.
And we have a little.
By the way, I can I can strip those. Those off of YouTube, I can at least strip the audio out so that we can preserve the audio from those or we can.
We can copy them from YouTube. We can download and save them.
Great. Because as everyone knows with Facebook, you know, It turns up today and then tomorrow it's like It's gone forever.
Yeah, yeah, great.
Yeah. So that's why I just grab them as they turn up.
Yeah, we're doing a fair amount of what I think of this cross fertilization. Les is also writing articles for Fair World Magazine and we cross feature those in our Wiki and on our Facebook page.
For the their history project international so we're kind of do some cross fertilization so great. Thanks, folks.
Oh, and that was the other thing I want to mention, British or bear, World Bear Magazine has all of their material.
Archived on WordPress. And they did, and I did get links that I can go in and access their old.
Old publications, you know, trying to locate. People outside the US. For example, yeah.
Cool. Okay.
Yeah, good.
Great. Paul, you've been to our meeting before. Welcome back.
Yeah.
I think I think you've been to our meeting before anything you wanted to Add or.
Yes, hi. So
I'm Eston. Sorry I'm in meeting.
I just wanted to add that I actually just got accepted, to teach English in Japan for a couple of years.
So that's, I might be able to add to the international part of this. And I've been wanting to explore the bear community over there as well.
And I'm finding that since I've joined this group, I've been kind of obsessed with like talking to random people about their experiences.
So, yeah, I'm excited to, to be over there. And if you need me to do anything while I'm over there, please let me know if I can help in any way.
Hmm.
Well, I'll give you a shovel, you could start unearthing tons of beer. Yeah.
Are you, Paul, are you doing the jet program?
It's, one through LA USD, it's called LANCKA, but it's very similar.
Oh yeah, yeah.
Yeah. So I'm terrified and excited.
Oh, I'm gonna. Oh, I will.
I need to give you a friend of mine's contact info. His name is Daryl Maud.
Hmm.
He's just switching from. Some college on the East Coast to some college in the Midwest, but he studies Japanese literature and We've invited him to do a.
An interview and he keeps declining, but I keep after him because he's You know, he's young, he's interesting, he's not your average bear.
And, he's also stuttering, he studies Asian culture and Asian bear, so.
I'll, get you his contact info just so you have that too.
Yeah, I would appreciate that. Thank you.
Yeah, and also, Paul, if I could ask you, shoot me emails on the occasion and keep me updated with.
With all of your your bare-focused stuff.
Sure thing, thank you. Yeah, I'll do that too.
Bill Barrack, anything you wanted to add, you've lost your dog though.
No. Postcom, Odie's in his bed over here.
Oh, okay. Anything you wanna add for the meeting?
And, Bill, happy thirteenth wedding anniversary this week.
Thank you. Yeah, I can't believe the number of hits we got on those pictures. Yeah.
Yeah, they're good pictures too.
Yeah.
Anything else anybody?
I think I'll add you to this little subcommittee because I think it would be useful to get somebody with archival experience.
Whatever the fuck we end up putting together which has to be kind of tailored to whatever the funding bid is like.
It'll probably be useful to somebody with that kind of experience on boards. So I'll probably send out a kind of email about that later tomorrow.
Also, every bit of shame with self promotion, and my book comes out on Monday. It because an academic book is insanely expensive, but I have done that done a deal to get free as an ebook.
So it's available for free downloads. I'll stick a link on to the, the Facebook group.
Okay, are you gonna be interviewed at.
I am I am trying to get some press releases sent out but my union being absolute fucking dicks about it and they're saying oh that's the publishers of support andability and I was like oh but the uni makes money from it the university gets money from the government for for kind of publication and stuff.
So the university will profit off my book, but God forbid they send out a fresh release about it.
But yes, hopefully I will I'll get a review copy sent to be a world magazine and yeah hopefully have a chat with on vote it.
Right. Okay. Yeah.
Yeah, Phil, I was gonna add, one thing, maybe a potential item for next meeting.
Is, the discussion of, Donor Management Software. Because that's just gonna be right around the corner.
And being organized about. Donors maintaining that list. Making sure that you're keeping up with it is a major part of fundraising.
So I would suggest you know because you're talking about the website that should have a strong and easy donor system.
Capturing those names and emails and locations. Could be really beneficial to the group.
Right. Do you have anything that you would recommend or? So maybe we should just propose to the group.
Well, there is a free, yeah, there is a free, software out there. I don't particularly use it, but it's called I give butter.
And it was developed by. Some, young folks that really didn't like the idea of nonprofits having to pay.
Right.
For a donor management system and it's highly rated. So you might want to look at that or we might one look at that.
Great. Yeah.
Good butter. I'm I'm currently using a platform called, and it's great, but it's getting a little pricey as our list of people goes up so I'm not sure I recommend it.
Hmm.
Yeah, I used to work in corporate social responsibility, so I'm gonna reach out to my people there and ask them for you know, small.
Startup organization type. You know, what do people recommend at this point?
Great. Thanks, Andy. Anything else anybody?
Sure.
Yeah, no.
Yeah, we should have at least in the next meeting on the agenda, we should be talking about, upcoming, events since we're getting into event season.
Okay.
Are we gonna table? Are we gonna do? Tabling events, are we gonna get boots at certain events?
What events make sense? Who will be where?
Great.
Maybe I recording equipment to record people in kind of a
Better.
You know, story course sort of thing where you enter, you can get some short interviews with people you encounter.
Yeah, what can combine like this kissing booth and and record them, right?
Yes, and that's what you're talking about, right? Hmm. Yeah. Record, yeah, you can only be on the podcast if you will if you agree to I know someone who used to be the He was the executive director of the Billy to Frank Center in, San Jose and they were close to what was then the new shark tank.
Of the always losing hawking to hockey team, yes.
The home of the the hockey team. Well, yeah, they used to be, you know, they were just the teal for a while.
But they would rent out their parking. To, you know, visiting. People who are coming to the games and he said they had one price for LGBT people and another price for just straight people.
We do that. Parking attendant and if you agreed to kiss them Now you're of the same sex then you'd get a discount on your part.
Okay.
He said we didn't actually make them do it but you had to agree to it and then give you discount.
It is a game off after after all.
Okay, great. Go ahead, Les.
Yeah. Oh, and one. Yeah, one last thing. I wanted to like kind of Make folks.
More mindful of, I mean. So much of what we're doing. And I'm really going through this with working on bear book 3 is.
Word of mouth, networking privately, when you meet somebody. Interested and involved in their community to get contact.
Yeah.
Further contact from them if they have them. And that way I lot more stuff turns up. You know, rather, you know, rather than for example, bear a world magazine, there's always a call for people to step forward.
Yeah.
People don't, but if they're approached personally, they're very responsive. Yeah.
I'm gonna put together a a call on my general Facebook page and just say, hey, if people haven't heard about the project we have our own Facebook page and group and we're looking for bears, especially bears who are outside the typical.
Hmm.
North American, you know. Blah, blah, blah. So, I'm gonna, I'll show people what I did there or those of you that are my Facebook friends, you'll see it.
Oh, I just sent you a friend request on Facebook. I hope that's you. Is your icon a little bare?
Yes, yes.
Like a gummy bear? Okay. Nice to send you a Facebook friend request. I think that'll do it, folks.
Again, we really seem to we're hitting stride now, which is great. . Just the interviews are going really well.
I'm really happy to be part of that. They're time consuming, but people are just so honored that we're capturing the history as Mel said, you know, this is why we exist, right?
Is to capture these histories and make sure we get these this information down and especially people who are traditionally underrepresented.
So it's great and like it seems like everybody's doing a piece of the work.
So thanks everybody who's doing. Some of the stuff. I'm happy to tell you all what to do.
Yeah, and. And the one other thing I would say in terms of the people that we interview is that almost everybody You know, has a sense of well.
This is just what I did in my own little life and. I have no idea how important the contribution is.
Yep.
Yeah, I would say on the other hand, some of the people we've interviewed. Our title holders and You know, that doesn't make them better, but it makes them better spoken because they're used to answering 20 questions about their life and you know the average person doesn't talk about coming out a lot but title holders do.
And so that's just been that's been good because they've generally been very articulate about what they've been through and they can articulate it well.
So, that's, that's been good as well. So. But the whole thing is going well.
Well, you know, and archiving and telling this history is so important because it really talks so much about our our ideas around gender and our ideas around masculinity, femininity, and our ideas around.
Expression and attraction and I mean this will be valuable for future generations to be able to look back at this is the way these people thought because we look back into the mists of time and we know that there were people before but Ta-da-day.
I didn't, what did they think about themselves? We don't know. So being able to really truly talk about this one subtract within the community and really be able to future people look back and understand what what that was about will be really.
A good contribution to the future.
Great. Okay, thanks everybody. What I'll do is I'll post the transcript of this meeting.
Into our, I'll make a link to it on our Facebook page. I won't post the video, but you know, that'll be archived.
And, as we said, we need to keep track of what's going on. So.
I have scheduled, whereas Nick would say scheduled. Next meeting is scheduled for May eleventh.
So I'll put up a meeting invite to that. Soon. Okay, thanks folks.
Okay.
Okay. Okay, thank you. And welcome back.
Take careHelloMeeting all