---
title: "Advisory Board Meeting"
meta_title: "Board's Meeting Notes"
layout: "board"
description: "Advisory Board Meeting Notes - 18 Mar 2025"
draft: false
---
#### Meeting Notes - 18 Mar 2025  

**AGENDA**:

No agenda set, first meeting

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**DISCUSSION ITEMS**

1. **Handmade Boston (HMB): Aug 1-2 (Fri-Sat)**

- Sister conference to Seattle
- No more online track: No more online tickets or Twitch stream for Boston
- Goal is to become the "fully offline" counterpart
- Return to original technical lectures format (sans homework)
- Boston should have job booth rentals too

**2025 Target:** Two-hundred in-person attendees. We're still in the growth and experimentation stage. 

**Founder's Note:** It wasn't until the third HMS that we found the perfect business model. This will now be our third HMB, following same trajectory.

2. **Handmade Seattle (HMS): Dec 5-7 (Fri-Sun)**

- Flagship Conference
- Fully-Hybrid: Both in-person and online tickets like always
- The formula's already perfected, just need to focus on ticket sales

**2025 Target:** Four-hundred in-person attendees. The closest we got to selling all in-person tickets was Fall 2023, with 97% of all tickets sold (before mass layoffs hit hard.)

**Founder's note:** A well-known phenomenon is that once you pack a venue (typically a 400-seat theater) you'll see exponential growth the following year, exploding to say one thousand ticket holders, then an order of magnitude after that. See PyCon, VidCon, etc.

3. **Ticket Sales**
- Early bird sale begins sometime in the Spring (with 20% discount)
- Once we start ticket sales we will use the [newsletter](/news) to request community submissions

**Q: Are board members allowed to submit their own talks or demos?**

*A: We've decided no, but we'll revisit the question (and its ethics) next year.*

4. **Weekend Conferences**

Board is pleased with the new conference dates. Hositing conferences over the weekend gives attendance a massive boost (even though venue rental is more expensive. Risk is worth it.)

5. **Revolt Chat**

- Board agreed [Revolt](https://revolt.chat) is a substantial improvement over Element/Matrix for the conference live chat
- Board wondered whether or not we should support Discord as another private chat server, in a bid to expand audience
- Founder noted at least a third of ticket holders are anti-Discord and privacy-conscious

Finally, the board recommended an overall survey to previous ticket holders.

6. **Voting on Talk/Demo Submissions**

- Matt Nite simply used a Google Form for Software You Can Love
- It's best if the founder says "please read these submissions by the next meeting, and add your own notes"
- Source speaker candidates from meetup hosts
- Generally receive more feedback from meetup hosts on conference content

We've agreed to create a dedicated email address for receiving submissions

7. **Hard Deadlines to Commit to Present at HMB/HMS**

- Gradually add penalties when deadlines are not met
- Ensure all speakers sign agreement. NO EXCEPTIONS

8. **Conference Agendas**
- Get the agendas up as early as possible
- It's okay to massage the schedule a little throughout the year
- It's okay to let speakers update their talk title and description even if it's already on the website

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**ACTION ITEMS**

- Founder to meet with meetup hosts before the next board meeting
- Create HMC email address for community submissions
- Create webpage explaining how to enter submissions. WITH DEADLINES
- Discord integration for submissions: allows live thread discussions among board members
- Make sure Jim (1st speaker for HMB) is on our website by the next meeting
- Make sure Taylor (1st speaker for HMS) is on our website by the next meeting
- Determine how many open slots we have for each conference

**Founder's note:** Last item depends on venue and the available hours their rental affords us, which is being negotiated. As an estimate, I will offer figures to the board from previous years.

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**NEXT MEETING**

Date: 16 April 2025 1600-1700 (US/Pacific)