Forest BB

Present Xabina, Graeme, Pomme, Bryony, Emi, Olivier, Ida, James, Swithun

Apologies Nix

Events book/vetting

Was there talk of the events booking system (free access to book) being changed? If there is any vetting to be done, Nix thinks that it should be done by a proper meeting, with samples provided by artists for consideration, rather than one person who likes/doesn't like their face.

Everyone agrees that the events booking should remain open. No one wants bad events. But blocking of bad performers should be done by a group meeting.

Sound engineering training day

Had to be postponed because of broken desk. But it will happen after August.

Sound engineer bribes

Could they be increased in order to get more/better sound engineers?

No, they get what other volunteers get already. Once we have more people trained, then sound engineers will be as common as mud and we can give them even less! Video camera will help with training. Pockets and Nix are up for this, we think.

Menu change

Need to phase out old ingredients. Maybe wait until after Festival. People like the current food. Alex will practice dips.

Volunteer coordinator stuff

Everyone fill up upstairs rota, please.

Bryony explains what the VC does. Phone people up, put up poster asking for volunteers. Emi and Xabina to do poster.

Have AGM next month maybe.

New fridge

Pomme and Swithun know someone who handles bankruptcies and may know if there are any cafe fridges being sold off. We'll ask him and give it a couple of weeks. Bryony will carry on looking for fridges in other places.

We are leaning towards a low non-display fridge with a good work top, rather than a tall glass display number. Unless Shannon can find the fridge of her dreams and persuade us.

Free beers for artists

Too many artists for them all to get free stuff? Not if it is cheap crap. Could do volunteer price for them, but then who knows who is an artist.

Xabina to PM Simone about going to CnC. Get something cheap but not looking too cheap.

Volunteer price on beer

Free eXcar after night shift. No discount on big beers. That is the decision.

Next meeting

They will start at 7.30pm from now on, so KM can get there on time.

Sorry, what? I thought price decisions had already been made in the previous meetings, otherwise I would have come by. Why no discount?

Big beers we make £1.15 profit on every bottle sold. edit:actually, £1.35 profit
Small beers we make 86p profit on every bottle sold.

The reason we put no volunteer price on big bottles two years ago was because we were buying the small beers (stiffys!) at 34p a bottle, so it really made sense. Now it makes no sense. We can absolutely afford to sell big beers at a volunteer discount, in fact, it will make us MORE MONEY per bottle. If take this away, you can't really blame volunteers if they revert to the byob mentality...

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"We all tend to idealise kindness and tolerance, then wonder why we find ourselves infested with losers and nutcases." Sebastian Horsley

i take that's profit made when sold at Volunteer price?
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Our big brother's got no heart,
when I get my chance I'm going to punch him in the nose, in the nose, in the nose

yes, they are bought for 64p, volunteer price on them is currently £1.50, although that may increase at any time...

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"We all tend to idealise kindness and tolerance, then wonder why we find ourselves infested with losers and nutcases." Sebastian Horsley

and big beers are bought at £1.15, sold at £2.50. VAT inclusive. wait, so sorry, that's £1.35 profit

I am a dick at making my own points.

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"We all tend to idealise kindness and tolerance, then wonder why we find ourselves infested with losers and nutcases." Sebastian Horsley

I really don't care what people decide about this. It seems that at the last FWG meeting, we decided 1.50 and 2.50 for volunteer prices. You were at the meeting, Chris, so what made you change your mind? Thanks for the numbers, Jane. They do tell 2 slightly different stories though. If volunteers want to drink cheaply, then they should still drink small beers. But if they want to give maximum profit to the Forest, then they should drink big beers (with/without discount). If we have to give them a discount on the big ones to stop them from bring their own, then this makes no sense.

I thought we can't have made a firm decision at the last FWG meeting, because people have been arguing about this ever since. But it seems we did. So perhaps we should revert to this decision. Not because I happen to agree with it any more than the Cafe & Events meeting decision. But because that is how this sort of decision should be made.

The numbers are inconclusive, historical arguments are inapplicable. Why don't we just toss a coin to solve this?

Why should the decision be changed from the FWG one?

The numbers aren't particularly inconclusive. Volunteers should get a cheap price on big beer, because
1. they deserve it
2. in doing that the forest will likely get more profit.
3. it tastes better

If your volunteer drinks around one litre of beer, this equates to:
2 big beers (1litre) = £2.70 profit
3 small beers (990ml) = £2.64 profit

In encouraging volunteers to drink big beers, we do not lose money.
We may make more.

Also, your volunteer will be 31% happier by the delicious seaweedyness of kelpie and the additional alcoholiness of fraoch. This will make them more productive and make the forest more money and we will be 72% more likely to approve of lazers.

I have diagrams which can illustrate ALL of this.

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"We all tend to idealise kindness and tolerance, then wonder why we find ourselves infested with losers and nutcases." Sebastian Horsley

if you really have diagram that might win me over...

but little beer go up to £2.50, is ok? (volly price unaffected...)

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Maybe it could work? But it will be a kaleidoscopic blend of mysterious shadows and rainbow hued-dreams seen through compassionate tears.

fine by me...

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"We all tend to idealise kindness and tolerance, then wonder why we find ourselves infested with losers and nutcases." Sebastian Horsley

I had written the post below uner the title "Volunteer Prices, etc" in FWG Section but I guess it needs to be copied here so there you go...
(small beer going up to 2.50 is better than my suggestion below)


I understand that we re not making as much money as we would like to, but the way to get what we want should not be by over-charging our volunteers. I mean, come on, how many beers with vollie prices do we sell every day compared to those with the customer prices? Too few, i believe. And it will be even fewer if we get rid of the vollie price. Personally I would never buy more. And so would do many other volunteers. So, eventually we will be losing money, not making it -as Jane has said.

Besides, I remember sbd saying in a meeting in July that the beer can be 5 pounds (for the customers) during the festival as it will be double price everywhere else and that the Londoners or the ppl coming from abroad are willing to pay it. And this was not a joke because when we reacted surprisedly, he kept defending it. So, if this is the case, we can have a small increase on the beer prices for the customers, we can make it 3.50 (if not 5!!) to make up for our "loss(!)" over the vollie prices. I don't think customers would make a fuss about a 20 pence difference but the vollies definitely will, over 1 pound difference! I really believe that it is more fair to charge the customers 20 pence more (if we REALLY have to) instead of charging our customers 5 times that!

I had no idea that this was gonna be discussed in the cafe and events meeting and I was working in the kitchen until 8 so I could not have participated any way but I believe this decision should be changed. I get the sense that no one in that meeting happened to be "heartily" opposed to this decision so i feel it might not have been discussed well enough by both sides, and the decisions can change, right? unless we have some sort of a closed, undiscussable, antidemocratic hierarchy -which, I am sure, we do not have at all! So, maybe a new meeting with only this topic on the agenda could be arranged urgently, or more ppl can be asked to express their opinions here on bb. But i believe there should be a sort of referandum with more participation than that meeting to re-make this decision.

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Cheers!
Taskin

we should not up the price of beer as we just lowered it! or should we? this is all ridiculous!
r

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www.ryanvanwinkle.com

OKay so what will it be? I'll be working in the kitchen tonight and it 'd be nice to know how much to charge for what and for whom... If we're changing the prices then the booze poster prices need changing too... don't want to spend the night fighting with people who each have a different idea what they want to pay for their booze while everybody else is playing with paint and lasers...

leave it as it is.

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"We all tend to idealise kindness and tolerance, then wonder why we find ourselves infested with losers and nutcases." Sebastian Horsley

I agree with Jane, all this debate is completely crazy!

Let the volunteer prices as they are!

Small beer £1.50
Big beer £2.50

And let have a crazy-amazing-cool party tonight and stop moaning, critisizing ang grumpying(that's good for me too).

Love the FOREST and the 88888888888888888888888 party!

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"If I can't dance I don't wanna be part of your revolution" Emma Goldman

Prices are set by the FWG or meetings thus assigned (e.g. new menu meetings). I can't believe a WG decided it was their decision to....I'm sick of this.

Vollie price for big beer £2.50. All prices stay the same. They deserve it, and are working really, really hard. We make more money on booze than food, but people come here because you can get food as well. Because there is a good atmos. Because it is vollie run and we recycle though it's a pain and all that stuff. People come because the principle is cool and they want to support that. The huge grounding of this is the face VOLUNTEERS WORK HARD here and should be assigned people to walk about casting rose petals at their feet wherever they tread.

I am passing a block on this, and I really mean it. It is completely and utterly against my ethos to not give vollies a cheaper price on big beer. I went along with it last year to my constant fury, not his year.

A*

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Bohnenflaschen!

Sorry we upset you, Alex. In defense of the people who brought this up, I think that with all the arguing, it seemed that no decision had been made earlier.

There is a lesson for all of us here. If someone says something you disagree with, check to see what has already been decided. If you agree with the decision, point to the minutes. If you don't agree with the decision, you would need to bring new facts to light. Otherwise nothing gets resolved and no one can remember what we all agreed on.