The 2019-2020 was a unique situation as the Board had to delay several items into 2020-2021 as it wrestled with the Covid-19 impacts on the BPA and WBC. Below is a a brief glimpse into what was decided for our organization's coming year.

Before being consumed by Covid-19 arriving in the US and working through the impacts it would have on WBC 2020, the board covered some of its anual tasks, of electing Officers for the coming year, reviewing the BPA Financials, voting for new Legacy Events (only Waterloo added), voting for Sportsman of the Year (Micah McCormick named Sportsman), Hobby Service Award discussion (no vote taken for 2020), and GM of the Year (decided to not have 2020 award snce no WBC 2020).

COVID-19 IMPACT:

Covid-19 consumed a lot of time for the 2019-20 Board meeting. After monitoring the situation from January to April, the Board decided in April to cancel WBC 2020, allowing members to adjust there travel plans and arrangements. Seven Springs was very helpful with the lodging requirements, handling all the cancellations for our attendees.

After making the decision to cancel WBC, the Board began planning the next steps to keep the members informed and prepare for WBC 2021. First up was 2020 Memberships. Since most members join to attend WBC, the Board decided that the best course of action for those that joined in 2020 was to extend the 2020 membership for Sustaining members and higher to be a two year membership running until December 2021. This would allow the membership to cover WBC 2021 since 2020 was canceled. They also approved refunds for those members that preferred to get their membership fee returned instead of extended.

The next topic became what events would run at WBC 2021. The first decision was to leave the 99 Century events, 12 Legacy events, and 25 Trial events the same as WBC 2020. The decision on Vendor Sponsored events would be left to the Vendors/Sponsors to determine if they wanted to run the same events or change to different events. The Board then determined that an avenue for new events should be considered. They decided to hold a small trial vote with submissions in December 2020 and voting in January 2021 to add two new Trial events. In order to use this to add new events, The ballot will consist of events submitted in December with the requirement that only events that have never appeared on a trial ballot previously could be submitted.

The communication plan on getting this information out to memberships led to the continuation of the monthly newsletters changing the topics to decisions around impacts of the cancellation and the promoting of PBeM tournaments to continue to allow members to play remotely against there fellow members. The PbeM has been successful thanks to the many GM's who stepped up to fill the void left by the absence of WBC.

NEW RULES FOR JUNIORS IN OPEN GAMING:

As a response to the increasing numbers of families coming to the convention and spending time in open gaming, the board decided to make a change to the open gaming policies to try and be a little more family friendly. Going forward, a junior WBC member (with a valid junior room registration) will be permitted to play though not sign out any games in the open gaming area provided that they are playing with an adult badged member of the con.

A PASSING OF THE SECRETARY TORCH:

After many years of serving as secretary of the BPA Board, Bruce Monnin decided that he would relinquish this office to Rebecca Roppolo. Rebecca did an excellent job as secretary this year and we hope she continues to do so for many years to come.

CHANGING REQUIREMENTS FOR LEGACY EVENTS:

Actually a decision from the 2018-2019 Board, rather than the board considering every eligible game every year, we will limit a game to being considered 5 times for Legacy status. This change was made effective as of 2019 so each game considered this year was its first of five. For any of the membership who are not aware, a game can be considered for legacy status if it has been held at WBC for 10 or more consecutive years and met the minimum attendance level.

NEW JUNIORS ROOM MONITOR:

Megan Byrd will be the new Juniors Room monitor, replacing Crystal Shipley who decided to retire from that position.

TOPICS PUSHED TO 2020-2021 BOARD:

The following topics received some discussion but eventually needed to be pushed out to the 2020-2021 Board meetings with our new board: Impact of cancellation on Caesar Award (New Praetor Award), revisiting tournament formats and standard tiebreaker rules (subcommittee of Board is currently working on this), several membership issues from WBC 2019, impact of outside Food and Alcohol in public areas on our members and hotel contract including having alcohol available to minors. Stay tuned for next year's Tenth seat for a summary on these and other items that arise throughout the year.

FEEDBACK:

Lastly, all members are reminded that they can get the ear of the Board for any WBC-related topic simply by emailing the Convention Director at conventiondirector@boardgamers.org. All reasonable requests are aired for the entire Board during our annual meeting.