Hi guys!
We wanted to let you know that we had our annual board meeting on the 11th of this month and thought you might want an update on what was discussed and decided.
The biggest news is that we now have a third board member! We have been planning on adding someone for quite a while and began thinking about it after the Department of Culture pointed out that in case of a conflict, or recusal, being in a 50/50 constellation might be problematic. Even though we have never disagreed on something important, we see the logic in their comment and the benefit of adding an additional perspective.
There have been a handful of different names on our list of who we thought would be a good addition to our board and we actually made up our mind this summer. Kristen Valde Anthonisen is a friend of ours who we have gotten to know through his role as a volunteer and, later, a trainee of Wings of Desire. He is a great guy with a lovely sense of humor, he is hardworking, thoughtful, and is one of the people who has shown a genuine interest in our organization. We are very excited to have him onboard and believe he will be a great addition.
Photo: Katarsis foto
The reason we landed on asking a Norwegian person is mostly because of our intention to seek official recognition from the Norwegian government. Once we are recognized by the government, we look forward to eventually expanding the board to include some of our international members. The process of seeking state recognition will begin anew at the start of the year, with the hope of completing the documents in early February.
Another topic of the meeting was a potential summer event in 2021. Since Oslo SusCon did not happen this year, Wings of Desire held a small retreat for the crew and friends here at Vestrønningen. We also celebrated that these were the first suspensions held at Church of Pain. The event was such a success that we now have the intention of doing an annual summer event. We are thinking that next year's event will have the same framework with a limit of approx. 20 people (who will mainly be camping on the property). The duration will be for three days from Friday–Sunday, either in June, just before Oslo SusCon (Thursday – Saturday), or in late August. We will decide on a date and announce the event in January/February 2021, with the proviso that the situation around Covid-19 may mean that we have to cancel or make changes to the plan.
Since having a look at the year’s finances is a natural topic for the annual board meeting, we decided to move the meeting from November to March of every year. We also changed the deadline for our members to submit suggestions to the board from three weeks in advance to the 14th of February (because we love you!). If the next annual meeting will take place in March 2021 or 2022 depends on whether or not anyone has any new issues to address. If no matters are reported, a new general meeting will be held in March 2022.
Otherwise, we rejoiced over the success of our website launch and the fact that we now have members of our church! As I’m writing this, we have 50 members spread across Europe, America, and Australia. Pretty sweet and pretty humbling—thank you guys for your support! We really appreciate it!
You can read the full report from our meeting in the linked documents below, available in Norwegian and a translated version in English.