As stated in our By-Laws, Article 4, Section 3:

The Secretary is responsible for the following:

1. Being present at all meetings of the membership and the Board of Directors.
2. Taking accurate and impartial meeting minutes and notes.
3. Recording the results of all elections and votes.
4. Making the aforementioned information available to the membership in a timely manner.

The Secretary may, with advance notice, appoint a temporary representative to perform these tasks in their absence. If no advance notice of absence is given, any present Board Member(s) may appoint a temporary representative.

Weekly meetings take place every Tuesday at 7 PM. Board Meetings are monthly, unless things run long, in which case there's an overflow meeting the following week. A typical month has four Tuesdays so that means four regular meetings and one or possibly two Board Meetings. Assuming I don't delegate the duties to someone else, that's five or six evenings each month just for attendance.

Weekly meetings don't have a ton of content and are really more of a round table than anything else. One or two people usually present and any conversation is pretty minor. Generally I update the meeting agenda wiki page as we talk about stuff and then save it once the meeting is over.

Board Meetings take a bit more effort. Their agendas are longer and there are more presenters. Conversations between multiple people are sometimes difficult to follow and occasionally there's more than one conversation at a time. Most topics are presented, discussed, then decided on as necessary. Sometimes it's hard to determine if a conclusion was reached and agreed upon, especially if a vote was not taken. My usual goal at any meeting is to take as thorough and accurate notes as possible making sure to include who was speaking, who they were speaking to, and any names, dates, sizes, locations, or other details. This usually amounts to a long, rambling, stream of consciousness that I type hastily in between items from the original agenda. Board Meetings have historically lasted between two to three hours. After the meeting is over, it may take an additional two to three hours to decipher and clean up the rough notes.

If regular weekly meetings are 30 minutes each, Board Meetings are two hours each, there's no overflow meeting, and cleaning up the Board Meeting notes takes a full three hours, the Secretary will spend a minimum of seven hours each month fulfilling their duties. Ways to reduce that demand could include delegating tasks to others, providing fewer details from Board Meetings, or providing only the conclusions or voting results from discussions. It may be possible to reduce the time demand to four or five hours each month should everything go smoothly.

This seven hour commitment does not include tasks associated with being on the Board of Directors in general or any additional issues that may arise such as signing up new members, renewing lapsed members, writing and reading emails, giving tours, taking dues and rental payments, or answering general questions. It also does not account for time spent training others on machines, cleaning, working on personal or group projects, or assisting other Board Members at their request.

-Brant

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