The meeting was called to order by President Frank Ramsay at 7 PM. Dean Senesgalli, a newly arrived professional woodworker from Kittery, Maine announced himself as a guest. He had made custom furniture as well as being a consultant for CNC manufactured wooden objects. He spoke a bit about the issues of being a professional woodworker in Maine with heavy pressure on price ( "I can get this at the big box store for $200 in pine. Can you make it in cherry for less than that?" ).

Per then introduced our guest speaker, Toby Klayman, who gave a very animated and interesting talk about earning a living as an artist, protecting your intellectual property via copyright, and techniques for marketing and selling your work. She provided us with voluminous handouts and examples of all the things she discussed. She briefly described her resume and talked a bit about her art. For those interested in more detail you can go to her website, www.klaymanart.com She also extended an open invitation to BAWA members to visit her studio in San Francisco to see her work, graphic art, as well as that of her husband, Fred, whose artistic medium is photography. She mentioned that she has given many classes on protecting artistic IP as well as having written a book on the subject. Although she has dealt with gallery owners in the past, at this stage of her career she prefers to sell directly to her large base of clients from her studio. She described many of the ways you could sell your work. For example, you could build a chair, and take a picture of it. You could then put the picture on a post card using a service like www.vistaprint.com where you could turn the photo into a card with your professional resume on the back for sales purposes or into a poster that could be sold for $20 per copy. She emphasized the importance of developing your own contacts and mailing lists and having small promotional give-aways for visitors.

To protect your design you need to apply to the Library of Congress using application form VA for an object or form TX for text. The fee is about $40 and the copyright is valid for about 70 years. This guarantees that you will have to be given credit for your work and will give you strong grounds to demand monetary compensation if your design is appropriated without permission. She talked about the different ways you could arrange for the use of copyrighted material. For example, you could request a large lump sum upfront or a certain amount of the product in which the copyrighted material appears, or, you could ask for a royalty on each item sold but only if you believe the company to be honest.

She mentioned that if you have a studio show you should consider holding a raffle in conjunction with the show as the raffle could very often raise a large amount of money by itself. For a studio show you need to clean the area quite well and remove any objects not for sale. You will also need a good deal of help from friends to monitor the show to prevent theft and to help with ringing up sales. She encouraged people to allow customers to buy their work on installments and left us with a copy of her installment agreement. Frank presented a certificate of thanks to Toby for her excellent presentation

Steve Rosenblum then gave a report on the results of the member survey, which will be presented in full detail in the near future. The main conclusion is that the members want more technical content from the club. They would like more talks on technical subjects, shop visits, skill-building workshops, design workshops, Sketchup training, etc. Based on zipcode information, our membership lives mostly on the west side of the Bay from San Francisco to San Jose and is almost all male and about half over 60 years old.

Frank then reported on the status of the Janet Pomeroy Center gates. They are made of Alaskan yellow cedar and western red cedar mostly donated by John Blackmore. Frank Taylor and Frank Ramsay will be installing them on Friday, August 20 and have requested that anyone wanting to help show up there at 11: 30 AM.

Per Madsen announced the subjects of the upcoming meetings, handplaning on September 16th and setting up your garage workshop on October 21st. Per also made a request for people to help out with the activities of the program committee in deciding on subjects for presentations and trying to obtain presenters. He passed out a signup sheet for that purpose.

Harold Patterson announced the Toy Workshop for September 28th at Jamie's shop and requested volunteers to help makes parts that will be kitted up for assembly at the next workshop which will take place closer to Christmas. Harold showed some of the examples of toys that will be made including racecars, dump trucks, rolling crickets, and train whistles. Many of these toys need to have wheels turned so Harold asked for volunteers to turn wheels about 2 inches in diameter and ¾ inch thick.

The meeting adjourned at 9 PM. There was no raffle or door prize as Stan was unable to attend. People left less gruntled than usual as a result. We all missed Stan.