YOU HAVE THREE NEW MESSAGES. FIRST VOICEMAIL:

“Hey, it’s Hand Eye. Last night was wilddddd. We’re about to start the annual general meeting at Electric Perfume, where are you? Okay, call me when you get this. They’ve got these cute baby tomatoes, I’ll try to save you some.”

SECOND VOICEMAIL:

“*whispering* Heads-up, I ate all the baby tomatoes, but it’s really your fault for not being here. I mean, we all meet only once a year, c’mon. Call me asap!”

THIRD VOICEMAIL:

“Hey! We missed you last weekend! So yeah, the Hand Eye hivemind achieved singularity in the east end last Saturday. It’s pretty cool, all our limbs and brains combined have been totally impressing all the hot Artificially Intelligent locals. Anyway, we wanted to tell you all the cool stuff that members and the public talked about at the meeting; basically this is what happened:”

OFFICIAL BIZ

–Sagan Yee was officially announced Hand Eye Society’s new Executive Director, taking over from co-founder Jim Munroe. Jim will continue to work with Hand Eye in a fundraising and partnerships position.

-Current employees: Technical Lead Ken Cho and Community Manager Al. Game Curious Coordinators last year included Krystle and Kadeem.

-Our Safer Spaces Policy is being revamped; staff and volunteers can expect internal equity training and anti-oppression resources.

-We’re always looking for volunteers and folks who can help in varying capacities, including: workshop facilitation, technical and computer equipment maintenance, and copywriting. If you have access to a car or have a SmartServ license, let us know!

-We’ve gotten funding to create a database of Toronto videogames! We will update as it develops.

PROGRAMMING

-Events we held last year: Comics vs. Games, Harbourfront pop-up arcade, Society Ball, Wordplay, and many more! For a full recap of what we did in 2015, check out our blog post.

–Continuing programs: Game Curious, which focused on workshops with kids in North York and Scarborough last year, will be at Ryerson University for our Spring iteration. Like our Toronto Reference Library program, Game Curious at Ryerson will be free to the public, ages 14 and up.

–YYZ Gameshow, our webseries on Toronto game culture, is up and running. You can check out what’s been released so far on our YouTube channel. Attending members watched the premiere of a new segment, which will be up online very soon.

-We’re looking for storage and possibly permanent homes for the Torontrons! Let us know if you have any leads.

–New programs: Hand Eye Society will be holding more workshops and events geared towards developing skills for game developers. If you’ve got an idea or want to get involved, let us know! As a soft launch for a monthly meetup tentatively called Game Dialogues, we held a night of videogame talks last Tuesday at LabTO. Subscribe to our mailing list and keep an eye on this blog for the next one, to be held late March!

-In April, the Spotlight Game series will be ending. If you have ideas for what should take its place (some at the meeting suggested a Let’s Play series), let us know!

DECISION-MAKING

Members in attendance made the following decisions:

-Approved accepting 2015 financial statements and utilizing an accountant. We are in our final year of Trillium funding.

-Voted in new Board Directors Shaun Hatton and Chris De Castro, to replace exiting directors Alex Jansen and Miguel Sternberg

-Held a discussion on conflict of interest pertaining to board members’ exhibiting work which will be taken into account for a pending decision.

You can read the full AGM 2016 minutes here!

And that was that! If you missed our lovely faces, you can catch us all at Hand Eye’s Spring events.