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Board Meeting Minutes |
Page updated: June 8, 2009 |
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SIGUCCS
Open Board Meeting
3/30/2009
Nashville
Present:
Board Members - Tim Foley, Leila Lyons, Karen McRitchie, Patti Mitch, Alex Nagorski, Bob Haring-Smith, Christine Vucinich, Kelly Wainwright
Non Board Members - Gail Farally-Semerad, Gale Fritsche, Pat Kohrman Richard Nelson, Jamie Richardson, Leila Shadbender, Terry Wolfe
Spring 2009 Symposium Report
Diane Jung outlined the efforts her committee made to get people to the symposium. She summarized our speakers’ program and our minimal vendor efforts. She discussed the difficult economic times which had reduced the number of attendees this year but felt overall we did pretty well with the numbers that we got. She felt that we had a very strong program and that she had a great committee to work with. She also pointed out that we had backup presentations ready in case speakers did not show up. Organizationally, she felt having co-tracks chairs was a very good idea and should be continued if possible. Gale Fritsche distributed copies of current budget and reviewed it. The budget has a $19K deficit which included the 10% contingency fee, the 16% ACM fee, and the 10 comped registrations (5 for the grantees, 2 for the board, and 3 for the speakers). It was pointed out that we had reduced our room block penalty by increasing our food spending which saved us around $3500.
Spring 2010 Symposium Report
Pat Kohrman reported on the spring symposium in Victoria, British Columbia. The theme for next year is "IT: A Beacon for Innovation and Growth". The "Save the Date" card has been placed in this year's symposium packet and was designed so that symposium attendees could also mail it to colleges. Nancy Bauer and Leila ShadBender our co-Program chairs for next year. Both Nancy and Leila have extensive experience with conferences, Nancy with SIGUCCS and Leila with Resnet. Mike Yohe will continue to do registration and will be shadowed by John Lateulere. Gale Fritsche is continuing on as treasurer. There will be a BOF on Tuesday to get more volunteers for next year's symposium. A site visit is being planned for the May - June time frame. Pat would like to see if one of the keynotes could be from Canada. There was a question about our CTE contract and Bob agreed to get that moving so we could have it in place for someone from CTE to be part of the site visit. There was a discussion of the cost of traveling to Victoria and it was thought that going through Seattle and taking a ferry to Victoria may be the most economical way from the States. The symposium website will have a FAQ area to discuss methods of getting to Victoria. People will need passports so we need to get the word out to all about the symposium early. There was concern about having another deficit for the spring symposium and the board reiterated that our efforts should be on the quality of the symposium and that the board had a substantial reserve account.
Combining the Spring and Fall conferences
Richard Nelson outlined his thoughts about combining the spring and fall conferences into consecutive conferences run at the same time of the year. He felt that it would be nice to bring teams (including management and staff) to the conference to work on a specific topic such as planning documents and that this may be a way to justify the trip. He likes to attend both conferences but many times cannot so he attends the spring while sending his staff to the fall conference. The board had already discussed this issue at the closed board meeting. A survey of the membership will be sent out regarding this issue. The spring symposium evaluation will also include a few questions on this issue.
If we decide to not combine conferences we need to determine a good location for the 2011 spring management symposium and submit a PAF to ACM. Leila Lyons thought that it would be nice to target it for a campus location that has hotel facilities on campus like the 2008 spring management in Tucson. Richard Nelson mentioned Georgia Tech as a possibility. Leila Shadbender mentioned that Resnet held their conferences on college campuses and used the college residence halls for the attendees. She also pointed out that this was a lot of work for the hosting institution.
Fall 2008 Conference Report
Terry Wolfe reported that the conference report was sent to the board and that the conference had a small deficit. He mentioned that they would have been in the black if he did not have to comp the registration fee for the grantees. The conference evaluation comments were mostly positive. He stated that he had a great committee to work with and that running the conference was a lot of fun. He also noted that the on-site people did a great job. He pointed out that the daily newspaper was popular. He stated that for next year the committee was batting around the idea of using clickers for the evaluations. There was also a discussion on the individual session evaluations. It was noted that these were mainly to provide feedback to the presenters. Patti talked about possibly making the evaluation form more user friendly. There were a number of people who complained about turning off wireless during the sessions. It was also reported that wireless would not be turned off next year. The wireless access was paid for by a vendor which saved the conference $4000. There were also complaints about the slowness of the internet connections and Terry pointed out that hotels do not usually have the network infrastructure to handle a computer conference with its networked attendees who have laptops and PDAs looking for wireless access. The number of papers submitted this year has decreased by 25%. Terry thinks it may be a trend for a couple of years due to the economy. The paper submission was also thought of as a possible reason for us having trouble getting more submissions. For many people this is the first time that they are required to write a paper for a conference proceeding. Everyone agreed that this was an important part of the Fall conference and should continue next year. Terry thought we needed to work with first time presenters to improve their presentation skills. Terry will be working on getting all the presentations on a key drive and to eventually get them on the web. There was a discussion about the stands and posters from the fall conference and trying to track them down.
Fall 2009 Conference Report
Gail Farally-Semerad and Karen McRitchie are co-chairs and Jamie Richardson is the treasurer. They are excited about the conference in St Louis and trying new things such as Facebook and Twitter to market the conference. They wil be changing the format to single session and some discussion sessions on given days which will be of like expanded BOFs and similar to the spring symposium's facilitated discussion sessions. Jason Young talking about Customer Services is one of the keynotes. He will also be doing a workshop. Cynthia Golden VP at EDUCAUSE is the other keynote talking about IT Professional development. The gala with be at the St. Louis arch in the basement of the national monument. They are planning on having an R&B band at the opening reception. Jamie reported on the finances and they are looking at TRMF again to try to cut expenses without hurting the conference. They have confirmations from the vendors for about $12k. This has been with little effort since the vendors are finding us. Karen stresses to vendors that this is an invited vendor conference and not a heavily attended vendor conference which may be a plus for some vendors.
Fall 2010 Conference Report
Kelly reported that Melissa Bauer will be the conference chair. The two co-program chairs have been selected. (Kelly could you add their names). They are still looking for a treasurer. Conference planning calls will be started shortly and they are also just starting to plan their site visit to Norfolk, Virginia.
Board reports
Alex reported that we had a $378,000 surplus in the SIGUCCS account. Alex was concerned about the number of conferences that had been in the red in the last few years. He felt that we had to try to control the board expenses which were about $24,000 per year. He pointed out that we needed to finalize the budget for 2010 which needs to be submitted to ACM. He stated that the current numbers look much better than the original budgets. There was a discussion about possibly discounting conference registration fees or providing group discounts to increase our numbers. There was also a discussion about possibly extending early bird registration and it was pointed out that this needed to be coordinated with the hotel. Another possible way to save money was to get vendors to sponsor or provide the projectors for the conferences. Alex thought that we might get a better deal if we went through a national vendor to get projectors. It was also suggested to possibly buy 5 projectors or have ACM buy them and check them out.
Workshops
Karen reported that the fall conference had 8 workshops with 102 participants. The spring symposium's executive seminar had 17 attendees with 12 paying and 5 grantees. Karen pointed out that next year's fall conference will have 6 workshops instead of 8.
Information Management
Patti is working with the ACM history project. It looks like we will be able to use an online database that will allow each person to update their own profiles. Patti pointed out that this will be very useful since all the information will be in one place and it will also be useful when we are trying to determine awards. The database should include non SIGUCCS and non ACM members. Work continues on upgrading the SIGUCCS web-site with a target go live date of this summer. Patti will also be evaluation if our marketing efforts our getting us new members. She would also like to see Google analytics to identify the states that we should be targeting in our marketing efforts. There was some discussion on permissions needed to place people's photos on the SIGUCCS and conference web sites. Christine will follow up with Irene Frawley to see what their policy is.
Marketing & Conferences
Christine talked about the marketing plan that she and her committee have put together and sent to the board. She pointed out how they designed the "Save the Dates" cards for this year's symposium with the hope that attendees will send them to someone they know. She discussed the “SIGUCCS Ask me Why?" pins. The marketing committee is asking members for testimonials about SIGUCCS for the web site. She passed out the SIGUCCS marketing pens. Karen McRitchie will be sponsored by the board to attend Resnet in Minnesota to promote SIGUCCS. A flip camera will be used in a drawing at Resnet. There was a discussion on the need to focus on members renewing their memberships as well as marketing our services to new members. Richard Nelson thought having some branded clothing with ACM and SIGUCCS logos might make good marketing material. He thought they could be used as speaker gifts. He has had experience doing this with a company called CafePress.com. There was a brief discussion about whether or not ACM would have any issues with their logos being used in this way. The marketing committee will be sending out a survey to members next month. We talked about the "Each One Reach One" program and possibly giving members an incentive to get other people to join. Christine suggested sending the "SIGUCCS Ask Me Why?" button in USA mail but board decided not to send it out. They felt it could be distributed more cost effectively at our conferences. A few possible incentives were discussed to get people to sign up for SIGUCCCS such as a free workshop or possibly giving people a ACM SIGUCCS shirt if they got someone to join SIGUCCS. Kelly suggested that the marketing committee ought to have some targeted goals to measure themselves and their activities such as trying to increase our membership by a set percentage. Business cards or possibly a sticker to put on ones business card was also discussed for committee and board members. Christine suggested having a pin as part of a welcome package that would come from Bob when people joined or renewed their membership. The differences between ACM and SIGUCCS memberships were outlined for Leila Shadbender. It was pointed out that we need to know when people sign up SIGUCCS. Christine and Patti will try to get access to the current SIGUCCS membership list from the ACM website. Alex suggested having one or two prizes that would be given as part of a drawing for people who got someone to join SIGUCCS. There was a discussion about our members’ only listserve and our public listserve and most agreed that the public listserve was the busiest and should continue to be open to the public.
The site selection process for our conferences is done by the board in conjunction with ACM. The board makes a recommendation to ACM of a region of the country that we feel would be appropriate and ACM returns 3 cities and possible hotels in that region. The hotel contract is negotiated by ACM.
Comments and contributions may be sent to the Information Director at infodir_SIGUCCS@acm.org