Unofficial Minutes of Second BuckCHI Steering Committee Meeting 1/8/96

Craig Oshima (webedited by Gary Perlman)

Table of Contents

This is (maybe) NOT the official minutes from the Jan 8th steering committee meeting. I'll leave that to someone who took better notes than I did. This is more to document our action items and outstanding questions (but since we didn't specify anyone to post minutes, maybe this'll do).

In attendance:

Lorraine Normore, David Ranson, Susan Roth, and myself (Craig Oshima)

We accomplished a number of things:

  1. We agreed to call ourselves BuckCHI (what a kewl name!) =-)
  2. We agreed to keep annual dues low ($15 voting members, $10 students).
  3. We went over the Bylaws to resolve various policy decisions.
  4. We continued discussion about topics for meetings.

Next Meeting:

Doh! We forgot to officially set a new meeting date, but Lorraine, Susan, and I informally decided (in the parking lot) to meet again in 2 weeks. We have a room reserved for Jan. 22 7-9 at CAS. And if the 22nd doesn't work for someone, let us know.

Specific stuff and action items:

I will follow up on a question we ran into about voting procedures. Specifically, whether we can conduct elections via electronic mail where possible (a big convenience, but is it acceptable?). Stay tuned.

David is verifying the voting eligibility of student members of ACM...we suspect such members cannot vote, which means students cannot run for office (ACM wants all officers of local chapters to be voting members of ACM). We created a student position on the executive council (Student-at-Large) but in retrospect, executive council is getting kind of large (8 people). We may want to reconsider, since students *are* eligible for the 3 committee chair positions. I don't know...let's talk about it next time.

David should be forwarding a list of possible topics for chapter meetings (most of them conceived by him in what I can only assume must have been a fit of productive creativity). Take a look at them, let them slosh around in the brain for awhile, and we can discuss new ideas or insights at the next meeting.

David and Kevin's list of names and addresses of potential members is also coming along nicely, and David should be forwarding that as well. If you have any additions, let him know.

Finally, I'd like to propose a change to the Bylaws as we discussed. If you were there, please read this and let me know if you disagree with the change. I'll be sending the Bylaws to Gary at the end of the week, so before then would be great. If someone disagrees, that's fine, I'll just leave things as they are.

Under "Article IX - Temporary Committees", we had agreed to list a Nominating Committee. An alternative listed in the template suggests that this function can be assigned to the Past Chair. I'd like to do that rather than form a committee. Advantages include the Past Chair's understanding with the requirements of the positions, and a streamlined organization. Disadvantages include additional work for the Past Chair (anti-motivation to serve), and potential for abuse of position (since a Nominating Committee as suggested by ACM must be 2/3 non-executive council...a "people's majority" that will be lost if the responsibility is assigned to the Past Chair). Personally, I don't imagine the second disadvantage will be much of a problem.

When the Bylaws are posted (either Gary or I will notify this group), please review them, and we can discuss any concerns at our next meeting. We made a lot of decisions about our organization, so it'll probably be worthwhile to briefly review them all at the next meeting.

Thanks for the effort, everybody! We're making progress!

My email address

One more bit of info. I recently left the world of CD-ROMs at Metatec Corporation behind (Dec 29th), and will be entering CompuServe's Web Engineering group in their internet division (Jan 15th). In the meantime, be sure to send email to my Central Ohio Internet Link address (coshima@bronze.coil.com) rather than my Metatec address. I'll let you know what my new address will be when I find out.

A page of contact information for the BuckCHI Steering Committee can be found at http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~perlman/BUCKCHI/steering.html.