Minutes of the IEEE Consultants Network – Kansas City Section
12/4/2002
Minutes
of the last business meeting (held on 11/6/2001) were approved.
Membership:
Membership applications were collected for calendar year 2003.
Officer Elections:
The group nominated and elected officers for
2003. The officers for 2003 are as
follows:
1)
Chair
– Ted Atchinson
2)
Vice
Chair/Treasurer – Jack Cussen
3)
Secretary
– Fred Granville
All present expressed their appreciation for the
efforts of the 2002 chair, Ted Atchinson.
Old Business:
The group discussed several items of old business:
1)
The
group elected to table a motion to hold a national or regional Consultants Network
meeting, based on the general feeling that such a meeting would place an undue
burden on our relatively small membership.
2)
The
group agreed to amend the current bylaws to allow email voting.
3)
The
group agreed that we should send an email to the KC Chapter IEEE membership
regarding the benefits of membership to the Consultants Network. Dale Rummer agreed to accept this
responsibility.
4)
The
group agreed that we should provide a $50 gift certificate from Borders to our
speakers. A motion was made to approve
this expenditure and the motion was approved.
5)
A
certificate recognizing the KC Chapter of the Consultants Network as an IEEE
Affinity Group was displayed. Affinity
status was achieved in late 2001 and maintained throughout 2002. The certificate was presented to Fred
Granville at a recent Kansas City section meeting. Our Affinity Group status for 2002 entitles us to $180, which we
have not yet received. There is an action
item to talk to the necessary parties to ensure we receive this amount.
New Business:
The group developed a tentative calendar of events
for 2003:
1)
February
20, 2003 – Consultants Network hosts the KC Section Meeting (Speaker responsibility – Fred
Granville) (Note: This meeting has been cancelled due to an
already full Engineering Week program.
We anticipate that it will be rescheduled for later in the year.)
2)
April
2, 2003 – First Educational Event (11:30AM – 1:00PM at the Wyndham Garden
Hotel)
3)
October
1, 2003 – Second Educational Event (11:30AM – 1:00PM at the Wyndham Garden
Hotel)
4)
December
3, 2003 – Business Meeting (evening)
5)
Networking
Lunches - First Wednesday of each month from 11:30AM to 1:00PM - beginning
March 5, 2003 at Annie’s Grille at the Overland Park Marriott (Tippins may be
used as an alternative for later lunches.) Note that networking events will not
be held in April and October because we are hosting educational events those
months.
Proposed meeting topics for educational events
include security, working styles, and networking. Tentative speakers include Danielle Rodenbough from Trouble at
Work and Denise Hamilton from DMH Global.
All events will be posted on the web site. An L31 meeting report will be filled out and returned for each
event.
The group discussed the requirements for membership
to the KC Consultants Network. It was
suggested that we review the bylaws to ensure we fully understand the
requirements. We determined that our
target market for membership growth is the existing IEEE KC Chapter membership.
The group discussed the benefits of membership for
members of larger consulting firms. It
was noted that there are several IEEE members who belong to large firms who
have expressed an interest in membership.
As part of our effort to raise our profile within
the KC Chapter, news items will be mailed to Mark Lamendola for inclusion in
the KC Section newsletter. At a
minimum, this should include all meeting notices.
The group agreed to establish closer relationships
with the ICCA and SME. We will do this
by distributing their meeting notices to our membership and providing
information regarding our meetings to them for distribution.
We should approach Denise Hamilton of DMH Global to
see if she is interested in working with us.
The group discussed several aspects of the web
site. Fred Granville noted that there
are several benefits to leaving our web site where it is – under the KC Chapter
web site. First it doesn’t cost
anything. Second, we are readily found
in the major search engines. Don Wolf expressed
a different view, stating that in the long run it would show a higher degree of
professionalism and autonomy if we hosted our own site with our own domain
name. It was also noted that the IEEE
would host some classes of sites for free.
The group agreed to table any action regarding the domain name and
placement of the web site for now.
The group did agree that the web site should be
updated to make it “friendlier” for prospective clients. Fred Granville agreed to do this work and
make it available on a Linux test server for review by the group.