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Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

IEEE-Kansas City Section

ExCom Meeting

April 16, 2007

Attendees: Dick Hodgman, Chris Zugelder, Debby Dilks, Mark Lamendola, Bill Ritter, Fred Granville

Action Items:

1. Dick Hodgman asked everyone to look over the budget in the next month and get back to him with comments. 
2. It was suggested that Dick talk to Shiva about planning for succession in the Communications Society. 
3. Bill will give Debby a link to the ByLaws for posting, so the ExCom will have had the requisite notice.

Action Items still Open from March:

1.      Dick asked Imran for a breakdown on the interest rates if we don’t want to put all of our excess money in the stock market.  OPEN

2.      Dick said that he planned to go to the Region 5 lunch and see what our budget should look like. OPEN

3.      Debby will ask Vishwa, Alex and David the status of their monthly meetings along with Chris Zugelder for the September GOLD meeting. The PES still has a June meeting to set up too.  Still working on this

4.      Imran said that the Reach out to Community committee had not met yet, but will after April.  Open

5.      Dick said that the Governance of Section committee had not taken any further action on, but that they need to follow up on what a couple of people were already working on.  We need Dave Kasper to send links for the Professional credit hours information.

6.      Dick asked Bill to post a request for By-Laws changes on the Community and let people comment on it.  Done, but Bill will post a revised ByLaws with Procedures and open it up for discussions

7.      Dick asked Bill Ritter to put together a trip report when he comes back from Congressional Visits Day. Open

8.      Mark will post the request for input from the membership on congressional issues in the Newsletter.   Open. We need to have the information two weeks in advance and the next one will be next week.  It comes out every two weeks.  Dick asked Mark if he could post the submittal deadlines on the website.  Mark said that he needs three or fours days to prepare the items.

9.      Dick will write up a description for the Program Arrangements Chair and get it to Mark to post on the newsletter. Open

10.  Mark needs to write something up for the newsletter to advertise the Webmaster position but send it to Dick first. Open. It is a Publications Officer and is the same thing for any organization.

Call to Order: After it was determined a quorum was met, Dick Hodgman called the meeting to order.

The March ExCom Minutes were posted on the Communities March 22, 2007 and all corrections were made based upon input members posted on that site.

Chris Zugelder made a motion that the March ExCom minutes be approved and Mark Lamendola seconded. Motion carried and the March minutes were approved.

Treasurer: Imran Pishori: Report thru March 31; Draft of 2007 budget

Imran was not present at the meeting, but Dick Hodgman took a look at the financial reports on line and they appear to be in the same state as the month before. Bill Ritter asked if there were any indications of deposits made. No 

Dick Hodgman posted a draft budget on communities earlier today and asked if anyone had read what he posted.  It is a high overview of expenses and income.  Same range as last year.  [A copy of the draft is attached at the end of this document.]

Dick Hodgman asked everyone to look it over in the next month and get back to him with comments.  Bill Ritter said that we need to earmark $1500 this year and next year to be held in reserve for someone to go to Sections’ Congress.  We should have $1500 from last year ready to go in the account now.  Dick asked that we put the budget under old business for next month.  He wants to give the ExCom an idea of how much money we get and where it goes.

Section meeting status:

May 17: Annual Banquet: Dick Hodgman, Section Chair

 All is in order for the May meeting.  Bill Ritter is the speaker and he will speak on Holloman High Speed Test Track (HHSTT). Dick Hodgman has the forwarding set up, sent himself a message and the notice went out.  All seems to be working work well.

June 21: Power Engineering Society: Vishwa Soni

Vishwa was not in attendance, but Debby said that she received an e-mail from him saying it was already posted on the website.  And it will be on: The Gordian Knot of The Grid: FERC, NERC, ERO, RRO, RTO, and hosts of others.

July 19: Engineering Medical & Biomedical Society OPEN AI: Alex Freeman

Debby reported that she had an e-mail from Alex in March saying that he is still

working on it and would get back with her soon.

August 16: PACE: David Kasper OPEN AI: David Kasper

Debby also sent a couple of e-mails to David but has not had a reply.  Chris will

e-mail Dave and see if we can get that going.

Standing Committee reports:

Nominations committee: Dr. Ken Vollmar, chair

Dick said that he has not heard from Ken Vollmar and doesn’t have a report.  Bill said that it is approaching the start time for committee functioning.  He thinks it is in May or June, so it isn’t that far off.  Mark said that was correct and it is in May and needs to be resolved very, very soon.  We need dates set for the 2008 monthly meetings too.  The Computer Society has two programs set up, but we need everyone else to get theirs.   Are we going to conform to the same dates?  We could go with the second Thursday of month and avoid Thanksgiving.  Fred asked if anyone was aware of any potential conflicts.  Wyndham has been very accommodating.  They are convenient to the highways for members out of town and the $17 cost includes all gratuities with a minimum of 23 plates. That is very reasonable.

Dick said that he didn’t see a problem with second Thursday meetings.  I’d like it posted on that on the Communities and ask for comments from everyone instead of just assuming it will be ok to move it to the second Thursday of the month.  The question came up, if the Power Society feels like they weren’t supported at the past meeting.  They wanted to move their meeting to March, but we already had a March meeting set up.  They also wanted to get support to holding their meetings at other times at the Wyndham.   We should ask Gary Ingram about their feelings. He would know about it.  Mark said that we should just put that question to them and find out.  Or maybe they just aren’t attending the monthly meetings.  Fred said that we should send an e-mail to the heads of the societies and affinity groups to see if they have a concern with changing the days of the monthly meeting.  It would be nice to have a direct response.  We could send them an e-mail telling them about it on the Communities and then open up a discussion. We could ask if they are aware of any conflicts for their members.

Ad-hoc committee reports:

2008 Region 5 Conference: Prof. Ghulam Chaudhry, chair

In Ghulam’s absence, Debby reported that they are putting together a PowerPoint to present to Region 5 this week.  Dick asked about the online registration.  Bill said that Bob Scolli agreed that it would be ok and on the cost.  There are a couple of people from Denver that will be at the meeting this week so we could meet with them and see what we can do.  Bill asked Chris if he has talked to anyone from Cvent and he said no.  Bill said that he could just wait until he goes to the meeting.  Bill said that IEEE thought they would have a system up this summer, but it won’t be ready so that is why we are going with Cvent.  Bill also mentioned that Debby brought up moving the SPAC to Friday because students and advisors can’t go to it and the competitions on Saturday.  He thought it was a good idea especially because it freed up some rooms on Saturday.  So that should be even better.

Reach out to Community: Imran Pishori, chair

Imran was not present at the meeting.

Communications: Bill Ritter, chair

Bill said that people are still learning when to use the Communities and how to use them.  Concerns were raised on the confusion the Communities creates trying to open documents.  Dick said that if it takes more than 2 minutes to open something, he will wait to do it later.   Dick expressed concern on having a much broader time to vote.  We could make it five working days or wait until five working days before the ExCom.  The whole idea was to take the voting and reviewing of the minutes off of the ExCom meeting time.  Fred said the bigger issue is where the best repository is for the minutes, if it is the Communities then it would be worth the extra minute or two to bring it up and read it.  Where do we want to store these minutes?   Mark said that the section website is set up to be where people go for information on the section.  The Communities is a tool for us to use.  To have it as a repository for anything that belongs to the section is wrong.  It is open for anyone to read.  I don’t mind having a link for the Community to the website, but it shouldn’t be the place for these documents.  Bill said that we should have a notice the day after something is posted on the Community.  Dick said that he stayed up late doing the agenda and the budget last night, but he didn’t see a notice on the Agenda today.  Bill said that it should send out a notice if he beat the deadline getting it posted. If it is midnight on the east coast though, it would be 11 p.m. here.  Dick said it was after midnight, but if he had a deadline that says must be done by 11 p.m. for posting the next day, he would have done it.  But the notice didn’t go out.  We will continue having two separate areas that have the minutes posted for now until we get this worked out.  Dick said that he went on line as a visitor it assumed he was on Eastern Time.  That is another rough spot.  Chris didn’t we run into this problem before and it was because we didn’t list our time zone in the preferences? But Dick reminded everyone that he came on as a visitor and it needs to adjust every visitor to the Central time zone because everyone on our site should be located in the Central Time Zone.  Bill said it does have both time zones shown.  Dick asked if it can be changed so that our section and everyone access our section would show to be in the CST.  Dick said that this could be a barrier to using the Community.  We want it to come back with a time zone for where the meeting is being held. If you log in a as member then everything is all right.  It is only when you don’t log on and enter as a visitor.  Only Excom members have linked to the Communities, however.  The Region 5 community has over 140 members in it.  Dick asked that 140 out of how many members in the region 5, isn’t very much.  Bill said that it is still larger than the ExCom.

Governance of Section: Dick Hodgman, chair

Dick said that he got a message from Mark saying that he had managed to fill all of the open positions for Computer Society.  He is an example for all of the other societies.  Mark said that he tells people that when they take an office, it is a two year commitment and it seems to work very well.

Doesn’t the Communications Society have some openings posted on it?  Yes, we have had people to fill them that are not IEEE members, however.  It was suggested that Dick talk to Shiva about planning for succession in that society.  You have four spots to fill. When asking for Vice Chair, tell them what you are looking for in next year’s chairman.

Menu Committee: Debbie Dilks, chair.  We need to take this off of the list.

Old business:

ByLaws: Bill posted the Bylaws on the Communities and had a good discussion with recommendations for changes.  Dave Readio had a good comment. Bill said that he can use those and put up a revised statement on the Communities.  Dick suggested not to make it to long, make it short and simple.  A lot of the words would be the process procedure but not specifically a part of the ByLaws. Dick asked Bill to put together a draft to set up a procedure and the ByLaws. We need a motion for a change to the ByLaws at the next ExCom and we are posting it on the Communites now for discussion and comments.  Bill will give Debby a link to the ByLaws for posting, so the ExCom will have had the requisite notice.

Open positions in KC Section societies

            Already discussed that in Governance.

ExCom minutes voting procedure

            Aready discussed that under Communications   We discussed more time to vote and using e-mail.  Dick noticed it takes several steps to find our way in there.  Can we put some of those things on the front page or somehow make it easier for us to use a single click to get where we need to be. Is there a way for us to customize it ourselves?  The R5 Community has been customized, so maybe we can do the same.  Debby suggested that if we even just have headings like Meetings and Agenda it would help to make it easier to find the minutes, etc.

AIs from February 15^th ExCom not addressed above;

Action Items:

1. Dick Hodgman will put together a formal budget for the KC Section with Imran. See above
2. Dick asked Imran for a breakdown on the interest rates if we don’t want to put all of our excess money in the stock market.  OPEN
3. Dick said that he planned to go to the Region 5 lunch and see what our budget should look like.  OPEN
4. Dick has a write up on the May program from Bill and will get it sent in for the website. Done. Closed.
5. Debby will ask Vishwa, Alex and David the status of their monthly meetings along with Chris Zugelder for the September GOLD meeting. The PES still has a June meeting to set up too.  Still working on this
6. Dick Hodgman would like to get a report from Bill Ritter back in a month on how the Community is working for the 2008 R5 Conference Committee.  Bill said it is working to a point, but not as good as it could be.
7. Dick would like the 2008 R5 Conference Committee to have one successful teleconference before the next IEEE-ExCom.  Done
8. Dick said that IEEE needs to tell us what “up and running” involves by August. Closed
9. Imran said that the Reach out to Community committee had not met yet, but will after April.  Open
10. Bill said that the Communications committee hasn’t met as a committee yet, but they have used the community to review the minutes, discuss them, vote on them, had two funding request pass with a motion that was seconded and then voted on both of them, etc.  Closed.
11. Dick said that the Governance of Section committee had not taken any further action on, but that they need to follow up on what a couple of people were already working on.  We need Dave Kasper to send links for the Professional credit hours information.
12. Dick asked Bill to post a request for By-Laws changes on the Community and let people comment on it.  Done, but Bill will post a revised ByLaws with Procedures and open it up for discussions
13. Dick asked Bill Ritter to open up a discussion on the Community to ask for input from the membership on issues they would like for him to present when he attends the Congressional Visits Day. Closed
14. Dick asked Bill Ritter to put together a trip report when he comes back from Congressional Visits Day. Open
15. Mark will post the request for input from the membership on congressional issues in the Newsletter.   Open. We need to have the information two weeks in advance and the next one will be next week.  It comes out every two weeks.  Dick asked Mark if he could post the submittal deadlines on the website.  Mark said that he needs three or fours days to prepare the items.
16. Dick will write up a description for the Program Arrangements Chair and get it to Mark to post on the newsletter. Open
17. Mark needs to write something up for the newsletter to advertise the Webmaster position but send it to Dick first. Open. It is a Publications Officer and is the same thing for any organization.

New business:

1. The PACE annual meeting is Friday through Sunday of Labor Day weekend.  It would cost $1000 to send a representative.  David Kasper is PACE chair and needs to request to go, then the sum can be allocated by ExCom., 

Fred Granville moved and Chris Zugelder seconded to close the meeting.

Submitted by,

Debby Dilks

(Attachment 1)             IEEE Kansas City Section, USA, Region 5

Draft Budget, 2007

Version 20070416, submitted by Dick Hodgman, section chair

April 16, 2007

Colleagues,

The next meeting of the Kansas City Section, IEEE Executive Committee is scheduled for Monday, April 16, 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM, by conference call. Dial toll-free 1-888-813-8477, Enter the participant passcode 149312. In the interest of finishing on time, we will start promptly at 12:00.

Those of you who must arrive late can submit reports ahead of time to Dick Hodgman dick@hodgman.org, Section Chair, or Debbie Dilks dilksd@umkc.edu, Section Secretary, to be read at the meeting.