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Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

IEEE-KC Section ExCom Meeting

May 15, 2007

IEEE-KC Section ExCom Meeting

May 15, 2007

Attendees: Dick Hodgman, Bill Ritter, Vishwa Soni, Fred Granville, John Fessler,

Debby Dilks, Imran Pishori, and Dave Kasper.

Action Items: 

1. Imran Pishori needs to send the copies of the deposited checks from the February meeting and ask the bank where they are. He will follow up with Wachovia banking to see where it is at.
2. Imran Pishori needs to send out a confirmation e-mail to everyone when he gets the checking account problems resolved.
3. Debby Dilks will call Alex Freeman to see if she can get the July meeting notice information.
4. Dick Hodgman will call Ken Vollmar to find out about the status of the Nominations for Officers next year. Dick will also ask him to look into the webmaster and newsletter positions.
5. Debby Dilks should write up a short column for the newsletter on the volunteer positions needed to fill for the 2008 conference.
6. Imran Pishori will work on the Reach Out to Community Committee.
7. Bill Ritter and Fred Granville need to get together to see if the Community can be made more user friendly.
8. Dick Hodgman needs to work on the Governance of the Section Committee.
9. Dave Kasper needs to send links for the Professional credit hours information.

Quorum was met and the ExCom met at 5:13 p.m.

Debby posted the minutes on the Communities.

Dick Hodgman said that action Item #6 [“Mark needs to write something up on the newsletter to advertise the Webmaster position but send it to Dick first.”] was now his to do, instead of Mark’s.

Imran Pishori moved and John Fessler 2^nd the approval of the minutes as corrected.

Treasurer, Imran Pishori gave the Treasurer’s report and asked what happened at the meeting in April. He was told that it was the Computer Society’s meeting and they handled collecting the money themselves. It is anticipated that Michelle Marshall will take a more active role as treasurer of that group.  

Currently we have $24,500 in checking, not including the Power Engineering Society’s funds. The Investment fund has $24,694. Imran asked, “Should we do something with interest rate? How much money do we need in checking?” If there is a better rate in the investment fund then go with it. “Do we have an idea of how much from R5 we have coming?”  We need to establish an account for the 2008 conference. The money will come from the Section. The 2008 Conference Committee needs to decide when to set that account up. We need a treasurer established. Debby asked who we should ask to be treasurer. We can ask the Section at the meeting tonight and/or Region 5 if either one has a recommendation for treasurer of the conference. We will set up a separate concentration banking account just for the conference. The Conference may ask for $1000 from the section, but needs to submit a financial plan to the ExCom for funding and present the plan; then we can authorize the transfer of money. Bill Ritter mentioned that money has already been spent from the section for the conference - like travel expense and teleconference. We really would like to have someone from the section be the Treasurer, so let’s see if we get any recommendations from the Section.

Imran said that he needed to track down earlier deposits from earlier meetings, because they are not all showing in our account. All funds have been deposited and he has proof of that, but he is missing the February statement. He said that he deposited the funds from February, but the deposit account is different than the checking account. The next action is to send the copies of the checks and ask where it is. Imran Pishori will follow up with Wachovia Banking to see where it is at. No deposits came through. Dick Hodgman received some messages back from the audit of 2006, but they just updated the L50. The PES wasn’t included in the L50 that Imran Pishori submitted. Next time Imran needs to include that amount because their assets are a part of the section’s assets. Imran Pishori needs to send out a confirmation e-mail to everyone when he gets this resolved.

3) Section meeting status:

We have Vishwa Soni’s meeting notice for June, but we are still missing July, August, and September. Debby will call Alex Freeman. Dave Kasper doesn’t have a commitment for the PACE meeting yet in August.  He asked if anyone was going to the KU presentation. Vishwa said that he will be going and Dave Kasper will go to see if Tom Boling or some of the others will be a speaker at the PACE meeting. He said that he believes it should be a professional development or political meeting rather than technical.

Bill Ritter talked with Nancy Boyda at the program in the Pittsburg area and said that they need to have section help getting the industry down there to publicize their job notices at Pittsburg State and asked if the section can help. Randy might but he wasn’t at the meeting to give his input. She would like to have a connection to keep them in Kansas to recruit. Dennis Moore has been pretty accessible too. He might speak.  Bill tried to get them to give a written statement of what they want, but August 16 is a tough date.

Chris Zugelder said that he is working hard to get the description of a program for the September meeting ready.

Mark already has the October meeting set up for the Computer Society.

Standing committee reports:

Nominations Committee: Ken Vollmar didn’t say if he was coming to the meeting and Dick Hodgman e-mailed him saying he didn’t have to do the work himself. We need more than one person doing it. Dick said that he needs to call Ken Vollmar. He is late right now with the nominations of people willing to serve in the elected offices next year. Dick will also ask him to look into filing the webmaster and newsletter job.

Ad-Hoc Committee Reports:

2008 R5 Conference: Debby Dilks and Bill Ritter gave the 2008 Conference Committee report. We are still looking for a location for the Wednesday tutorials holding 75 people. Bill said that R5 wants to standardize all websites. Dick Hodgman said we have the doer’s prerogative. There were some questions about who will collect the money.

Debby should write up a short column for the newsletter on the volunteer positions for the 2008 conference.

Reach out to Community: Imran Pishori hasn’t done anything yet with this committee, but plans to very soon.

Communications committee: Bill Ritter hasn’t done anything this month. Dick asked him and Fred to get together to see if the Community can be made more user friendly. The position is open for the Webmaster and Newsletter and we need to get someone to do those. We also need to clean up the Communities to make them more user friendly.

Governance of the Section: Dick Hodgman hasn’t done anything on that.

Dick Hodgman gave a recap of what happened at the R5 Conference in Fayetteville, Arkansas. He said that a hot topic with IEEE was immigration and IEEE’s position on it. The President of IEEE USA (John Meredith is the IEEE USA president) said their position on the H-1 visas are that they are very exploitive and IEEE’s position is to offer an easier route for the green card and give the applicant the latitude of finding other jobs. They discussed a point system and prioritizing education and training over family rights. So a greater emphasis will be on advancing education for engineers.  Congress is passing some bill today on non-professionals.

Dick said that the three people running for the office of President in IEEE – gave presentations and stood for a question and answer session afterward. It was a great chance to get to know the candidates better.

Imran asked if he could put the IEEE membership chart that Dick brought to the meeting on the door tonight for the monthly IEEE meeting.

Past Action Items were addressed here.

1. Dick Hodgman asked everyone to look over the budget in the next month and get back to him with comments.

Dick said he assumed the budget looked ok since no one got back to him.

Dave Kasper asked if Dick got to talk budget with anyone at the R5 conference.

2. It was suggested that Dick talk to Shiva about planning for succession in the Communications Society.

Dick has not talked with Shiva yet.

3. Bill will give Debby a link to the ByLaws for posting, so the ExCom will have had the requisite notice.

We will table talking about the ByLaws. Bill Ritter created a very detailed outline for the budget with a line by line item on the budget but we may prefer a cost and income budget.

Dave Kasper moved to adjourn and Fred Granville 2^nd.

Respectfully submitted by:

Debby Dilks

Secretary