NPIC-AFS
January 17, 2008 11:00am - 3:30pm
EXCOM Annual General Meeting Planning Meeting
At the Lakeway Inn, Bellingham
Attending: Eric Knudsen, Jim Shannon, Mark Pederson, Keith Wolf, Chris Fairbanks, John Monahan, Ryan Vasak, Rachel Keeler, Julie Henning, Larry Dominguez.
Approval of previous minutes
Jim moved to approve the minutes from last EXCOM teleconference. Julie seconded the motion, and they were approved by acclimation.
AGM Planning
Eric introduced the agenda for the meeting. It was decided to delay officer reports until the next meeting due to time and to focus on getting details worked out for the AGM while at the venue. We started the meeting by touring the facility at the Lakeway Inn with a hotel representative, Jeff Gerhman. He showed us all the rooms that would be available for the conference. We worked on room design and where activities would go for each session, breaks, socials, posters, etc.
After the tour, we had a working lunch to continue the discussion on the facility layout related to the AGM program. After lunch, we broke out into groups by topics to work on details of each section of the AGM. After the breakout session we all reconvened to summarize what we had each worked on. Below is a summary of each breakout group discussion:
Administration/Registration-
Julie is leading this group. The Lakeway Inn will provide a secure room where we will be able to keep registration material, computers, and other items during the duration of the conference. The registration tables will be set up near the entrance of the hotel lobby. The hotel will provide tables and skirts for the tables to be used for the registration area. We will need email access, computers, and two printers for registration. Also, some boards would be handy to hang up announcements and signup sheets for various activities. Julie will make up a list of items to go into the registration packets.
Facility Layout-
Larry, Eric, and Ryan are working together on room layout selection, poster and exhibitor locations. Ryan will look into poster boards.
Program-
Larry has made significant progress on the program. He handed out a draft program and went over it with the group. The program includes 3 concurrent sessions and many new abstracts are coming in each day. Last call for abstracts will go out January 27th.
Media- We will need conference posters and printed programs. Jim S is in the lead.
Accommodations -
John offered to take the lead as the onsite accommodations chair. He will be the main contact with communications with the hotel staff. He will call the hotel about renewing the reserved rooms that are blocked of NPIC participates. Currently, the rooms are only held until February 4th. Julie will work with John on number of registrants and budget to help with ordering food for breaks and meals.
Socials-
We will have a welcome poolside social after the Monday afternoon Strategic Planning 2011 meeting with Wayne from the parent society. Tuesday night social will be the poster social, so Ryan, Eric, and John will coordinate the Tuesday social. On Wednesday night the social will start around 5:30 with a general welcome, awards, raffle and silent auction. After these activities are completed, Keith Wolf’s band will play live music. They will start around 6:30pm. Also, Chris suggested that we could have a magician at one of the socials. He would line this out. Jim is the lead on the Wednesday social. Chris, Jim, John, and Keith will work on obtaining raffle items.
Student Activities-
Rachel and Julie are the lead. Julie will coordinate all student volunteers and student waivers. There was discussion on student best paper and best poster awards. Details included when to give the award to the students and to give the award out during the meeting so they don’t have to wait until the following year. Also, we discussed having student presenters identified in the program. This could include having their names bolded in the abstract. Also, we will be looking for student judges to help score and decide who should get awards. We will not have a student social, as we will encourage the students to attend all socials and interact with the professionals at the meeting. Julie will contact Erin Lowry about leading student volunteers at the meeting.
Other AGM business-
There was discussion about organizing a field trip at the end of the meeting. Chris suggested the Port of Bellingham was doing a lot of work at their waterfront and may be interested in leading a field trip. He will contact them.
After the Fraidenburg training on Tuesday afternoon we will use the forum to introduce students and others to NPIC and try to recruit folks to participating in NPIC. Also, this may be the time to discuss student subunits.
A Spawning Run will be held on Wednesday at 6:45.
The focus after this meeting is to get a List Serve announcement by January 27, to remind people of the deadline for abstract submission.
We need a Student Coordination Committee chair because Chris Sergeant has resigned. Eric will try to find someone.
Meeting Adjourned 3:30pm.
