The Minutes of the 1st Tele-Conference of the Steering Committee of OCAIR Year 2000-2001

Taken by Ruan Hoe

Jing: We have probed and tested three E-comm alternatives—Dialpad, Instant Messenger Service (IMS) and NetMeeting (NM). Meihua has put a lot of work in it. At this point, one of the major concerns is whether IMS will take people away from our Listserv. If that is going to happen, we don’t have a place to assemble and post.

Ruan: At this point, I don’t see any interference that reduces the volume of traffic on the listserv given that quite a few of us are using IMS note. IMS kind of compensates the shortcomings of Listserv.

Larry: Agree with Ruan.

Meihua: The advantages of using IMS lies in the convenience of consulting colleagues, sharing and presenting our work, problem-solving with the capability of instant communication. The down side of IMS is if it is overused, people won’t get their work done.

Jing: Yes, that is right. It should be used with member’s discretion. One thing for sure is that it won’t replace the Listserv since IMS won’t allow us to do the posting to the whole group as a bulletin board. But it adds a personal touch to our communication. If we don’t have further questions, we shall be able to roll it out next week. Larry is going to provide with technical support when it is needed.

Ruan: Jing and I have talked about the membership form since we don’t have a systematic way of collecting our membership information at this point. We decided to call the form membership form instead of membership registration form since we don’t want to make it sound like it is a requirement for membership. Let me share with you the form I have put together*.

(*Note: Due to technical difficulties in sharing the form displayed on his desktop with the other Steering Committee members, Ruan is requested to send each of the SC members a copy for review. Discussion is due to follow).

Issue Three: By-law Amendments, DC Symposium $500 Small Grant Report, Beijing Conference Small Grant of $400 Report.

Brian Hu: Robert Zhang posted a proposal of amendments to the by-laws earlier this year, but nobody responded.

Jing: The procedure should be that the leadership makes the calls for proposal for the by-law amendments. It is not the leadership’s job to propose amendments for members to concur with or approve. We need to make it clear that it is the members’ choice whether they want to make amendments to the by-laws or constitutions. Brian, can we send out calls for proposal by August 15**.

Brian: I will.

(**Note: After the Tele-conference, due to the higher priority given to the IMS roll-out, the SC decides to postpone the call for amendment proposal to a later time in the fall.)

Jing: We need to report to the members on the DC Symposium Grant of $500 and Beijing Conference Grant of $400.

Brian: I thought we had reported the DC Symposium Grant to the SC and we did not need to report to the whole group.

Jing: Yes, we need to report the expenditure of the grant money to the entire group. Will you please dig up the report on the DC Symposium Grant and send it to the group?

Brian: Yes. For the Beijing Conference Grant, we need either to redirect the money for some other causes, or return the grant to AIR since the group seemed lack of interest in the conference. OCAIR needs to discuss where we want to spend the money on other causes if not Beijing conference. Otherwise, the grant will be returned to AIR.

Meihua: Let the group decide whether to return the grant or not. It should be the group’s decision only.

Jing: Does AIR allow us to re-direct the grant?

Brian: I don’t know. Let me check with AIR to see whether we can re-direct the grant first. If the answer is positive, we will ask the group how we want to spend the money.

Ruan: Yes, it makes sense to ask AIR first to see whether they allow us to re-direct the money before we talk about where to re-redirect the money.

Jing: Ruan and I have done a search on newsletter editor. The candidate turned down our offer because of personal reasons. Now we have to decide how to find a newsletter editor for this year.

Meihua: Why can’t we have one of our SC members to do the job? If we can get the group approve this practice, we don’t have to do a search for newsletter editor every year. I suggest we have SC member at-large as newsletter editor.

Jing: What do you think, Larry?

Larry: How many issues do we put out?

Jing: Just one.

Larry: OK, I will do it.

Meihua: I will propose an amendment to the by-laws for this arrangement when amendments are called for.

Jing: Based on the SC discussion earlier this week on electing Bill Knight and David Cheng for AIR officers, I sent a message to the group concurring with the group that we ask our members to nominate these two candidates for the positions as VP of AIR and Data Policy Committee Chair respectively. Anything else should we do in the AIR officer election?

Brian: We should encourage members to continue our active involvement in the AIR regional affiliations.

Meihua: Yes, it should be a long-term goal of OCAIR to make our presence to the AIR. At this time, it should be low-key as we have discussed earlier and we should take one step at a time.

Jing: Ruan will send reminders to the group when the voting time comes.

The End of the Tele-Conference