18 October 2004
The 15 October 2004 meeting of the Virginia Council was called to order by Adeeb Hamzey, Vice Chair, at 7:00 PM in the Hilton Atlanta Airport & Towers, Atlanta, GA.
Present were:
A quorum was established upon the arrival of Sean Haynes.
The Secretary's report from the 11 September was approved.
No treasurer's report was received. At this time, Carlos Whaley has not picked up the treasurer's books from Adeeb.
The Section Reports were all received, posted, and discussed at length.
While no report from the awards committee was received, we discussed the decline of the Virginia Awards Committee. Without these awards, there is limited opportunity to acknowledge outstanding individuals at the state level. All agreed we needed to create our own state level recognition to be awarded at appropriate section level events. If these awards paralleled the Region 3 awards sufficiently, then winners (and even strong runners up) could be forwarded along to the Region 3 awards chair for consideration. The timing of our awards process should support the 1 December deadlines of the Region. Specific recommendations for structure should be provided by interested parties by our next meeting.
The communications report was reviewed as posted. Ralph Russell indicated that there is an IEEE IT help desk you can reach by telephone by calling the main number and asking for the help desk. He had a very positive experience with them when he was having some IT problems. Bill Clayton agreed to make sure the members present received TWiki training at the Saturday Communications training session.
The quarterly membership report will be presented at the next meeting.
The previously reported November PACE workshop turned out to be a Portland section workshop that Adeeb attended as part of his Region 3 responsibility. The PACE workshop included a look at the out-sourcing of high tech jobs and how members can prepare themselves for the changes this will bring about. IEEE USA is lobbying to influence policies that will reduce the impact of these changes. The next PACE event for Virginia Council sections will be held in Tucson, AZ in April.
The council approved a motion to create a single ad hoc Pre-College Technical Education committee to coordinate the efforts of the Girl Scout Project, the Boy Scout Jamboree, and eMeritbadge.com. These projects are currently working together on a number of initiatives.
The council noted that John Cross sent out the announcement for the Children's Engineering Convention 2005. John is encouraged to register our Girl Scout Project by the 1 November 2004 deadline.
Sections are reminded to consider donations to the Sections Congress 2005, which will be held in Tampa Florida. Region 3 would like to report 100% participation by their sections and suggests a $2 per full member contribution. Contributions can be made in any combination of 2004 and 2005 money.
Dave Bower presented public information highlights.
John Twitchell reminded us of the 1 December deadline for Region 3 awards.
The meeting was adjourned until 4 December 2004.