IEEE Foothill Section

EXCOM Minutes for June 2002

The following minutes capture the highlights of the Foothill Section Executive Committee (EXCOM) Meeting held on 6 June 2002 at the International House of Pancakes Restaurant (IHOP) in Upland, CA.

I. Call to Order 
The meeting was called to order by the Chair, Lyle McCurdy at 7:15 pm 

a. Quorum Review. 
A quorum was present. The following officers and guests attended the 
meeting: Lyle McCurdy, Keith Reno, Mike Sedlar, Bill Holbrook, Chuck Antoniak, Dick Webb, and Tariq Qayyum. Art Sutton was attending another meeting at Cal Poly. The Chair, Lyle provided a hard copy agenda with several attachments.

b. Approval of minutes 
Errors found in the minutes for the May 2nd meeting were: 1) Keith Reno's friends name is indeed Carol, 2) in item IIc, it should have said "...hosted by Dick Webb of Maury Microwave at Cal Poly", 3)in item IIe, the name "Eremita" was misspelled, and 4) in item IIf, "Disk" should have been "Dick"
The minutes of the May 2nd meeting were approved unanimously as amended with Chuck making the motion and Tariq seconding. 
The Secretary (Mike) also reported that as of May there were 1220 active members in the section. Since many of these members are "Life" members, Mike also suggested that they should be pursued as resources for volunteers.

c. Approval of Agenda--new items to add to the agenda? 
There were no items added.


II. Section and Committee Reports 
a. Section Report 

1. LAC report, Saturday 11 May 2002, Lyle and Art
Lyle provided a section report (page 2 attached to the agenda) which was essentially the same report as the one presented in Las Vegas.

2. WESCON update, Lyle and Art
Plans for WESCON are moving forward rapidly. See agenda attachments pp. 3-6. The council is encouraging sections and chapters to hold their Sept. meetings at WESCON. Lyle will be presenting a PSPICE workshop (see page 6 of the agenda attachments). 

3. WESCON/ECI Excess Funds Distribution, Lyle and Art
The section will get a cash refund from the excess money from previous WESCONs. This amounts to $1661 (see page 3 attached to the agenda for details).

b. Treasurer's Report. Art Sutton. 
Since Art Sutton was not present, there was no Treasurer's report.

c. Membership Committee Report, Chuck Antoniak 
Chuck reported that based on the numbers presented by the Secretary, membership was down 17 since last month. Chuck also remarked that student membership fluctuates quite a bit within the section.

d. Education Committee Report, Lyle McCurdy 
There was nothing new to report. 

e. PACE Report, Bill Holbrook
Bill reported that his PACE report was sent to Eremita on 4 June. ProDefCon will be held in Seattle March 29-30, 2003. Eremita has agreed to pay 1/2 of Bill's last expense report and then the section will pick up the remainder. The section provided Bill an advance on his money last month since the rebate from Eremita was slow in coming. Chuck recommended that we run a MPAC or SPAC in our section. There was discussion and agreement, but nobody stepped up to champion and organize such meetings.

f. AP/MTT Chapter Report. Chuck Antoniak and Dick Webb (new Chapter Chair)
Dick reported that a good speaker is needed for the topics of Microwave or Antenna theory. He will check the IEEE speaker list. Mike also suggested he review the speakers used by other chapters in recent months (published in the LA Bulletin) and consider covering the same topic with the same speaker in our local area. This strategy was used in the past to get good speakers for general section meetings.

Mike agreed to provide Dick with a list of the chapter members [completed via e-mail on 12 June]. 

g. Circuits and Systems/Electronic Devices Chapter Report Tariq Qayyum 
Tariq reported that a meeting will be held after school reconvenes; most likely in November. New officers were elected and school is out now so there is not much activity. 

h. Student Activities Report, Lyle McCurdy 
Still no additional awards have been sent out for the student leaders. Lyle reported that he got a rough sketch of how chapter, sections, and branches are organized (page 8 of the agenda attachments). We still could not figure out if we have a student branch or student chapter in our section. Lyle agreed to ask at the June 8th LAC meeting. We also would like to get a report of all students in the IEEE who attend our local schools, even if they are not in our geographic section. Lyle agreed to ask about this also at the LAC meeting.

III. Old Business 

a. Update on Catalina Boat Trip, May 18-19, 2002, Art Sutton 
Since Art was absent, there was no report

b. Update on Foothill Section Website, Bill Holbrook
Bill reported that he spent a lot of time to get a draft of our site to work under Netscape 4.7. This version of Netscape is preferred by IEEE headquarters and the LAC webmaster. Bill is now working on print problems and embedded picture problems. He needs feedback from the rest of the EXCOM and hopes to send out a draft for our approval soon. The committee questioned the cost of the site and how it would work; 1) do we get our own page on the IEEE server, or 2) do we use the LAC site and use Bill Jones as our Webmaster or what. Bill agreed to check into this more, but after talking to Bill Jones he prefers that we go through Bill to the LAC website.

c. Section Tech Meeting--Seismic Net Interpretation, Dave Perry
Still no definite word on when or where this meeting will be held. Dave Perry is working the issues, but could not attend our EXCOM.

IV. New Business 

a. Joint LAC IEEE E-Conference & Web Site Training, August 2, 2002 9-11 am and 2-3 pm, Lyle and Art
Lyle reported on this planned training meeting (see agenda attachment p. 7). The training will be on how to how a net based conference including how to set it up, etc. Using net conferences may be a way to get more of our members to participate in section and chapter meetings. There was a lot of interest in getting trained on this. Eremita will sponsor the meeting and hold it a SCE in Rosemead. A motion was made by Chuck and seconded by Bill to help sponsor the meeting including up to $300 of funding. The motion passed unanimously. The section will also help to advertise the event.

b. Ideas for new Section Activities; GOLD, SPAC, technical meetings, etc, All
We need some new ideas. There was concern that the section has only held one meeting so far this year and that was the joint ICES dinner in February. It was reported that Art Sutton has contacted Safetrans for a meeting, but we had no details of the plans. We will consider a PSPICE presentation in the Fall (Lyle would do it). It needs to be more than 1 hour (2-3 would be better). Mike agreed to check on hosting an October section meeting at Rockwell. Several members requested that we do a more detailed/in-depth technical presentation on DSL sometime soon. Chuck agreed to give an updated investment talk at WESCON. This could be on a Tuesday or Wednesday following the close of the general session and we could offer food. Lyle agreed to check into room arrangements including costs, etc. We will finalize the title, description, date, etc. at the next EXCOM meeting.

c. Set next Executive Committee meeting. 
The committee agreed that we need to get something scheduled for WESCON, and since the LAC Bulletin publishing date for a Sept. event is August 1, we need to meet before that and finalize an event. The group agreed to hold a Meeting on 25 July at IHOP.

d. LAC Meeting Saturday, June 8th 2002 at ECI building, 9am to 3pm
Lyle agreed to go to represent the section.

e. Other.
Keith agreed to be the Education Chair. Keith also asked that we add AWARDS to the agenda for next meeting. The topic of a yearly planning meeting was discussed and we agreed to talk about it some more at our next meeting.

V. Adjournment. The meeting was adjourned by the Chair at 9:18 pm. 

Recorded and submitted by; 
Michael Sedlar, Section Secretary 2002 
Please provide all corrections and/or comments to Mike as soon as possible.
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