Electronic Meeting Version
The purpose of this document is to provide guidelines for the electronic submission of meeting reports. This document will be revised periodically to reflect the baseline capabilities of Region 3 Executive Committee (Excom) and Region Committee members' e-mail.
The report should be reflect plans, activities, and concerns for the area. The report should be condensed to be the equivalent of one typed page wherever possible.
It is expected that all members of the Region 3 Excom Committee will provide written reports at each of the three Executive Committee meetings. Additionally, reports are expected from all Region 3 Committee Members at the annual Region meeting held in conjunction with Southeastcon. To facilitate effective use of limited meeting time, these reports must be electronically distributed to members ahead of the actual meeting. Keep in mind that members will need time before the meeting to read your report. The agenda for the meeting contains a submission deadline which members should conform to so that the Excom will have a good meeting.
The electronic version of the agenda will contain links to a web version of your report. The Region 3 Secretary will keep the agenda up-to-date as e-mail reports are submitted.
Since the meeting is electronic, paper reports are not accepted.
Try to condense your report to the equivalent of one text page of information.
Consider the e-mail message (not the header) to be your report. Add a header to the top reflecting your topic. Some folks seem to have mail systems that don't render what you see for the To:/From:/Subject: and thus you are not communicating what you think you are.
Take whatever actions you need to on your mail system to make sure that your e-mail is readable on systems that render your text without adding any "newlines" (carriage returns) that are not in the mail message. (In other words, make sure paragraphs don't end up one long line.)
Don't use tabs in your mail message, they don't work the same on everyone's machine.
If you need to create tables or lists where you have indented lines or any other kind of formatting, be sure to type your message in a fixed width font (like Courier) so that what you align with spaces has a better chance of being aligned when you send it.
Try to avoid attachments wherever possible. Some members' mail systems can't handle attachments at all. Also, not all members have the same tools for reading attachments. Especially avoid attachments for your base report which should be in the body of the e-mail message.
Try to avoid any expectation on where pages breaks appear for folks who decide to print your e-mail. Various things effect this and controlling it is difficult. Probably the "best" system is to use courier, limit your lines to 65-76 characters line, and limit lines per page to 59 lines. It would also be a good idea to announce on the first line of your mail message that you are obeying this convention if it is important that the document print well.
New: If you wish to supply a "formatted" version of your report in HTML (HyperText Markup Language) used on web pages, please feel free to do so. However, please send it ONLY to the Region 3 Secretary and change the subject of your mail to have "(HTML)" on the end of it. Send an ASCII text version of report to the Region 3 Excom alias and the section alias.
Written by David Green,
1998-2001 Region 3 Secretary
Last Update: Monday, 28 December
1999 by dgg