1.   President O'Connell welcomed the attendees.

2.   The agenda of the meeting was approved.

3.   The minutes of the previous meeting (January 24, 2004) were corrected and approved.

4.   President's Report. (Brian O'Connell)

(a)   February TAB Meeting

Brian O'Connell has been appointed to the IEEE Publication Services and Products Board. They are discussing open access as a possible publishing option. Access to publications would be free, but authors would pay to be published. There would be provisions for independent authors to get published without paying the fee. There is a bill in Congress that would have the government pay to have all government work put on the Web. The IEEE staff is worried about this. The Publication Services and Products Board will be looking at this.

(b)   CPSR Agreement

(See Attached) A sister society agreement with Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) was discussed. Sister society members can subscribe to our magazine for two dollars more than SSIT members pay, and without joining IEEE. Other societies such as ASME and the Association of Internet Researchers may be brought into this. The president has approval to approach Mary Cullen at IEEE to check on the details of this.

(c)   IEEE PSES Co-sponsorship

The IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society is forming and will have a meeting in Santa Clara in early August. SSIT agreed to be technical co-sponsors of this. Brian O'Connell will be one of the speakers. Joe Herkert may also speak at this meeting.

(d)   Other Items

Clint Andrews is running for Division 6 Director.

Gene Hoffnaggle has formed a New Technology Advisory Committee. The committee is concerned with keeping IEEE attentive to the opportunities to use or become involved with new technologies as they arise. Brian O'Connell is a co-coordinator of this committee. Byron Newberry will be asked if he wants to become involved. Clint Andrews will continue his involvement with energy policy.

IEEE-Announce can be used for broadcast announcements. All relevant e-mail addresses are now here. All members of the SSIT Board of Governors as well as others are here. Directions on how to use this will be sent to those already on it.

SSIT needs a new Division 1 representative.

5.   Past President's Report (Clint Andrews)

(a)   Japanese Chapter

The Japanese chapter wants a visitor to speak at one of their meetings. The BOG previously (Jan 24, 2004) authorized $500 for Clint Andrews to add Japan to the itinerary of his upcoming trip to China. This has been done, and Clint will lecture and do dinner and other things with the Japanese chapter in Koyoto, May 29.

(b)   Irish Chapter

Clint Andrews got e-mail about a chapter starting up. He will answer back.

(c)   Institute

The Institute called Clint Andrews and interviewed him about our membership growth. They also talked to Steve Unger. The article about this is expected to appear over summer.

(d)   Membership Offer

We are ready to e-mail IEEE members that checked off a box indicating that they are interested in joining SSIT. Last year 296 members took up our offer for a free 1/2 year membership. About 40 of these have stayed on as members this year.

(e)   ISTAS 2003 Proceedings

The proceedings publication needs to be pulled together. Hayden Rochester has agreed to do this. It is still a very thin proceedings. May not meet the 100 pages that we promised; it is closer to 50. Judge Sheldon might contribute a written version of his talk. Other people might add other material.

6.   Treasurer's Report (Carl Stephan) (See Attached)

There are 743 members in arrears, perhaps mostly those members we gained through the 1/2 year free offer. There appears to be no crisis in membership.

We ran a surplus of $60K in 2003. $30K of that was taken away by IEEE infrastructure charges. But we are building a surplus. Also we got an infrastructure rebate.

Should we decide on a line item in the budget for BOG member trips for giving talks at meetings? Discussion: Some support should be given to officer's travel. Perhaps there should be a committee to review travel requests. It would be nice to have a uniform policy. We may need to involve IEEE accounting in this. Carl will consult Brian Wilson (IEEE) about this and will report back at the next meeting.

Motion: Allocate $3000 each for Joe Herkert and Brian O'Connell to attend and speak at the PSES Symposium in Santa Clara. (See item 4 c) Approved.

Motion: Allocate $2000 each for Jerry Engel and Brian O'Connell to travel to Los Angeles to visit Marymount University for planning for ISTAS 2005. Approved.

A presidential contingency fund might be a good idea so that the president could react quickly to opportunities. The treasurer will talk to other societies and Brian Wilson to see what is a reasonable arrangement.

Motion: Approve member rates for 2005 of $24, non-member rate as recommended by IEEE, $26 for IEEE members but not SSIT members. The page count for Technology and Society to remain the same. Approved.

7.   Publications Report (Michael Loui) (see attached)

(a) Technology and Society

The magazine has been redesigned. There have been several favorable comments about the new design. Nine papers have been submitted this year. The special issue for ISTAS '04 is on track. We should know soon if there is enough material for a full issue. The schedule for special issues has been rearranged.

(b) Electronic Newsletter

The newsletter is working well.

(c) Web Site (and other topics)

The Web site has been updated. Some of the suggestions from the previous BOG meeting have been incorporated in it. Other features are planned for the future.

Discussion: Should we create a CD that contains all past SSIT publications? It would be well-indexed, and contain PDFs of all papers and proceedings. Investigation of this is delegated to the Publications Committee.

Discussion: We should look into making sure that everything is available in IEEE Xplore. We might have to pay to get issues earlier than 1987 included.

The next Presidential message in S&T will be about opportunities for volunteers within SSIT.

(d) IEEE Press Proposal (Joe Herkert)

The IEEE Press has asked SSIT if we want to co-sponsor a book, Case Studies in Engineering Ethics. The author is Gail Baura, who has published with IEEE Press before. The book reviews a series of engineering disasters, some well-known, others not. The author states that there is no other such book written by someone with an industrial background. There are three levels of sponsorship; for each level we agree to we get 1% of the proceeds.

Motion: Create an ad hoc committee to review for decision the IEEE Press proposal. Approved. The committee members are Joe Herkert, Jerry Engel, Michael Loui, Carl Stephan, Clint Andrews, Janet Rochester. Bradley Kjell agreed to create a PDF of the book proposal and IEEE Press agreement and to e-mail them to the committee.

8.  Conference Reports

ISTAS 2004, Worcester, MA. The conference will be held at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. There are 30 or so registrations at this time. There are a smaller number of papers than we would want, but there will be panel discussions.

ISTAS 2005, Los Angeles. Loyola Marymount University will host this. This might be held. June 9 and 10, 2005. There is also an ASEE '05 conference on the West coast the week before this. The June T&S will announce this, perhaps.

Hydrogen Economy Conference, Washington, DC. SSIT is co-sponsoring this. It looks good. There are several prominent speakers: Jeremy Rifkin, U.S. Rep. Robert Walker. Clint Andrews will speak and may write a paper on the topic.

9.  Committee Reports

Nominations. A slate will soon be needed.

Fellow Nominations. Jerry Engel, Steve Unger, Bob Newcomb are presently on the committee. Jerry will have to leave the committee next year since he will be busy with the Computer Society and has a conflict of interest.

Membership. See the treasurer's report.

Chapters. The MIT chapter is active again. There is a new chapter in Phoenix at the University of Arizona. There may be a Connecticut chapter that meets with the Education chapter.

Virtual Communities. IEEE has created a virtual community for us. We need to start using it. It can be used for general discussion, board of governors business. How do we get it started? It is unmoderated, but users must be allowed in first and need to be SSIT members. There is space for files that members can download.

Society Development Committee. (See attached.)

10.  Old Business

No old business.

11.  New Business

A student has a paper accepted for ISTAS 2004 but has no money to go. Should SSIT sponsor the student? Most members said not. We should think about an SSIT student scholarship to sponsor students in such cases. This will be discussed further at the next meeting. Perhaps there should be a separate registration scholarship fund and a travel scholarship fund. The recipients would be determined by competition. Could we put this into the MOU for Marymount? Perhaps one of the sessions should be a student paper and awards presentation. Competitors would not be required to be SSIT members. Membership would be part of the award.

The September BOG meeting is likely to be in New York City. The December meeting may be at Loyola Marymount; perhaps this will be done in conjunction with chapter development. We may try to find a speaker. This may be on the 4th or 11th of December, 2004.

12.  Next Meeting

The next meeting is on Saturday, June 19, 2004 at ISTAS 2004 in Worcester, MA.

14.  Adjournment

The meeting adjourned at 2:40PM.

Attendees at the Meeting
NAME	AFFILIATION	EMAIL * = @
Clint Andrews	Past President	c.j.andrews*ieee.org
Terri Bookman	T&S Managing Editor	t.bookman*ieee.org
Gerald L. Engel	BOG	g.engel*computer.org
Joe Herkert	Editor of T&S	joe_herkert*ncsu.edu
Bradley Kjell	Secretary	kjell*ieee.org
Michael Loui	Publications Chair	loui*uiuc.edu
Brian O'Connell	President	oconnellb*ccsu.edu
Janet Rochester	BOG	j.rochester*ieee.org
Karl Stephan	Treasurer	kdstephan*txstate.edu