Porto, November 2001 Board

Minutes of the board of Directors
25th-26th November 2001, Porto, Portugal

Present:   Jean-Francois Desnos, Jan von Knop, Ligia Ribeiro, Kristel Sarlin and Ivan Vrana

Excused: Jens Dørup, Yves Epelboin

The following agenda of the BoD was approved:

1. Check of Minutes from Prague and negotiation of proposals from Dusseldorf

2. Report of BoD members on completing their assigned tasks

3. Eunis Congress Porto

4. Strategy  for further Eunis activities

a. Cooperation betweenUCISA and Eunis

b. Employment of Ron Chisnall

c. European Issue/Part of Educause Quarterly

d. Financial issues of Berlin conference

e. Good practice – Eunis web services

f. Evaluation of eLearning Platforms (SURF)

5. Corporate Members Seminar

6. Secretariat

7. Task Forces

8. Eunis Academia

9. Miscellaneous

1. Check of Minutes from Prague and negotiation of proposals from Düsseldorf

• The BoD meeting organisers will send a bill to Eunis treasurer to reimburse costs which are not covered by the local institution: eg room rental, lunch,… In future, these costs have to be listed to the Treasurer befor the meeting.
• The BoD approved minutes from Prague.
• Proposals from Düsseldorf – approved with the following modifications:
  • Ivan Vrana has presented an archive structure and a list of filed documents at the Eunis secretariat. He should distribute this list to all BoD members. BoD members should send him further documents, which are not in this list and can be found in their individual archives.
  • Jean-Francois Desnos should deliver applicable information that the BoD needs on the French Association Law concerning how to operate a French registered organisation.
  • Tasks of the secretary were modified as follows:
    • The first contact point for all Eunis issues will be a Eunis-contact list, which should be forwarded to the Eunis BoD members and this contact point should be highlighted on the Eunis web pages.
    • She need not be available on phone daily and respond on e-mails daily.She will maintain the mailing lists for BoD, General Assembly, Task forces, members, etc.  The E-mail lists should be maintained by the web administrator.
    • She will maintain all official Eunis documents (receive, sort, file, archive, create cross reference)
    • She will perform also other administrative tasks according to instructions of secretary Ivan Vrana.
• Distribution of tasks and responsibilities in the BoD was extended as follows:
  • Jean-Francois Desnos should contact the French president of the European University Association
  • Jens Dørup: Deputy treasurer
  • Task forces – supervision by BoD members:

 

Andrew Rothery	Distance learning and e-learning
Viljan Mahnic *)	Eunis publishing house
Kristel Sarlin	Eunis Academia
Ligia Ribeiro	Information resources management
Jan & Ligia	Security and Encryption
Yves Epelboin	Eunis web & portal

*) in case he was coopted as BoD member, see par. 4c).

 

• • Eunis Survey: Kristel Sarlin is the responsible person.

2. Report of BoD members on completing their assigned tasks

Present BoD members reported about their activities. Absent BoD members reported in writing.

3. Eunis Congress Porto

Ligia Ribeiro provided BoD with a detailed information concerning:

• Time schedule
• Programme
• Organisational issues
• Finances
• Deadlines
• Campus facilities

All features of preparation were described very systematically and deeply and they were documented by a printed project. The BoD was very pleased and impressed by a high level of preparation activities, which promise that the Eunis 2002 Congress will be a success.

4. Strategy  for further Eunis activities

a) Cooperation between UCISA and Eunis: Jean-Francois Desnos informed BoD about:

• • His negotiations with representatives of UCISA leading to closer cooperation of UCISA with Eunis.
  • Willingness of Andrew Rothery to become the Eunis BoD member and to coordinate (by other tasks) that cooperation

The BoD decided to coopt temporarily Andrew Rothery to the BoD. This cooptation should be confirmed by the next General Assembly.

b) Employment of Ron Chisnall

• • The BoD evaluated employment of Ron Chisnall as useful for Eunis.
  • Jean-Francois Desnos should prepare a contract with Ron Chisnall for  year 2002 for delivering a monthly EUNIS newsletter. Jan von Knop will sign the contract and Ron Chisnall shall report to Ivan Vrana.

c) Educause Quarterly

• • Jean-Francois Desnos informed about his negotiations with Richard Katz concerning possible participation of Eunis in Educause Quarterly. Mathew Boyce from SCT promised to sponsor the EUNIS contributions. The BoD considers this an important Eunis activity. This project is conducted by JFD because of his personal contacts with SCT and EDUCAUSE.
  • Jan von Knop should write an official letter to Richard Katz and Brian Hawkins, Educause vicepresident and president, to facilitate this activity.
  • Jan von Knop should ask Viljan Mahnic about his willingness to participate in Educause publication activities and about his willingness to become a Eunis BoD member.

After a positive response from Viljan Mahnic, an electronic ballot will be used for his temporary cooptation to the Eunis BoD, which cooptation should be confirmed by the next General Assembly.

d) Financial issues of theBerlin conference

• • Porto University did not obtain from GINIT the financial prize of  €2000 for winning the EUNIS Award of Excellence nor did they get reimbursment of € 225 for the registration fee. Kristel Sarlin should check the same issue with Helsinki University of Tehcnology. Then Ivan Vrana should ask GINIT to complete their payments. Treasurer should reimburse the registration fee.
  • EUNIS is still waiting for the reimbursement of the prepayment of the Berlin conference flyers . Jan von Knop promised to reimburse EUNIS (5627 Euro).
  • Electronic proceedings from Berlin conference should be published on Eunis web.
  • EUNIS will not finance any new publication as a book of the proceedings from the Berlin conference.

e) Good practices – Eunis web services

Kristel Sarlin proposed that EUNIS could follow the example of Educause Effective Practices and Solutions EUNIS and start a member service activity which gives members a chance to publish on the EUNIS web good practices they have accomplished on their campuses. This was considered a good proposal. Contributions should be evaluated before publishing. No formal decision was made yet.

f) Comparison of eLearning Platforms (SURF)

Kristel Sarlin told about an eLearning Platform comparison made by SURF. The report is currently available in Dutch only but SURF is negotiating with UCISA about a translation into English. A preliminary agreement about the possibility to utilise it also within EUNIS was discussed with Tom Dousma from SURF at Educause. Kristel Sarlin will make a follow up on the matter.

5. Corporate Members Seminar

• The BoD agreed that there will be a half-day  Corporate Member Seminar + dinner in Porto on June 19.All BoD members are expected to suggest proper contact persons from Corporate Member organisations.

6.  Secretariat

• Discussed during point 1.
• The president informed present BoD members, that there was a preparatory meeting of president, treasurer and secretary, where the following rules and procedure for access, manipulation and archiving of financial documents were proposed to be adopted:
• All documents should be accessible to president.
• Operative financial documents should be maintained and archived at the treasurer place and copies of selected ones should be sent to the president.
• Documents of general character (like budget, balance, contracts,…) should be archived in Eunis secretariat.

Proposal was approved by BoD.

7. Task Forces

In addition to discussions  during point 1, Jan von Knop wished that there could be a meeting between the Task Force leaders in the beginning of year 2002. Jens Dørup and Ivan Vrana should look at the possibilities.

8. Eunis Academia

The BoD agreed on the costs and possible profits of the EUNIS Academia preconference seminars in Porto.

Kristel Sarlin will contact potential speakers.

9. Miscellaneous

• Ivan Vrana should propose a design of Eunis official paper.
• Ivan Vrana should propose a design of business cards for BoD members according to data (content) they should send him.
• Jean-Francois Desnos will address Corporate Members and encourage them to pay their membership fees.
• Kristel Sarlin should prepare a proposal of change of Eunis Statutes, which should implement membership of universities as a new (additional) form of membership.
• Jan von Knop informed BoD, that Eunis will be co-organising conferences in Moscow and Modena (Euromedia 2002 on 15.-17.4.).
• There will be an ERASMUS conference in Rotterdam in September 2002. Jan von Knop and Ivan Vrana will contact the organisers to see if EUNIS could be visible there.
• The deadline for proposals for the EUNIS Award of Excellence will be March 1, 2002 .
• The BoD will act as an editorial board for EUNIS publications in the proposed EUNIS Publishing House.
• There should be at least one BoD meeting per year. Additionally video conferencing possibilities should be developed. Jens Dörup and Jean-Francois Desnos should continue their experiments.
• At the Porto conference there will be a BoD meeting on 18.6. morning and a General Assembly in the afternoon 18.6.
• The choice of the sites for further conferences should be made as soon as possible.

Recorded by Ivan Vrana and Kristel Sarlin Last updated . 12/18/2001