Minutes of the board of Directors
23rd June 2009, Santiago de Compostela, Spain

Present: Jean-Francois Desnos (Chair), Yves Epelboin (past President), Javier Franco, Markku Kuula, Jan Madey, Viljan Mahnic, Martin Price (Executive Secretary), Ligia Ribeiro (past President), Kristel Sarlin (past President), Peter Tinson and Hans Dieter Weckmann.

Apologies: Lars Kayser, Andrew Rothery, and Robert Sultana.

1. Approval of Minutes of 4 October 2008.

The Minutes of the 4 October 2008 meeting were approved.

2. EUNIS2009 Conference – last-minute issues.

There were no last-minute problems to resolve. Javier Franco reported that approximately 250 people had registered for the Conference.

3. Executive Secretary.

The President reported that Kristel Sarlin had agreed to take over as Executive Secretary of EUNIS when Martin Price retires at the end of EUNIS2009. The Board approved Kristel’s appointment.

4. Membership.

It was reported that the following institutions and organisations had joined EUNIS since the Board’s meeting in Santiago de Compostela in October 2008.

Full Members:

Aston University (UK)
Open University of Catalunya (Spain)
University of Reading (UK)
University of London Computing Centre (UK)
Wroclaw University of Technology (Poland)

Total: Full – 134; Corresponding – 4; Corporate – 9

The Board discussed how to persuade EUNIS members to pay outstanding annual fees. It was agreed that the Treasurer should send reminder invoices to non-payers after approximately 2 months. In early January the Executive Secretary should write to institutions to confirm the name of their representatives and ask for payment from those who still had not paid. It was also suggested that a brief statement of EUNIS activities in the previous year should be sent to members with invoices to show the benefits of continuing membership.

It was agreed that an up-to-date list of paid members should be sent to Conference Organisers shortly before registration for events opened. They would then be able to check who was eligible to pay at discounted member rates.

Martin Price agreed to finish tidying up the current membership list before handing it over to Kristel Sarlin.

The Board discussed dealing with requests from members for financial help to attend EUNIS events. It was agreed that, as a matter of principle, EUNIS should not set aside a budget for this purpose. If such requests were made, it would be for the local organisers to decide on a case-by-case basis whether they were able to help or not.

5. Finance
a. Accounts 2008-9

The Board received a Statement of Accounts as at 19 June 2009 from the Treasurer. It was noted that an invoice had not yet been submitted for hosting the E-Learning Task Force meeting in Paris in January 2009.

b. Budget 2009-10

The Treasurer presented a draft budget for 2009-10. Some additional expenditure was approved by the Board, namely “accounting assistance” for the Treasurer and “secretarial help” for the President. It was also possible that the web manager might need some technical help, but more web content was required first.

c. Membership Fee

The Board agreed there should be no increase in the membership fee rates in 2009-10. It was noted that an increase would be needed at some stage in the future.

6. EUNIS Elite Award for Excellence

The panel of judges had received 3 entries for the Elite Award, but reluctantly decided not to recommend any for the Award for 2009. Although some projects submitted were good they did not fully conform to the rules of the competition.

The Board discussed whether the EUNIS Elite Award should continue, and agreed that it should. In future the rules should be specified more carefully. It was also suggested that an earlier announcement of the competition might attract more entries. And an earlier deadline for submissions would allow the judging panel more time to consider their decision.

7. EUNIS2010 Conference

The Board confirmed that the next annual EUNIS Conference will take place in Warsaw, Poland from 23 to 25 June 2010. The traditional day of workshops and tutorials will be held on 22 June. Jan Madey has arranged for an overlap with a Polish national conference on 23 June. This would probably encourage more delegates from Poland to attend EUNIS2010.

Subject to availability of members of the new Board, the next meeting of the EUNIS Board will be held in Warsaw on 3/4 October 2009.

8. Future EUNIS activities

The Board discussed two proposals for future EUNIS workshops. The first was a proposal from Oracle to host an event in Brussels on the subject of research management. The second was an invitation from CINECA for EUNIS to take part in a workshop in Bologna in October 2009, where a topic related to the Bologna Process was proposed. Some informal discussion had taken place beforehand to explore whether both events might be combined. The Board welcomed the possibility of holding these events, but had serious doubts about organising speakers etc in time for October. Past experience had shown it was extremely difficult to contact people in July and August, so it would not be possible to make firm arrangements before September. This would be too late to advertise an event taking place one month later. With reluctance the Board felt that EUNIS could not agree to an October 2009 date, but would suggest deferring the event until March 2010

8. Future EUNIS Conferences

Following a message to the EUNIS membership there had been five expressions of interest in hosting future EUNIS Conferences, from :-

  • Vedran Mornar & others (University of Zagreb, Croatia)
  • John Murphy (Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland)
  • Arsenio Reis (UTAD, Vila Real, Portugal) firm interest in bidding for 2011
  • Noel Wilson (University of Ulster, Belfast, Northern Ireland)
  • Christian Zuffery (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland)

The Board welcomed the interest shown and agreed to ask all those concerned for a more detailed proposal. In particular it was important to know precisely where the Conference would be held, and how easily delegates would be able to travel to the venue from all points of Europe.

Further discussion on the location of the EUNIS annual Conference for 2011 onwards was deferred until the next Board meeting.

10. Actions from previous meeting
  • Amend and distribute Guidelines (see Item 12)
  • Follow up non-payment of fees (see Item 4)
  • Present Accounts and Budget in same format in future (done)
  • Arrange Elite Award competition 2009 (see Item 6)
  • Invite Peter Tinson to lead ICT Performance Indicators Task Force (done, but only recently)
  • Arrange EUNIS Top Concerns Survey (not done)
  • Invite bids for future EUNIS annual conferences (see Item 9)
  • Discuss Research Management workshop with Oracle (see Item 8)
11. EUNIS Task Forces
a. E-Learning Task Force

With regret the Board accepted Andrew Rothery’s resignation from the Task Force for personal reasons. It was reported that Gill Ferrell (JISCinfoNet, UK), who is chair of the Dørup E-Learning Award judges, had agreed to take over as convener of the Task Force. The Board approved Jill’s appointment.

b. RS3G Task Force

The Board agreed a new Task Force to be led by two representatives of corporate members – Jonathan Dempsey of Digitary and Simone Ravaioli of Kion.

12. Guidelines for EUNIS Conference organisers

The latest version of the Guidelines was received. It was agreed that some sentences should be added about requests for financial help from members (see Item 4 above). Ligia Ribeiro offered to check on the rules for bidding for EC funding in such circumstances.

 

Martin Price
Former EUNIS Executive Secretary
28.9.2009