Santiago de Compostela, June 2009
GA
Minutes of the general assembly
25th June 2009, Santiago de Compostela, Spain

Present:

The President (Jean-François Desnos) took the chair. There were 28 member representatives and guests present.

1. Welcome and Registration of Representatives

The President welcomed new colleagues to their first meeting of the EUNIS General Assembly. Representatives of member institutions and organisations registered their presence at the meeting.

2. Report on EUNIS activities 2008-9

The Executive Secretary (Martin Price) led a review of EUNIS activities during the past year.

There were now 148 paid up members of EUNIS from 29 countries in Europe, plus Israel, Kazakhstan and USA, a modest increase since last year.

The Chair of the EUNIS E-Learning Task Force (Andrew Rothery) sent apologies for his unavoidable absence from Santiago. For personal reasons, and with great regret, he would be standing down from all EUNIS activities with immediate effect. Fortunately Gill Ferrell had agreed to replace Andrew as Chair of the Task Force.

The EUNIS ELTF held a one-day meeting in January 2009 at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris, kindly hosted by Yves Epelboin. It was attended by more than 20 members.

The Task Force work is undertaken by 8 working groups, several of which were reporting on their activities at sessions during EUNIS2009. The working groups are:

EUNIS Dørup E-Learning Award
E-Learning snapshots
E-Learning Case Studies across Europe
Future of E-Learning 
Virtual Worlds 
E-Learning Platforms
E-Learning communities
Online repositories for E-learning

There had been an informal meeting of persons interested in E-Learning during the the Conference, and a further Rask Force meeting was planned for early 2010.

A new EUNIS Task Force had been approved by the Board earlier in the week, the RS3G Task Force, which would be led by representatives from two EUNIS corporate members, Kion and Digitary, Simone Ravaioli and Jonathan Dempsey. There were also discussions about two more Task Forces, for ICT Performance Indicators and SUN Microsystems.

3. EUNIS Executive Secretary

It was announced that Martin Price would be retiring as Executive Secretary at the end of June 2009. His successor would be Kristel Sarlin of Helsinki, Finland, a founding member and former President of EUNIS.

4. Financial Report

The Treasurer (Markku Kuula) presented the EUNIS Accounts for 2008-9, which showed a slight decrease in the overall balance of funds in hand to €104,702. The General Assembly formally approved the accounts.

The Treasurer also presented a proposed Budget for 2009-10.

The Treasurer reported there would be no change in the annual membership fees for the year beginning 1 September 2009, but warned that a rise in fees would be necessary at some point in the future.

5. The future of EUNIS

There had been a lively and constructive debate about the future of EUNIS during an Open Forum earlier in the conference. The Board would analyse and discuss the many helpful ideas put forward and report back to the EUNIS membership in due course.

6. Proposals for future activities

General Assembly representatives were encouraged to discuss ideas for future activities in EUNIS with any member of the Board.

7. Election of Council

Eight members of Council completed their terms of office in 2009. Also, three members were standing down early, either because they were changing jobs or for personal reasons. Therefore there were 11 positions on Council to be filled.

The following were elected:

For 3 years until 2012:

Pierre Ageron (France)
Pascal Bachmann (Switzerland)
Gill Ferrell (UK)
Alf Hansen (Norway)
Orla Hoppe (Denmark)
Viljan Mahnic (Slovenia)
Peter Tinson (UK)
Christian Zufferey (Switzerland)

For 2 years until 2011:

Grzegorz Jarzembski (Poland)
Arsenio Reis (Portugal)
Andres Salu (Estonia)

(After the meeting names were drawn from a hat to decide whether each person was elected for 2 or 3 years)

 

Martin Price
Former EUNIS Executive Secretary
16.9.2009