Minutes of the board of Directors
4th October 2008, Santiago de Compostela, Spain
MINUTES OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS
4th October 2008, Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Present: Jean-Francois Desnos (Chair), Yves Epelboin (past President), Javier Franco, Lars Kayser, Markku Kuula, Jan Madey, Martin Price (Executive Secretary), Ligia Ribeiro (past President), and Robert Sultana.
Apologies: Viljan Mahnic, Andrew Rothery, Peter Tinson and Hans Dieter Weckmann.
For the first three items of the agenda the Board was joined by members of the EUNIS2008 Organising Committee (Orla Hoppe, Mikkel Godsk, Dorte Sidelmann Jørgensen and Maria Hvid Stenalt).
1. Review of EUNIS2008
The EUNIS2008 Organising Committee presented a Report on the 2008 Conference and an Evaluation of the feedback forms received from persons attending EUNIS2008.
The Aarhus Conference had been a great success, with 311 delegates from 29 countries registered to attend. Just over 100 papers were presented. A fitting highlight of EUNIS2008 was the first EUNIS E-Learning Award, created in memory of the late Jens Dørup, which will be reported on in Item 2 below. There was also the customary optional day of tutorials immediately preceding EUNIS2008, when 53 paying attendees took part on 3 tutorials and 1 workshop.
It was likely there would be a surplus on the Conference budget of approximately €10K, which would be shared equally between the University of Aarhus and EUNIS.
Feedback from conference delegates was very good. 60% rated the presentations Excellent or Good (mainly Good). The organisation of the event was also highly rated, with 80% rating Excellent or Good (mainly Excellent in this case). Overall, 90% rated EUNIS2008 Excellent or Good.
There were some relatively minor issues to be looked into for future EUNIS events. The main one was that a number of people were unhappy that their presentation time had been cut to 15 minutes. The Board acknowledged this could be a problem and discussed whether the programme should be restructured to give fewer, longer presentations. However there was a risk that this would reduce the numbers attending, so the Board agreed to keep the presentation ‘slots’ short, but presenters would be warned of this beforehand. It was also important to synchronise presentation times in parallel sessions to allow delegates to move between streams.
The Report and Evaluation documents would be posted on the EUNIS website athttp://eunis.dk/evaluation/index.html
2. Review of Dørup E-Learning Award 2008
There were 15 submissions for the first Dørup E-Learning Award. Four projects were shortlisted for presentation at a special stream during EUNIS2008. The Award was presented to the winning team from the University of Zagreb, Croatia by Jens Dørup’s family. The Zagreb project was entitled “E-tivities with a Wiki: Innovative Teaching of English as a Foreign Language”.
The procedures for the Award, supervised by Dorte Sidelmann at Aarhus, had gone very well and there was no need for major changes in the arrangements. It was suggested that the EUNIS2009 Call For Papers should emphasise more strongly the difference between ‘regular’ papers and submissions for the E-Learning Award. It would also help the E-Learning Award co-ordinator if he/she were sent an email when a submission was made.
Dorte Sidelmann was unable to continue in her role in 2009 because she would be taking maternity leave, but her colleague Maria Hvid Stenalt had kindly agreed to take over.
It was agreed that the judging panel for 2009 should be James Cilia (Malta), Yves Epelboin (France), Gill Ferrell (UK), Jan Madey (Poland), Andrew Rothery (UK, Chair of E-Learning Task Force) and Maria Hvid Stenalt (Denmark).
3. Proposed Guidelines for Conference Organisers
The Board received the draft Guidelines for Conference Organisers (the “Guidelines”) kindly prepared by members of the EUNIS2008 Organising Committee, and an updated version of the Agreement for EUNIS Congresses (the “Agreement”) from Yves Epelboin.
Several changes to both documents, mainly minor, were agreed.
a. Agreement
The Title of each EUNIS annual conference should be EUNISnn – the nn-th international conference of European University Information Systems. The Conference contents should mention a possible exhibition alongside the presentations. Under the Finance heading there should be reference to the guarantee of €10K available from EUNIS funds if the conference runs at a loss. Also it should be stated that any surplus funds from the conference would be shared 50-50 between the organising institution and EUNIS.
b. Guidelines
The Guidelines should mention the need to provide wifi facilities for delegates. Also Jan Madey offered to draft some words about the responsibilities of the Scientific Committee, and the length of presentations.
The Board thanked the Aarhus Organising Committee and Yves Epelboin for their work on these documents. They will be extremely useful for colleagues organising future EUNIS conferences.
4. Review of actions from previous meeting on 24 June 2008
a. Lapsed Members
No work had yet been done to chase up members for payment of their overdue fees. The Treasurer, Markku Kuula, said that invoices for 2008-9 would be sent out at the end of 2008.
b. Revised Accounts and Budget
The updated Accounts 2007-8 and revised Budget for 2008-9 had been circulated to members in September 2008. For ease of comparison it was suggested that the annual Accounts and Budget should presented in the same format in future.
c. Future Activities
Two possible future events were mentioned.
The first was an MIS Seminar, which would be discussed late in the agenda (See item 12 below).
The second was a Rectors’ Seminar along similar lines to the popular events held in Paris in 2003 and 2006.
5. New Members since 24 June 2008
It was reported that the following institutions and organisations had joined EUNIS since the Board’s meeting in Aarhus in June 2008.
Full Members:
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece)
HIS Hochschul-Information-Systems GmbH (Germany)
SIGMA Gestion Universitaria (Spain)
Total: Full – 129; Corresponding – 4; Corporate – 9
6. EUNIS Executive Secretary position
At the 24 June 2008 meeting of the Board, Martin Price had given notice that he would retire from the post of Executive Secretary at the end of EUNIS2009 in June 2009. The Baord had received two expressions of interest in taking over as Executive Secretary, from Kristel Sarlin and Michael Nowlan. Representing Finland, Kristel had been involved in EUNIS from its earliest days, and was a former President of the association. She had organised the EUNIS Conference in Helsinki in 1999. Michael, from Ireland, was a long-standing supporter of EUNIS, and had been a member of Council when he retired from his university in 2007. After some discussion, the Board voted to offer the position to Kristel Sarlin. She would be asked to work alongside Martin from January 2009. The Board also hoped it would be possible to find a role for Michael to work on specific projects for EUNIS.
7. EUNIS Elite Award for Excellence
The Board noted there had been only one submission for the EUNIS Elite Award in 2008, and that the judges had decided not to make an Award this year. However, it was agreed that the Award should continue in 2009 with no changes to the rules of the competition. The Executive Secretary would announce the competition in due course and it would be advertised on the Web, as usual.
8. Partner Organisations
a. TERENA
The Board was reminded that TERENA and EUNIS traditionally incorporated presentations from each other in their annual conferences.
b. EDUCAUSE
It was suggested that EUNIS’s relationship with EDUCAUSE should be redeveloped, possibly following informal discussions with senior members of EDUCAUSE at EUNIS2009.
c. HUMANE
There had been no contact with HUMANE for some time
10. EUNIS Task Forces
a. E-Learning Task Force
Because he was unable to attend, the leader of the E-Learning Task Force, Andrew Rothery, had submitted a written report on his group’s activities.
Robert Sultana had hosted a meeting of 24 members of the E-Learning Task Force in Malta in January 2008. There had been a meeting of interested persons during EUNIS2008 in Aarhus, Denmark, and a further one-day meeting was planned for Paris (hosted by Yves Epelboin) early in 2009.
Paulo Alves had set up a wiki for ELTF some months previously. This has been extended for use by all Task Forces.
The eight main areas of activity of the E-Learning Task Force are :-
Dørup E-Learning Award (reported under agenda item 2)
EUNIS E-Learning Snapshots
Case Studies
Future of E-Learning
Virtual Worlds
E-Learning Platforms
Supporting E-Learning Communities
Online repositories for E-Learning
b. MIS Task Force
See item 12 below
c. ICT Performance Indicators Task Force
At an informal meeting of the Board on 3 October 2008, Carys Thomas of UCISA (UK) and Antonio Fernandez of CRUE-TIC (Spain) had presented a proposal that a EUNIS Task Force on ICT Performance Indicators should be set up. Although several members of the Board had doubts about the ambition of producing comparable statistics across Europe the Board agreed that a Task Force should explore the possibilities of sharing ICT Performance Indicators between different countries. It was agreed that Peter Tinson should be asked to convene a Task Force.
10. EUNIS Top Concerns Survey
The Board had agreed some time ago that a new EUNIS Top Concerns Survey should take place. The Executive Secretary explained that he had not contacted the organiser of the previous survey, Iain Stinson because he had just moved universities. Yves Epelboin offered to run the survey on behalf of EUNIS.
11. Future EUNIS Conferences
The Board agreed that EUNIS2010 will be hosted by the University of Warsaw, Poland from 23 to 25 June 2010. The event will overlap with a national Polish conference on the first day.
There were no firm arrangements for 2011 and beyond. It was agreed that a general invitation to host future EUNIS annual conferences should be circulated widely after the final amendments to the Guidelines had been made, with the aim of making a decision for 2011 at the Board’s next meeting.
Previous expressions of interest for hosting future conferences had come from Portugal, Netherlands, Ireland, Bologna, and Greece.
12. Possible Workshop on Research Management hosted by Oracle
Following his attendance at the MIS Seminar preceding EUNIS2008 in Aarhus, Lucas Heymans of Oracle had proposed hosting a workshop on Research Management in Brussels. The Board welcomed this generous offer and agreed to look further into this event possibly taking place in Autumn 2009. It was agreed to go ahead only on condition that EUNIS would make the final decision on the content of the programme and select the persons attending.
13. Approval of Board minutes
It was suggested, and agreed, that future Board Agendas should begin with formal approval of the minutes of the preceding meeting.
This concluded the formal Board meeting.
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Plans for EUNIS2009
The Board was joined by Raul Canay Pazos, Pedro Rey Sanchiz and 4 other representatives of Universidade de Santiago de Compostela to discuss plans for EUNIS2009.
The Board had visited the proposed venue for the conference at the Faculty of Medicine. The maximum number of attendees would be 410 persons. The Faculty is close to the centre of the city and there are many hotels nearby. The organisers propose to use hotels in the price range €100 to €180. The Board asked for some cheaper hotels to be added to the choice for delegates. It was noted that the Board would meet on the evening before the EUNIS start, i.e. Tuesday 23 June 2009. The proposed chair of the Scientific Committee is Emilio Lopez Zapata. Members of Council and the Board would be invited to join the Scientific Committee.
A number of keynote speakers were identified, including:-
Michael Zastrocky, Gartner
TERENA representative
Rector, USC
Diana Oblinger, EDUCAUSE President
Richard Katz, EDUCAUSE Vice President
Mario Campolargo, European Commission
Manuel Castells
Jean-Francois Desnos, EUNIS President
It was hoped a large Spanish bank would be a principal sponsor of EUNIS2009. Jean-Francois Desnos would write to EUNIS Corporate members to introduce them to the Santiago organisers.
The EUNIS2009 website would be available soon.
The Organising Committee was asked to produce a conference budget for approval.
Martin Price
EUNIS Executive Secretary
3.3.2009