Minutes

Meeting was brought to order by Lynne Sabo.  The treasurers’s report was submitted by Peeti Madan and approved. Susan Dahl submitted the secretary’s minutes  of the previous meeting (Sept) in Carrie Niler’s absence, and they were approved.  Membership statisics were presented by Bekki Bock, based on new numbers.

The status of the Web Site was discussed. We will go “live” on Monday.  Job opportunities will be included on the site & will stay posted for 90 days & then deleted, unless specifically asked to continue the listing. This will be a free service to our members.  Paypal will be included in time for registration for our Spring Symposium in AC. There will be a link to the Hotel Web-Site to make it easy for the members to get room reservations, and to make it clear that they must do this separately to reserve a room. It will be de-activated after the cut-off date for pre-registration, and then re-activated that Friday morning of the Symposium, so we have all the registration records straight.  It was observed that there was a “script error”, when one attempted to print from the site.  This will be addressed by Abbie bringing it to the attention of the Webmaster. According to our contract, we can make changes to the Site that take up to 1/2 hour, monthly or bi-monthly until we tweek it.

The Spring Symposium will take place at the Tropicana Casino & Hotel in Atlantic City this year.  A motion to give $25.00 Harry & David (or equivilent) gift baskets to the speakers who are not receiving honorariums was seconded & passed. The Scientific Program is all organized by Michelle Egberts and Ellie Zimmer. Speakers, topics and schedules are all set.

Nancy Price is in charge of the Exhibitors.  There was discussion of whether to let them break down their exhibit booths at 12:00 or 2:00 PM. It was decided that 2:00 PM made more sense for the meeting.  The cost of the booth space has changed.  The Double Gold is now $2500.00, the Single Gold is $2000.00 and the Bronze is $1000.00. The Gold booth buyers have the advantage of having a direct hot link from our website to their website visible when our members visit our site.

Lynne will be hosting a Wine & Cheese Reception for the Vendors on the Thursday night before the Symposium from either 6 or 7:00 until 9:00.  They will have the opportunity to set up their booths that afternoon.  We will order less beer than in the past, and leftovers will be sent to the President’s Suite afterwards.

One problem we will face is that the Speaker Halls are not attached to the Vendors’ Exhibit Hall.  We will have to make the Members aware of its location. We discussed whose responsibilities are for various things for the exhibitors & booths, ie electrical service, etc.  Nancy Price pointed out that it was clearly stated in the contract letter that all additional accoutrements for the booths had to worked out separately with the drayage company or the Casino itself, but often the contract signers are not the persons manning the booths.  It was decided to leave a large, obvious notice on the booth tables before the Vendors arrive, reminding them to make any arrangements that their company had forgotten to arrange ahead of time, as it was their responsibility, not ours.

Janet Bingales is in charge of Members’ Registration.  She has asked that anyone not otherwise busy help out from time to time, as their staff may want to attend a particular talk and would not want to leave the registration desk unmanned.  It was decided that the Registration Give-Away Bags and pens would be the same as the last meeting in Newport, as we had no sponsor willing to provide new ones.  There will be a prominent FYI in the program to indicate the new SNM Rules about sign-in/sign-out, and the moderator will reiterare this verbally after every lecture.  Similarly, there will be prominent posters at the Meeting Hall Site, to indicate the new Rules of sign-in/sign-out, and the proper way to submit the paperwork to insure CE credit.  There will also be an “E-mail Blast” of Regulation Information from the SNM soon.

By- Law changes were discussed, and Ron Detris was found to be the Chairperson.  He suggested that because it was such a monumental undertaking, that we divide the task into smaller parts, as not to get overwhelmed.  This approach was approved, and accordingly we decided that the entire By-Laws need to be reviewed by the Fall of 2006 or the Spring of 2007 at the latest.  We under took changing the Mission Statement. We dissected its language, and streamlined and updated it. The entire text will be re-written and available at our next meeting. Myrellen Merry was kindly documenting it as we changed it, but no printer was on hand for hard-copy.

Lynne adjourned the meeting.

Addendum to Minutes 12/03/05 

Present at the meeting were: Bekki Bock, Nancy Price, Susan Dahl, Ronnie Detres, Maggie Doonan, Ted Rubel, Steven Kantor, Ellie Zimmer, Preeti Madan, Janet Bingales, Ann Marie Alessi, Myellen Merry. 
 
A Schedule of the Spring Symposium Speakers, contact numbers, Lecture Titles, and time slots were submitted for our reference by Ellie.