Board Meeting -- Minutes

Hamilton College, Clinton, NY, September 12, 2015


Attendees

Lawrence D'Antonio (LD) (Chair)
Mark Bailey (MB) (non-voting guest)
Mark Hoffman (MH)
Sandeep Mitra (SM1)
Shamsi Moussavi (SM2)
Tony Sena (TS)
Jim Teresco (JT)
Richard Wyatt (RW)
Due to time constraints of some of the attendees, the agenda was slightly re-ordered so that the discussion of the Mass Bay report could be first. This will be minuted under section 0 .

0. Discussion of Mass Bay Report

(For the report itself, see the Chair's report II, 1.
  • A decision is needed on classes to secure rooms for the conference.
  • The conference should not be on the weekend of April 16.
  • The conference should not be on the weekend of the Boston marathon.
  • The Board would like a decision by the end of October.
  • The dates of the conference are still undecided. However, the weekend of April 21 is acceptable.
  • Parking - is very good.
  • Budget - Larry will email the budget information to the relevant people at Mass Bay.
  • The Board would like a progress report fairly soon.

    I. Previous Meetings

    1. Minutes

    MOTION (MH/RW): To accept the minutes from the April meeting.
    Passed: unanimously.

    II. Reports

    2. Chair's Report: Larry D'Antonio

    I. Report from National 1. The next national board meeting will be held October 9-10 at Seattle Pacific University. 2. A committee was formed at national, called the CCSC Future Directions Commission. This Commission has the following goals: 1. Investigate and analyze the drop in submissions to conferences, drop in conference attendance and the corresponding drop in CCSC membership. 2. Analyzing the current organization and potential modifications to our geographic regional structure with a view toward maximizing both conference attendance and conference submission rates. 3. Providing appropriate definition of our publication functions to enable an eventual transition to different leadership. The Commission has the following members: 1 Lawrence D'Antonio, Northeastern Representative 2 Deborah Hwang, Webmaster 3 Jeff Lehman, Midwest Representative (Chair) 4 Megan Thomas, Southwestern Representative 5 Kevin Treu, Southeastern Representative One of the first actions of the Commission is to conduct a survey of various people involved in CCSC. The survey consists of the following questions. Any of you are welcome to complete the survey and return it to me. 1. What are the main strengths of your region? 2. What issues have your regions faced in the past few years? (if solved, how?) 3. What issues do you currently face? 4. What concerns do you have for your region in the future? 5. How do nearby CCSC conferences affect your submissions/attendance? 6. If you could change one thing about your conference/region, what would it be? 7. How are conferences planned in your region? 8. How many people serve on your conference committees and length of service? 9. How do you manage membership data for your region? II. Future Conferences 1. 2017 Conference Our 22nd meeting will be held at MassBay Community College, in Wellesley Hills, MA. Shamsi Moussavi will be a conference chair. 2. Future Conferences I have received indications of interest from the University of New Hampshire, the University of New Haven, and the College of Saint Rose. I will be doing site visits to these schools and report back at our April meeting.

    Remarks from the meeting on, or made at the time of the discussion of, the Chair's Report

    There was much discussion with many issues raised. Any questions or issues should be emailed to Larry.

    3. Webmaster's Report: Stoney Jackson

    September 2015 1. Email Aliases Email aliases do not replace "To:" with final recipient, triggering some peoples’ junk- mail filters. We are considering using an email-listserv, one per email alias, instead. We'll try with registrar@ccscne.org since we know Quinipiac's filters drop emails sent to Dr. Hoffman (assuming he is amenable). 1.1 Current aliases and lists 1.1.1 Board board@ccscne.org Entire board chair@ccscne.org Chair of board editor@ccscne.org registrar@ccscne.org secretary@ccscne.org membership@ccscne.org webmaster@ccscne.org 1.1.2 Conference Committee confchairs@ccscne.org Chair or Co-Chairs of conference conference@ccscne.org All conference chairs demos@ccscne.org faculty-posters@ccscne.org hackfest@ccscne.org pgmcontest@ccscne.org program-chair@ccscne.org Chair for sub/rev/pub process publicity@ccscne.org registration@ccscne.org speakers@ccscne.org student-posters@ccscne.org tutorials@ccscne.org vendors@ccscne.org workshops@ccscne.org 2. Website Finishing updates (see below). Site will be "live" on 9/19. 2016 conference URL: http://ccscne.org/conferences/ccscne-2016/ Need a list of committee members. Given those, we'll... - Add their information to the conference page. - Update the email aliases. - Email them instructions for accessing the submission system and the category pages. - Reminder, each page lists its maintainer. They are responsible for content. They may update their page themselves, or ask us to post updates. However, please send us the content as you would like it on the page. Please do not ask us to make "intelligent" changes. We are not that smart :) Updates to website - General system and security updates. - Disable sticky menu, fixing the overshoot when one clicks on an internal link. - Separate authors and participants menu to make finding pages easier. - Add calendar plug-in which is backed by Google Calendar to make it easier to manage and update events. 3. Submission System Before the system can be opened, we need the following dates updated: "PapersDue" : "November 8, 2014", "PaperReviewsDue" : "December 8, 2014", "DemosDue" : "November 8, 2014", "DemosReviewsDue" : "December 8, 2014", "LightningsDue" : "November 8, 2014", "LightningsReviewsDue" : "December 8, 2014", "PanelsDue" : "November 8, 2014", "PanelsReviewsDue" : "December 8, 2014", "TutorialsDue" : "November 8, 2014", "TutorialsReviewsDue" : "December 8, 2014", "WorkshopsDue" : "November 8, 2014", "WorkshopsReviewsDue" : "December 8, 2014", "FacultyPostersDue" : "January 02, 2015", "FacultyPosterReviewsDue" : "January 12, 2015", "PapersResubmitDue" : "January 24, 2015", "DemosResubmitDue" : "January 24, 2015", "LightningsResubmitDue" : "January 24, 2015", "PanelsResubmitDue" : "January 24, 2015", "TutorialsResubmitDue" : "January 24, 2015", "WorkshopsResubmitDue" : "January 24, 2015", "FacultyPostersResubmitDue" : "January 24, 2015", "ReviewerRegistrationDue" : "January 24, 2015", "CameraReadyDue" : "January 29, 2015", "StudentPostersDue" : "May 5, 2015", "OldStudentPostersDue" : "February 27, 2015", "StudentPostersResubmitDue" : "March 23, 2015","StudentPostersCameraReadyDue" : "March 23, 2015", "EarlyRegistration" : "March 27, 2015" 4. Development of a New Submission System We recommend abandoning this project. This project requires more time and effort than what Stoney and Karl can give. Even if Stoney and Karl could "complete" the project, the system (as with any system) would require a good deal of effort to maintain (fixing problems and adding new features). Also, transferring the development and maintenance of a custom system to the new Webmaster makes replacing Webmasters more difficult. We recommend encouraging CCSC National to purchase ConfTool Pro. Although the free- licensed version has a submission review system, the pro version appears to offer many features that we (CCSCNE) would like. A feature list is available here: http://www.conftool.net/en/features.html. Demo sites are available here: http://www.conftool.net/en/demo_installations.html. Stoney Jackson thanks the board for the opportunity to work on a custom project. He learned a lot about web-systems and software development form his efforts on the project. He apologize for not being able to complete the project. In case anyone would like to pick up the torch, or use in their courses as an object of study, the existing code base for the project is open-source (GPLv3) and is available at: https://github.com/CCSCNE/review . Demo here http://review.ccscne.org . 5. Other Dreamhost $119.40 / year due on 4/21/2016 program.ccscne.org - mobile-friendly, online program twitter.com/ccscne - maintained by Jim Teresco ccsc.org/ne2016 - registration site, maintained by Registrar, Mark Hoffman esurv.org/?u=CCSCNE-2016 - online conference evaluation

    Remarks from the meeting on, or made at the time of the discussion of, the Webmaster's Report

    None.

    III. Old Business

    None.

    IV. New Business

    4.Student poster competition

    Sandeep had a couple of suggestions for the student posters: 1. Ongoing... how many student posters should we accept? This will be limited by the facilities - how many can we co-locate in one place? This will also be restricted by the availability of the location - we need it from 8 am - 8 pm on the Friday of the conference. Over the last few years, we have accepted about 55 or so student posters. 2. Can we get more feedback from the student attendees about the student poster session? It appears that most of the feedback forms are filled in by faculty. It would be good to get more student feedback about the student poster session (in addition to the faculty feedback we already get).
    RE 2: Sandeep will look into creating a student evaluation form. It is the Poster Committee who is to decide on poster size and set the rules on it.

    5. Election to the CCSCNE Board

    Mihaela Sabin of the University of New Hampshire has expressed interest in becoming a member of the CCSCNE Board. I support her nomination.
    MOTION (LD/RW): To Appoint Mihaela Sabin of the University of New Hampshire as a member of the CCSCNE Board.
    Passed: unanimously.

    6. Election for the Editor position

    Mihaela Sabin has expressed interest in becoming the CCSCNE Editor. This is of course contingent on her being elected to the board.
    MOTION (LD/RW): To Appoint Mihaela Sabin as the CCSCNE Editor.
    Passed: unanimously.

    11. Motion to adjourn

    MOTION (RW/MH): To adjourn.
    Passed: by acclamation.


    Respectfully submitted,
    Richard Wyatt
    (CCSCNE Secretary)