TEI-C Board Minutes: 17 April 2026

Attending: Elisa Beshero-Bondar, Hugh Cayless, James Cummings (chair), Dimitra Grigoriou, Diane Jakacki, Magdalena Turska

Regrets: Gimena del Rio Riande

Agenda Items:

  • Approval of minutes
    • DG and DJ approving
  • Next Meeting: Friday 15 May 2026 (same time slot)
  • Treasurer
    • HC took over from John Unsworth, it is important that the Treasurer is well acquainted and a part of TEI Community and likely to remain an active member for longer time to come
    • It is not a requirement to be American, but a degree of familiarity with US taxes/insurance and general landscape is certainly helpful
    • Treasurer is an officer and serves as an ex officio member of the Board, doesn't need to be an elected Board member
    • Treasurer needs to keep an eye on payments, keeping track on some non-automatic elements. It's not necessarily a high-volume commitment, but requires steady engagement.
    • Potentially the duties could be shared.
    • [Link to Google Doc of duties removed]
    • JC: how should we go about finding a replacement
    • HC: last time there was an open call, 2 ppl responded, Board was making a decision based on candidate statements sent in
    • DJ and JC: double checking if Bylaws specify a formal procedure to select and appoint the Treasurer; effectively this is all in Board's discretion
    • JC: pointing out that Treasurer's "perk of the job" is the TEI-C paying TEI travel and accommodation, which speaks realistically against multiple people sharing the duties
    • HC: now we have the management company it's much simpler to be a Treasurer, but also the management company is a big expense item, which may be put in question in the long term. John Unsworth eventually found it overwhelming, which is why we have a company now.
    • DG: how long was the handover process. HC: not very long, about a month or so.
    • DG: When would HC want to step down? HC: happy to be available for guidance, would like to wrap up last Council reimbursement and step down then.
    • JC: this means we should start right away with "job advertisement". Would HC want to be involved in the selection process? HC: happy to provide advice and consultancy, but not be part of selection.
    • DG: would HC be available for pre-appointment expression of interest and questions that may come with that? HC: yes.
    • HC: there's a Dropbox folder that will be soon shared with JC. There are some credentials for TEI accounts, e.g. email etc. For Paypal someone else can be designated as a manager. And Virtual will be informed that JC is the alternate contact person from now on.
    • DG: we should assure we all have access to candidate information and volunteering to assist JC in crafting the announcement and processing further communications.
  • Elections 2026
    • Gimena shared a timeline, DG is working with her on it
    • Call for nominations is thus imminent to be released Apr 27th
  • Rahtz Prize
    • DJ will move on with this in the next couple of weeks
  • TEI Conference
    • JC: Reviews due in a couple of days
    • Discussion ensues about abstract and admission policies of TEI vs ADHO etc
    • JC will approach organizers to confirm everything is on track, atm it seems so
  • Council Report
    • EBB: busy schedule for Council with 2 meetings a month. Now Stylesheets meetings were replaced with P6 meetings alternating with regular TEI.
    • There was a discussion of putting P5 into maintenance mode, but in the end refuted, it will still be actively developed for the foreseeable future
    • JC: this resembles transition "protocol" for P4 to P5, which was still supported for some time after P5 has been released
    • HC: there were several working groups to analyze various aspects for P4 to P5 transition; is there similar idea now?
    • EBB: atm it's "everyone is the working group" and consider it full Council activity
    • HC clarifies it was not limited to Council members only back in the day
    • Blueprints: this is where we need community input on. Definitely specialized working groups.
    • There's a hypothesis that TEI P6 may not need chapters so much but rather Blueprints to show in practice how to do things.
    • EBB: our "thinking" exercises in Wurzburg were oriented in the direction of figuring out where current class system imposes burdens or limitations on users.
    • JC: not all public relations work is the sole burden and responsibility of the Council; Board and others may be willing and able to step in
  • Membership Drive
    • JC Reports that he has almost finished a report on the results of the community consultation and will share that with the Board in the next week
    • We can use that as a foundation for changes we want to make to membership
    • EBB: is there an emerging picture? JC: it's that everybody disagrees! There are some interesting suggestions to increase membership. Support for *We are TEI *blog was expressed. Also frustrating suggestions to do things we are already doing ;-)
    • JC is taking care to anonymize the results for publication
  • Social Media
    • DG had done a lot of work there. Who is our target audience?
    • From current engagement we are reaching more established academics. We do not touch younger audiences - should we, and if yes, how could we do that? Metricool is the tool DG used to get metrics for audience engagement.
    • DG: for DH in Korea maybe we can try to reach younger demographics (DG, DJ, JC are going, EBB attending remotely)
    • EBB's students seem to love attending TEI events, so thinks it's possible to engage the young. [ebb adds: Also lots of smart young people are staying off social media so may be harder to reach or require local interaction.]
    • JC: there's probably a divide between social media and who we want to engage. For undergrads and young researchers we should aim to normalize the TEI membership if you are working in a project that uses TEI.
    • MT: could voting data give us some insight in what effectively blocks "new(er)" people being elected to the Council over incumbent members
    • Council has been working on the TEI Technical Contributors program to offer some sort of training/engagement program to address that issue: give people opportunities to learn technical skills and gain experience and visibility in TEI working with Council.
    • JC: joining Council and learning how it works over a bunch of terms is truly beneficial, it develops numerous transferable skills that we should highlight more
    • MT: at which point we should take stronger steps to assure not only continuity but also renewal in the Council; is there perhaps some self-reflection and coordination in the Council itself to try and navigate this tension