TEI-C Board Meeting Minutes 2017-07-13

Agenda

Meeting Procedures and Other Announcements July Minutes (password protected)

Need to review May 2017 minutes; to be approved over email (password protected) Treasurer/Membership Logistics and Support Virtual, Inc Update (JU): Protocols for interacting with Virtual, Inc for new membership, reporting, etc.? (JU) Second Keynote Honorarium/Travel Expenses for Carina Blixen ($2,000-$4,000) (KT, JU) Wild Apricot / Membership Management: - DNS Changes Req. for AWS-hosted Wild Apricot; Ian Rifkin? Luis Meneses? (JU) - Free, 1 year Workshop Memberships (MD, JU) - Schedule a video-conference tutorial with LR and MD to go over Wild Apricot? (MD, JU) Elections Committee for 2018+ Terms for Board, Council and TAPAS (MD) Need a Chair Review Timeline; Adjust for Tardiness Election Procedural Documentation (in-progress) 2018/2019 Call for Host Update (Michelle) Planning the In-Person Board and Council Meetings (Michelle) 2017 Conference Update; see minutes (Kathryn) Rahtz Prize Update; see minutes (Michelle)

Attending

  • Hugh Cayless (HC)
  • Michelle Dalmau (MD)
  • Laurent Romary (LR)
  • Kathryn Tomasek (KT)
  • John Unsworth (JU)
  • Pip Willcox (PW)

Minutes

1. Meeting Procedures and Other Announcements July Minutes: (password protected) Need to review May 2017 minutes; to be approved over email (password protected) ACTION ALL: approve over email after edits, to be made by Tuesday 18 July 2017, when they will go live 2. Treasurer/Membership Logistics and Support a. Virtual, Inc Update (JU)

  • Protocols for interacting with Virtual, Inc for new membership, reporting, etc.? (JU)
  • JU is in the process of getting them up to speed and working on moving the bank account. The new account will cost less in fees, particularly for wire transfers. It will be less attached to an individual than the Bank of America can be, so future Treasurers can more easily be changed, with access to the account, and with a new formal address that is not tied to an individual. They will receive cheques by post and have access to our PayPal account. There is a contact working with us. They have been given a guide of Wild Apricot. They will prepare a professional financial report and will help us with best-practice budgeting. The TEI is a low traffic customer for them—we pay few invoices, just bursaries and conference support outgoing and membership fees coming in. JU is optimistic about this relationship and has oversight of this. Once it is complete, JU will step down as Treasurer. The new Treasurer will be put in touch with them and take over this oversight, without being concerned with details. We continue to need a TEI board member who will be responsible for membership.
  • JU will send round names and email contacts for Virtual. MD and LR can deal directly with the main contact: all correspondence doesn’t need to go through JU.
  • LR: is someone looking at redirecting the Wild Apricot TEI URL IP address. JU: Ian Rifkin at Brandeis is going to make the change by 4 September 2017, which is the cut-off. It will take 24 hours for the change to propagate, with both websites available during this period. There will be minor disruption during this period.
  • MD and LR need a tour of Wild Apricot from JU. JU will be available most mornings to meet with MD and LR for this. JU and LR plan to meet on 17 July 2017 at 8am/9am and 2pm/3pm.
  • LR is concerned to understand the details of the accounting processes and would like to document this process (to facilitate smooth transition to new members of the Board). JU produced some documentation for the workshop.
  • ACTION MD: to look this over and post a version on the wiki.
  • JU aims to stand down in the new year. The Treasurer is appointed and doesn’t have to fit the election schedule.

b. Second Keynote Honorarium/Travel Expenses for Carina Blixen ($2,000-$4,000) (KT, JU) MD and KT suggested to Victoria hosts that the second keynote speaker could be from South America. Alejandro Bia suggested Carina Blixen, who has created a digital text project for the National Library of Uruguay. Victoria has arranged language facilities for this. Travel to Victoria is expensive: can the TEI afford this? JU confirms the TEI can cover this. There were no objections to this invited keynote. c. Wild Apricot / Membership Management:

  • DNS Changes Req. for AWS-hosted Wild Apricot; Ian Rifkin? Luis Meneses? (JU)
  • Free, 1 year Workshop Memberships (MD, JU)
  • Schedule a video-conference tutorial with LR and MD to go over Wild Apricot? (MD, JU)

3. Elections Committee for 2018+ Terms for Board, Council and TAPAS (MD) The conference is later this year, so we are not long behindhand. We have a timeline and partial documentation that KT and PW established last year. This is on the wiki. MD will revise dates for this year. ACTION MD: ask KN to chair the Elections Committee. PW and KT will provide support for KN and update documentation. They can’t join the committee as their terms end this year so they are eligible for election. We need at least one more person on the committee. ACTION MD: research whether we could take 2 people from the Council to join the committee. HC: look for volunteers from the Council to join the committee at the start of August. Review Timeline; Adjust for shift in light of this year's meeting schedule Election Procedural Documentation (in-progress) 4. 2018/2019 Call for Host Update (Michelle) 5. Planning the In-Person Board and Council Meetings (Michelle) This will happen after the conference. We have been offered the hotel conference facilities. MD would rather meet on campus, if that is free. We have met in paid-for places in the recent past (the hotel Mama Shelter in Lyons). ACTION MD: follow up with Martin Holmes about the cost of meeting on campus. 6. 2017 Conference Update; see minutes (Kathryn) Reviews are complete and acceptances were sent out as promised on 14 June. Final versions are coming in. We had a small problem with ConfTool settings, but we have taken care of it. All 136 submissions were accepted, with one paper accepted as a poster. We may fill out a couple of sessions with papers that members of the local committee and program committee held in reserve. Kiyonori and Luis responded to my query to the Board about Carina Blixen's proposal for delivering a second plenary in Spanish. Both were enthusiastic, and Luis said he would be happy to provide translation support. I have delayed getting back to Blixen because I have been waiting to hear back from John about whether we can afford to pay for her travel from Montevideo to Victoria as well as her lodging. My estimate for the total is around $4,000.00. When I was on the conference site last week, I saw that hotel reservations have opened. So that's good news. 7. 2018/2019 Call for Host Update (Michelle) MD, JU, PW voiced doubts about hosting two conferences. JU notes that the cost of bringing the Board and Council together is usually more than the Subvention. LR suggested two meetings, 6 months or so apart. They might not both need the subvention, as they have other funds, although they have costed the subvention into this. We considered blessing a second workshop, while all members present preferred 2018 Prospective Host 1 over 2018 Prospective Host 2, from the strength of their proposal (both proposals were strong) and from the point of view of extending participation. LR notes that in Europe we have reached the point that all digital projects using primary materials now use TEI and we don’t want to fall back from this position. An alternative would be to give the imprimatur of the TEI to a workshop at Darmstadt. Perhaps one or two days with a focused theme. We would need to be sure that dates would not conflict with the conference at 2018 Prospective Host 1. 24-28 September 2018. In any such workshop there would be no subvention, no travel for Board members to Darmstadt etc. (It may be the Council would choose to hold their second in-person meeting in Darmstadt, in which case travel would be covered in the usual way.) We suggest that we approach Darmstadt thanking them for their excellent proposal and see how they respond to the idea of a workshop, perhaps on a sub-theme. ACTION MD: approach Darmstadt about this. Tokyo dates: 24–28 September 2018 We accept 2019 Prospective Host 1’s proposal for 2019, believing that the US is currently not compliant with the TEI’s code of conduct as a conference host so are not accepting 2019 Prospective Host 2’s proposal. There is a potential proposal from 2020 Prospective Host. This would not fall in the 2020/21 proposal. LR will talk to Anne Baillot about this. We will invite resubmission from 2019 Prospective Host 2 for a time beyond the next presidential election in the US. 8. Rahtz Prize Update; see minutes (Michelle)

Risks and opportunities of holding two TEI-C conferences/workshops in one year:

Opportunties 1. Embracing multiple local interests 2. Not wasting the work and support-gathering of putting proposals together 3. Taking the opportunity of local funding while available 4. Celebrating the TEI in more places 5. Easier and cheaper to get to for more delegates, as they can choose the venue closer to them Risks 1. Splitting the attendance My feeling is (and it would be good to get the data from Conftool) that proposals are dropping off, as travel funding is squeezed around the world Not enough proposals for either (at least for the Lyons conference we struggled to fill the slots we had available) Unfair on organizers who might need a certain level of attendance to break even financially Most delegates come from North America and Europe and it would be cheaper to get to 2018 Prospective Host 2, meaning 2. Workload for the Board overseeing two events 3. Workload for reviewers, calling on them to volunteer twice in a year (even if the total number of reviews isn’t the same) 4. Setting a precedent for future years 5. Giving the impression—particularly thinking of 2018 Prospective Host 1, as we venture into new territories—that it isn’t worthy of a “full” conference, when they are likely to need all our support as the TEI reaches out to a new part of the world for a conference 6. Double the funding needed for the Board (or a subset of the Board) to travel to both, particularly with two Business Meetings I note that one motivation for slimming the Board numbers down was to save money