2025-06-24 Executive Board Meeting Minutes

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Minutes
WAML Executive Board Meeting 
Tuesday, June 24, 2025
11 am Pacific / 2 pm Eastern

Call meeting to order: 11:03 Pacific

Officers in attendance: 

  • Meg Miller (President)
  • Cheyenne Stradinger (Vice President)
  • Jessica Benner (Past President)
  • Emilie Ducourneau (Secretary)
  • Bruce Godfrey (Treasurer)

Absent: 

  • Bruce Godfrey (Treasurer) (arrived 30 minutes in)

Other attendees:  Zoe Dilles, Sierra Laddusaw, Ken Rockwell, Jack Tieszen, Mike Smith

Approval of minutes from last meeting:

Officer Reports & Check-In

  • Meg Miller (President)
    • Met with Georgia and sam to discuss Communication committee absorbing Social Media manager position
    • Cheyenne and I followed up on Code of Conduct (CoC) violation from ABQ to discuss resolution with affected party
    • Followed up with Brubaker maps folks (Jon J., Tom B., Cheyenne, Kat)- Kat has a draft message she will share with the group
    • Contacted Kat to express interest from membership about virtual winter meeting option- would fall under purview of Continuing Education Committee (our meeting is usually at the same time as her unit meeting)
    • Ad Hoc IB Committee met – guests were Kevin and Georgia–how the search bar and indexes work. There may be another committee about converting indices to HDML and other similar questions–what other changes can be made to the website
  • Cheyenne Stradinger (Vice President)
    • Meeting with Sierra Laddusaw on Friday for VP transition.
    • Hope to have registration up soon. Working on final prices for banquet, registration, etc.
    • Only EastView and Simply Analytics are sponsoring so far.
    • Based on submissions, about 21 people estimated to come so far including Bruce and myself.
    • Proposals for submissions closed on Friday (6/20). Will probably extend the date for proposals. So far:
      • Eight 15-minute presentations
      • Three 5-minute lightning talks
      • One Workshop
  • Jessica Benner(Past President)
    • Election–new Board elected
    • The Code of Conduct committee has been meeting to create a new document. Will discuss later in the meeting
    • Appointed positions–Emma Slayton has agreed to take over as Features Editor. Does Ken know if Chrissy Klenke is still interested in the New Mapping editor?
      • Ken: she is and we are currently collaborating on the new issue
  • Emilie Ducourneau (Secretary)
    • Transition meeting with Jack is planned for this Thursday 6/26
  • Bruce Godfrey (Treasurer)
    • Will meet with sam for transition/onboarding

Actions approved over email by E-Board since May 2025 E-Board meeting

  • N/A

Appointed Position Reports

  • Sarah Zhang (Information Bulletin Editor)
  • Ilene Raynes (IB Book and Geospatial Resources Review Editor)
  • Georgia Brown (IB Features Editor)
    • This will be my last Features – Emma Slayton the Data Education Librarian at Carnegie Mellon University  (eslayton@andrew.cmu.edu) is taking over starting with the fall issue.
  • Nick Beyelia (Membership Manager)
  • Mike Smith (New Mapping Editor)
    • Retirement is imminent! 
  • sam hidde tripp (Social Media Manager)
    • I have not had time to look more thoroughly for associations in Mexico, but I did find at least one that I will be reaching out to. I’m sure there are more.
  • Zoe Dilles (WAML Archivist)
    • Need to talk with Julie Sweetkind-Singer about archiving paper copies. Will report back next month. 
  • Kevin Dyke (Web Administrator)

Updates from task forces, committees, etc.

  • Continuing Education (Kat Strickland)
  • Communications Committee (Georgia Brown)
    •  We had 10 register and 7 attend the 2025 Editing Party.  Working on tidying up the document with edits to get to Kevin. 
  • Scholarship Committee (Jo-Ann Wong)
    • Scholarships are open and will close on June 25. 

Old Business

  • Social media (sam)
    • Facebook (FB) can’t be separate from a personal account, so the social media email can’t be connected to that. As someone who is looking to disconnect from FB, I’d like to hand over the account administrative stuff to someone else who still uses FB and wouldn’t mind hanging onto it. Ideally, someone in the communications committee.
    • Twitter won’t let me change it for 48 hours (because I logged in recently after being logged out for a while). the switch should be easy after that!
    • LinkedIn is live! adding the password to the rest of them. It’s currently a personal profile, as like facebook you need a personal before you make a business page, but it’s attached to the new social media email. https://www.linkedin.com/in/westernaml/. Tell everyone to connect!
  • Either the communications committee will take on communicating/disseminating information to the membership during the conference or they will look for a volunteer who can do this during the conference.
  • Elections (Jessica)
    • Onboarding (Meg)
    • Will the incoming board start in July, or does the current board have one last meeting?
    • Meg: Last year we did not have a July meeting so that we could tie up loose ends and complete the transition checklists. What would people like to do this year?
    • Cheyenne: It is nice to have a meeting with both the old and new boards. 
    • Decision: there will be a July meeting on the 22 at 11 am Pacific/ 2 pm Eastern.

ACTION: Cheyenne–ask what days and times people are available to meet for this upcoming year

ACTION: Meg—add new board members’ emails to Google Drive.

  • Who will be the secondary signatory for the treasurer? As Vice President, Sierra will do this

ACTION: Jessica–transition Sierra as the secondary signatory

ACTION: Bruce–transfer the honorariums to: the new Features Editor (Emma Slayton) and the new New Mapping Editor (Chrissy Klenke). Social media manager honorarium will be reabsorbed into the archives as it is no longer a position. 

New Business

  • Code of Conduct discussion (Jessica)
    • Ad hoc committee has worked to create a new, fleshed-out version of the Code of Conduct
    • Code of Conduct Document, includes a form linked in the text:
    • https://docs.google.com/document/d/1h3_uXRkHwgOJWDULr6qCV9TqnwnRC9bhSB3vPBkpQn4/edit?usp=sharing
    • This CoC includes: our mission, expectations, reporting, a set of potential consequences, a note about updating the code, and a link to the documents we used to create. Updating the code may need the most work
    • Thoughts? Missing items? Concerns?
      • Meg: it looks great, but there is not a paragraph for the person being accused of the breach of conduct. Do we notify them? Doing this would make it more inclusive.The accused deserves the right to know. 
      • Bruce: financial question–litigation, council…has this ever happened before? What would we do?
      • Jessica: It would depend on the severity of the situation
      • Meg: adding a disclaimer line about how people are responsible for their own actions and WAML is not.
      • Sierra: We should also reach out to both the accused and the victim. Need to be sure we are explicit in contacting both parties.
      • Zoe: We left it vague so that the executive board could use their judgement on the individual situation.
      • Jessica: We should continue talking about this during the next meeting, but we should also send out a section so that people can preview it with the understanding that we are still tweaking and updating it.
      • Meg: Consent in relation to tech–i.e. asking someone before touching their laptop or plugging it in.
      • Jessica: in addition to this, we should create a companion document for the executive board on how to proceed when a report comes in
      • Jessica: Looking and revising this should be a part of the Vice President’s role, as one part of their job is planning the conference.
      • Meg: What if the VP is the person who is being accused? Where are these files kept? Will future executive boards be able to see them? Do we put a statement on these folders that executive board members need to keep them to themselves?
      • Jessica: We could take the report and remove identifying information so that the incident would be retained confidentially.
    • Main conversation around who takes action when a report comes in.
      • Currently set with the VP, online admins, event organizer as main contact + an anonymous form and Executive Board for deciding appropriate action.
      • Jessica: The report is set up to go to the entire board. If someone speaks to a board member verbally, how would that be documented? Thoughts? Meg: It is good that it’s going to the board–a small number of people. A report must go to some subset of the board, especially if the accused is a member of the board. 
      • Bruce: “Withdraw financial support”–lifetime member is expelled…what happens? Jessica: Our intention with this is in case of an infraction from a scholarship winner–if something happens, we could take the scholarship away. Do we add honoraria to this, too? 

ACTION: Jessica–update the document with these comments and (with the committee) draft an outline of the checklist for the executive board to use at a meeting that gets called to deal with a submission.

Potential Social Media Announcements

  • N/A–No social media manager anymore!
  • Jessica: Could this section be transitioned into email announcements? Or we can get rid of this section altogether. 

Next Meeting

  • Tuesday, July 22nd, 2025 at 11 am Pacific/ 2 pm Eastern

Meeting adjourned: 12:20 pm Pacific

Minutes submitted by Emilie Ducourneau (Secretary).

Approved by the Executive Board by email on July 11, 2025

Action Items

Bruce

  • ACTION: Bruce–transfer the honorariums to: the new Features Editor (Emma Slayton) and the new New Mapping Editor (Chrissy Klenke). Social media manager honorarium will be reabsorbed into the archives as it is no longer a position.

Cheyenne

  • ACTION: Cheyenne–ask what days and times people are available to meet for this upcoming year

Jessica

  • ACTION: Jessica–transition Sierra as the secondary signatory
  • ACTION: Jessica–update the document with these comments and (with the committee) draft an outline of the checklist for the executive board to use at a meeting that gets called to deal with a submission.

Meg

  • ACTION: Meg—add new board members’ emails to Google Drive.

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