2022-11-02 Executive Board Meeting Minutes

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Minutes
WAML Executive Board Meeting 
November 2, 2022
10:00am PST / 1:00pm EST

Call meeting to order: 10:02am PST

Officers in attendance: Katherine Strickland (President), Jessica Benner (Vice President), Evan Thornberry (Past President), Rebecca Seifried (Secretary), Bruce Godfrey (Treasurer)

Other attendees: Ken Rockwell, Nick Beyelia

Approval of Minutes from last meeting:

Officer Reports & Check-In:

  • Katherine Strickland (President)
    • Update on last month’s action item: Kat updated the post-conference survey and Jessica emailed it to WAML attendees. 
    • Membership renewal update: Several more have come in since the reminder email was sent out. Some people accidentally renewed twice. See Nick’s report below.
      • Discussion about whether the new WordPress platform’s membership plugin will make it easier for people to check their membership status. Evan and Nick are meeting tomorrow to discuss the migration.
      • Discussion about whether people who haven’t renewed should be removed from the listserv. Maybe we should hold off until the migration is completed.
    • Joint MAGIRT & WAML workshop on “Image analysis in the cloud: Introducing ArcGIS Image for ArcGIS”: (Nov. 30, 10:00am-12:00pm PST) currently there are 19 registered, 30-person cap.
  • Jessica Benner (Vice President)
    • Conference Planning Survey Results (view in Google Forms): 27 responses (72 total WAML Members = 37.5% response rate)
      • Able to attend in person? Generally Yes
        • Yes (21, 77.8%), Yes with restrictions (4, 14.8%)
        • No (2, 7.4%)
          • Free text comments: responsibilities broader than geo so can’t justify, age & COVID, budget/travel funds
      • Specific venues: no obvious winner, but Vancouver and Albuquerque are more popular (italicized result n = 24)
        • Vancouver (20, 83%) (13, 48% said Likely | 7, 25% Not Likely | 7, 25% Neutral)
        • Albuquerque (22, 91%) (15, 56% said Likely | 6, 22% Not Likely | 6, 22% Neutral)
        • Moscow (16, 66%) (11, 40% said Likely | 10, 37% Not Likely | 7, 25% Neutral)
        • Free text comments:
          • Haven’t had meetings in Idaho or New Mexico for ages; consider them high priority
          • Definitely prefer a PNW location for selfish reasons — either Idaho or BC 
      • How to meet? Most chose Hybrid
        • Hybrid (20, 74.1%)
        • In Person (5, 18.5%)
        • Virtual (2, 7.4%)
      • Other conferences?
        • ALA/MAGIRT (4/16 responses)
        • NACIS (5/16 responses)
        • All others 1/16
        • Seems like WAML is more of a gathering place than others on the list.
      • Places offering to host
        • Denver after 2025, Pittsburgh, HIG along with Eastview and U of MN in Minneapolis (have been rebuffed because outside of WAML areas) 
        • Free text comment: Time for WAML to move beyond its “Western” roots and have conferences in other places!
      • General free text comment: 😂😂I’m retired, so keep that in mind when you tally answers
  • Evan Thornberry (Past President)
    • Update on last month’s action item: Matt was able to get reimbursed for the domain registration.
    • Attended NACIS in person; will be helpful for planning WAML 2023.
  • Rebecca Seifried (Secretary)
    • Check-in about the minutes editing/approval process – working well for everyone.
  • Bruce Godfrey (Treasurer)
    • Had 3 sponsors for the conference; 2 had paid before the conference. Followed up with the third sponsor and they have now paid. The issue was that there was no Silver Level option on the website. This has now been added to the website.

Actions approved over email by E-Board since October 2022 E-board Meeting:

  • 10/26/22 – The Board voted to appoint Mike Smith as New Mapping Editor (motion proposed by Evan, seconded by Becky, voted in favor by Becky, Bruce, and Kat).
    • Ken has been in communication and sharing documentation. They have an article planned for the next Bulletin to announce the re-launch, introducing Mike as the new head of that initiative, and asking WAML members to submit resources to be included. Focus will still be Western North America (which now includes Texas). Will also include URLs for the state geological mapping agencies.
    • Policies and Procedures: 2.4.b.3: The President shall provide a letter to the Appointee confirming the appointment.
      • ACTION: Kat will send Mike a letter notifying him that he has been appointed New Mapping Editor.

Appointed Position Reports:

  • Membership Manager (Nick Beyelia)

Statistics 2022/23

As of November 2, 2022, WAML has a total of 72 members (including 55 renewals, 8 honorary lifetime memberships, 4 paid lifetime memberships, 3 year-long memberships that were gifted to WAML scholarship recipients included as part of their award, and a total of 2 new members). This represents a 66% decrease from 2021 where a total of 109 members were reported. 

The number of honorary membership holders remains at 8 and the number of paid lifetime memberships held at 4, repeating the previous three years. 

Twenty-three members chose not to renew their membership for the 2022/23 period; this number is up from the previous year when 13 members chose not to renew their membership.

The majority of membership renewals took place prior to August 2022. It was expected that membership would surge as the conference approached but that did not happen. 89% of members paid via Paypal while 11% paid by check. 

Total Memberships Reported at Fall Meetings

YEARTOT#LIFETIMENON-RENEWALSNEWSCHOLARS
2015737h/1pd
2016937h/1pd
2017918h/2pd2211
2018829h/3pd148
2019949h/4pd119
2020949h/4pd1913
20211098h/4pd13192
2022728h/4pd2323
Membership table

Updates from task forces, committees, etc.:

  • Scholarship Committee
    • ACTION: Kat will follow-up with Philip White (cc: Evan) to offer to put out a general call for expressions of interest for chair of the Scholarship Committee.

Old Business:

  • Stanford physical address (Evan)
    • Update on last month’s action item: Evan reached out to Julie (cc: Jessica) to ask for a status check on the process of getting a physical address. He will let the Board know what he finds out.
  • WAML domain – on hold until physical address is established.
  • Listserv migration (Evan)
    • Update on last month’s action item: Evan is meeting with Kevin, Matt, and Nick on 11/3 to discuss listserv migration.
    • ACTION: Evan will email notes from the 11/3 meeting about listserv migration.
  • Continuing Education Committee review (Kat)
    • ACTION: Kat will reach out to the rest of the Continuing Education Committee to gather ideas about how the group might be reshaped.
  • Web Communications Committee review (Jessica)
    • Update on last month’s action item: Jessica was going to reach out to the Web Communications Committee members who have not yet gotten back to her, but wasn’t sure what we should be asking them.
      • Clarification that Ken is in the group because of involvement in the publications committee. Suggests there should be an ongoing group of some sort to support web communications.
      • Ideas from previous meetings:
        • Idea 1 – the group could be integrated into Amy’s work as Social Media Manager.
        • Idea 2 – the group could be morphed into an “Appointed Positions” committee (which it nearly is already, based on membership). 
      • New idea:
        • Create a “Communications Committee” (dropping the “Web”) including all Appointed Positions and optionally 2 at large members.
    • This should either be an active committee or be dissolved. We don’t necessarily need to dissolve and reform; we could just reshape it into whatever form we want it to be. 
    • See Policies and Procedures 5.1.c for the current charge.
    • Who would chair the group? Appointed positions are being given honoraria for their work; we don’t want to add more work to their plates by requiring one of those positions to serve as chair. We could open the chair position to at-large members, or have one of the officers (Past President) serve as chair.
      • If we add this to the Past President’s duties, it may take some time to formalize.
    • Who would be a member? We can require Appointed Positions to be members with the goal of giving them a space to communicate more regularly. The group doesn’t have to meet more than quarterly.
      • Current Appointed Positions:
        • Archivist: vacant
        • Book and Geospatial Resources Editor: Ilene Raynes (2012-)
        • Information Bulletin Editor: Chrissy Klenke (2018-)
        • Features Editor: Georgia Lee Brown (2020-)
        • Membership Manager: Nick Beyelia (2021-)
        • Social Media Manager: Amy Work (2020-)
        • Web Administrator: Kevin Dyke (2021-)
      • Concern that this should be a voluntary role; people should be able to opt-out.
    • Next steps: communicate with the current committee members. Once we get their feedback we can discuss further. See Policies and Procedures 5.1.a.8 for process moving forward.
    • ACTION: Jessica will email all current members of the Web Communications Committee and Amy Work to share our proposal about reshaping the committee and ask for feedback.
  • Updating the Policies and Procedures (Jessica)
    • Jessica is working on it!
    • ACTION: Jessica will continue working on updating the Policies and Procedures.
  • Archivist position at Stanford (Kat)
    • ACTION: Kat will try to schedule a meeting with Kim Durante to formalize a deposit system for members and to talk about the WAML-Stanford relationship.
  • Secondary signatory on the bank account (Bruce)
    • Currently, this is still Susan Powell but needs to be updated to someone appointed by the President for a 3-year term
      • Policies and Procedures 2.1.i.3: Beginning July 1, 2018, and every three years going forward, the incoming Vice-President shall be appointed as the secondary signatory.
    • The E-Board should have appointed Kat in July 2021, but we missed the deadline. It makes sense to appoint Jessica Benner as secondary signatory for a 3-year term (i.e. the length of her serving on the E-Board).
    • ACTION: Bruce will work on establishing Jessica as secondary signatory.

ACTION: Becky will add language about the secondary signatory as a duty of the Vice President to the Policies and Procedures and the Transition Checklist.

New Business:

  • Decision about WAML 2023 conference location
    • The Board doesn’t need to vote on this; in the past it has been the decision of the incoming and past presidents. Locations were often planned several years in advance. 
    • Jessica proposes holding WAML 2023 in Vancouver and asking Cheyenne about hosting WAML 2024 at UNM. We could also plan to hold WAML 2025 in Idaho.
      • CA employees aren’t currently able to use funding to travel to Idaho, but they could still attend virtually if the conference is hybrid.
    • CA was a common host location in the past, so we may want to keep that as a possible location for coming years.
      • How many WAML members are actually in CA? 
    • Jessica is planning to visit Vancouver ahead of the meeting as a recon mission.
    • Evan reached out to UBC’s conferences and accommodations office and got information about the required deposit. To finalize the required deposit amount, we will need to know the specific dates and the number of rooms we would like to reserve.
    • Dates:
      • Evan suggested August 23-25. Asked for accommodations available for August 22-26. He will be attending ICC the week before in South Africa. This would avoid the start of classes at UBC; however, this might be a busy time for other campuses.
      • Why is the date so variable? It was held in November at UT Austin to avoid heat and work with football season. Fall isn’t a good option for UBC because accommodations aren’t available then.
      • Week of August 7 might be better – further away from the start of classes and gives Evan breathing room between conferences.
      • Early-mid October could also be worth inquiring about.
    • Number of rooms:
      • We can ask previous conference hosts (Lisa for San Diego, Chrissy for UNR) about their attendance numbers. The attendance list for Reno has 47 names.
      • Maybe around 45 rooms were booked for UT Austin – Kat will double-check.
    • ACTION: Evan and Jessica will meet within the next month to decide on how many rooms to book, discuss other planning logistics, and prepare a save-the-date announcement for Amy.
    • ACTION: Evan will ask about availability of accommodations for the week of August 7 and mid-October.

Potential Social Media Announcements:

  • Looking ahead, we should prepare a save-the-date announcement for WAML 2023. Suggestion to include an image of campus.
  • Flyer for the upcoming WAML-MAGIRT workshop and link to register.
    • ACTION: Kat will email the WAML-MAGIRT information to Amy.

Next Meeting:

  • E-Board Meeting, Wednesday, 12/7/22 at 10:00am PST / 1:00pm EST

Meeting adjourned: 11:33am PST

Addenda:

  • As a follow-up, Nick emailed the E-Board locations of all current members who provided that information and best guesses for an additional 13 members who did not (3 members are unaccounted for here):
    • California: 24
    • Canada: 6
    • Nevada: 4
    • Colorado, Pennsylvania, Washington: 3
    • Georgia, Texas, Wisconsin: 2
    • Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Utah, Washington DC / Israel: 1

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