Conference Committee Notes - Nov. 7, 2016

Post date: Nov 10, 2016 4:25:4 PM

CONFERENCE COMMITTEE – NOVEMBER 7, 2016 – notes by Nancy Hutchins

Attending: Chris Campbell, Nancy Shippen, Nancy Hutchins, Margaret Browne, Alice Waco, Rick Krouskop

Contract. It is being worked but Lasell has been slow in responding, so the details are still being worked out.

Budget. Some time was spent discussing how important it is to set a reasonable target number of participants. One reason Denver brought in extra funds was that the target was set at 70 full time participants and the real number turned out to be 92.

Website development. Rick sent a link that can be used as a template for changing the information to the 2017 conference. Rick will be out of town Jan. 15 – Feb. 7, 2017, so a reasonable date to get the website up will be after Feb. 7. Decide on a date for opening the website to publish in the Transformer article.

Registration information needs to be sent to Rick to handle. Everything else needs to be entered by the local group. As to when registration closes or when to begin late registration, Margaret counsels those are dependent on the university’s requirements.

Schedule development. Margaret is sending her scheduling information from 2016. Nancy Hutchins reminded everyone that several prior conference websites are available for viewing via the “for facilitators” section of avpusa.org.

Dawn will ask at C of C how many committee will want a meeting time. Margaret said that two different time slots were used last year (and previous years) because some people are in more than one committee.

Education will likely want a tech room.

It might be good to see if Bylaws Committee wants a breakout session early on in the conference.

Nancy Hutchins suggested that whatever activity is scheduled to follow the Annual Meeting be something that has flexibility in case more time is needed.

Publicity. The November Transformer deadline is Nov. 30. This is the only time to use the Transformer for laying out the program. (Note: Ed Sabin of MD is co-editor. His email is edsabin1@gmail.com.

Emails to the list should be no more than twice a month.

Scholarship Committee. Stephanie George has agreed to serve another year. We need at least two more people. The protocols from past years are available from Nancy Hutchins.

Theme. The local group did not come to any consensus at the October meeting. Chris said he would send out what is being considered again to the National Conference Committee. Dawn passed on the suggestion “Unity across Diversity”. Nancy Hutchins and Margaret noted that the theme, whatever is chosen, does not have to restrict content that may later show up.

Youth. Lasell would require a separate dorm for youth and it is available. We would need dedicated chaperones. Nancy Hutchins agreed to contact anyone we can think of who we believe is interested in making this happen to see if we have people to handle the chaperone role before we announce that youth (under 18) are invited.

There is a smaller Peace Fellows Program. Dawn said there is a scholarship for at least one so far. We hope there will be four.

Next meeting: Monday, Nov. 5, 8 PM EST.