Board Meeting

Saturday, 7 February 2004, Paris

as compiled and edited by Tamara Kwist, Assoc. AIA, Chapter Administrative Assitant

Minutes

Participants:

1. Welcome by Sandra Zettersten, AIA, President

Welcome by the President, review of agenda and introduction of the fact that we are going to put together our goals and vision for the next 10 years. She thanked Daniel Herren the Immediate Past President.

2. Treasurer’s Report by Tom McDuffie, AIA

Review of US and European accounts.

A print-out was distributed to the meeting participants.

Chapter finances are generally healthy. The total amount in the two money market accounts at US Sun Trust is $26,742.69. The total amount in the French checking and money market amount at Crédit Lyonnais is €12,475.93. The treasurer suggested that the two money market accounts at US Sun Trust be merged for simplicity. Our yearly expenses for 2003 were $14,287.91. The pass through of the US Sun Trust account in 2003 was $15,352.58 and €72,298.75 for the Crédit Lyonnais account. The money that is currently in the US Sun Trust accounts represents 2 years of membership dues. Our expenses roughly equal the money we take in for membership dues each year.

A motion passed to raise the Administrative Assistants salary from $550 to $700 monthly.

A motion was passed that the AIACE will budget around €2000 each for the President and the Vice President, President Elect for participation in Grassroots. If the chapter faces financial concerns in the future this budget for Grassroots will be reconsidered.

These two expenses, yearly salary for the Administrative Assistant and the stipend for the President and the Vice-President, President Elect Grassroots participation will basically use all of the funds that the chapter receives yearly for membership.

Tom McDuffie notified the Board that he will be moving to London. The Board will need to identify a new Treasurer to take over his position.

3. Update on Porto Conference by Pedro Balonas, Int’l Assoc. AIA and Alexandra Ferreira da Silva

The program for “Porto: Culture and Sport” held from May 13-17, 2004 in Porto, Portugal has not changed since November. All venues are confirmed. All information now appears on the web site. Siza to be present for one event and several of his projects will be included in the program. Registration will take place at the Porto Pestana Carlton hotel, Plaça da Ribeira 00351 223402300.

Sponsorship is advancing, Armstrong has pledged €5000, Eternit has pledged 3000 and they are waiting on a €5000 pledge from Regent. In addition, the City Hall of Porto may pay for half of a lunch which could be around €3000. Lutron would like to sponsor something for Porto. Ray Spano, AIA will confirm if Technal will offer some sort of sponsorship.

The budget based on participation is a follows:

60 participants 80 participants 100 participants 120 participants
Proposed income €35,200 €42,600 €50,000 €57,400
Expenses €42,085 €48,065 €52,165 €56,265

The budget has been reduced by roughly €10,000 since the last budget was presented to the Board.

After a separate conversation with the Porto Conference Organizers the Continuing Education Coordinator, Dominique Tomasov, confirmed that the main program will contain 13 Learning Units and the extension trip to Douro will contain 3 Learning Units. She announced to the Board that she will see that this information is posted on the AIA National site.

4. Paris 11-14 November Conference Committee led by Sandra Zettersten, AIA

The need to establish a standing committee for Paris and all future conferences and give deadlines for program completion was discussed. Alan Schwartzman suggested locating part of the meeting at the headquarters of the Regional Council of the French Order of Architects, now under renovation in Paris.

Ray Spano mentioned contact with Philippe Robert, Hon FAIA, who would consider participating in the conference. A presentation and visit of the Jusseau Campus renovation is a possibility. Transportation will be primarily by means of private buses.

The attendance cap for this conference will be 120 people which will require only 2 buses. A motion was passed that a committee consisting of the following co-chairs; Ray Spano, AIA; Alan Schwartzman, FAIA; Isabel Meinecke, Int’l Assoc. AIA; and George Berg, AIA; shall take the responsibility of organizing a two day (Friday and Saturday) conference in Paris in November 2004. This committee will participate in a conference call with Sandra Zettersten, AIA at 1:00 p.m. on February 25 (the minutes of this conference call will serve as a progress report by the committee).

5. Section Director Directives by George Berg, AIA

A report was given about personal contact with each Section Director to answer questions and to encourage each to organize a small get-together and to make an attempt to expand membership in their region.

Switzerland

Maureen Reinertsen, AIA presented her 1 day program at the Novartis Campus in Basel, Switzerland on March 26, 2004. The program will consist of a tour of buildings, presentations by the CEO of Novartis and architects who designed the campus and will also include a discussion of future project possibilities and the bidding process with Novartis. The program will earn all participants 6 Learning Units and will cost 75 Swiss Francs per participant.

Maureen Reinertsen, AIA remarked that it is unclear how participants should pay for such events especially as payment will not be made in euros. The Board agreed that a protocol for Section Directors handling money should be established.

Turkey

In an e-mail report from Ahmet Alp, AIA he notified the Board that he is in contact with Granitas for potential sponsorship of the AIACE. He is also involved in the organization of the 2005 UIA World Conference and continues to contact potential new AIACE members in Turkey.

France

Isabel Meinecke, Int’l Assoc. AIA presented a list of events proposed for the French Section in 2004.

George Berg, AIA suggested that the initiative to establish a standing monthly drink in Paris be revived. He will propose a venue.

6. Web site Report by Richard Anderson, AIA

Tamara Kwist, Assoc. AIA summarized Richard Anderson’s e-mail on this subject.

Recent updates to the web site, aside from Porto information, have included the "President's Letter", the Bern Meeting minutes and a note about a Paris lecture. A page is posted on the web site with some suggested methods to display AIA Continental Europe in short form. http://www.aiaeurope.org/drafts/aiace.html Why are we AIA Continental Europe and not AIA Europe? Richard Anderson, AIA would be interested in feelings and the work involved in changing the chapter name, even if unofficially.

A draft for the corporate partner page is at http://www.aiaeurope.org/drafts/sponsorship.html. The text is from the “Enhance you Exposure” document. While the web format is very clear, we should make certain that it has a print form that is also clear.

Current sponsorship links are "Lutron, Wicona and Domal, Technal, Grace Construction Products, Henkel Bautechnik". These are shown on the home page and other pages within the site. There is no current system for when they should or should not be displayed, although in my planning, those sponsors do not appear on our membership pages and they are customized when corporate partners sign-on for a specific conference.

Personal resumé pages will be reworked. We might consider that people need to opt-in to having their data listed on the site. Although it was suggested that a modest fee be charged, the Board felt that all members were entitled to a one-page resumé as part of basic dues, and that the electronic version simply replaces the previously published hard-copy Directory. However, we might also consider a more elaborate version of resumés which for which we could charge a modest fee. We should also consider, that in the names listing of our membership, that some people may not want their contact data freely available. The Board emphasized that the original intent of the web site was to provide an electronic version of the membership listing with names and a description of their practice.

Input provided from Tom Vonier, FAIA (1) consider supplying an image such as a project example or a photographic portrait, (2) when in the members section confine the search function only to the member pages as the key is to lead site visitors from the home page to the directory -- by some device such as a button saying, "Searching for a US trained architect in Europe?" (3) I like this aspect in the current set-up: If someone runs a Google search on my name, or enters "AIA Europe" into a search engine, the Chapter site (and, in the case of my name, my profile page) invariably pops up first or very early in the search results.

A sample page is available. http://www.aiaeurope.org/members/France/vonier.html

A page which begins to address communication via our web site -- essentially guidelines for submissions - can be found at http://www.aiaeurope.org/drafts/communication.html. The mailing lists for board business and for the Paris conference planning lists are ready but invitations to join have not yet been sent.

The Bern conference meeting minutes notes mention a goal of "an interactive web site", this needs to be more specific.

7. Continuing Education by Dominique Tomasov, AIA

Dominique Tomasov, AIA presented an update on Continuing Education Issues and requested that compensation be considered for her continued participation in her role as the Continuing Education Coordinator. This starts all over for each conference with the education of the organizer regarding CE learning units, and ends with extensive follow-up of reporting to Oklahoma. The Excom is concerned about creating a precedent. Continuity is essential in this function; therefore it is not desirable that this role revolves from person to person.

A motion passed compensation of 600 will be budgeted per conference for the Continuing Education Coordinator. This sum will be converted to Dollars at the current exchange rate at time of each payment and a check drafted on the US account. The Board shall also appoint an assistant to the Continuing Education Coordinator.

8. Nominating Committee led by Sandra Zettersten

A motion was passed that the Nominating Committee chairman should be the Immediate Past President for the next year’s Board and that he or she should appoint 2 other members, the slate of candidates for the following year are to be presented to the Board at least 2 months prior to the next election at the Fall General Membership Meeting.

9. Sponsors-Corporate Partners Report by Sandra Zettersten

Sandra Zettersten, AIA reinforced the need to establish a standing committee and touched on the issues of “Friends of Chapter”, partnership sessions, follow-up on challenge to attendees to contact sponsors for product information and confirmation of who is the main contact for each sponsor. Corporate partners’ committee needs to collect information on results of sponsorship. The added value needs to be established.

A motion was passed that the first Corporate Partnership Committee Workshop shall take place at the Porto conference, the committee will receive input but will also provide feedback to the sponsor with the input of the Continuing Education Coordinator.

10. Membership and Web site Report by Richard Anderson

Vision statement and need to establish a standing committee of Regional Membership committees Int’l Assoc. Viewpoint presented by Isabel and Pedro

The projected schedule of resolving membership listing next will be within the second half of February. Input will be needed for the other sections of the site, notably a tighter organization of the membership area of the site specifically: (1) relay to potential members the information necessary to join our chapter and (2) provide a function for people to search for members. Organization will be by country.

We have much work to do to explain how our membership works and how one goes about joining. It is not enough in our case to simply link to AIA National. Related to the difficulty of describing our membership is actually tracking our membership. TIMSS has put us in a poor position. Not only does it handle foreign status clumsily but it also does not deal well with any local membership. The AIA member renewal invoice mentions only what one owes at current local and state levels -- no provision exists to change those affiliations in real time -- adding it to one's "shopping cart" on the web site is not even possible. For our chapter, this becomes particularly problematic as we are more likely to have “unassigned" members -- those who choose to have two affiliations with ours as their secondary.

I suggest that the AIACE take control of one yearly mailing as I am not certain that email has saturated our membership or is yet mature enough to ensure complete understanding and coverage. Two methods have been presented. One is to receive the invoices from National in bulk and mail them out to our members with a letter recapping fees. A second is to mail our own letter at about the same time National mails theirs. I think the latter is a better choice but I would like to take it one step further. Like the BSA, I believe we should take back control of our billing process. If we are to do this through the internet, we will need to bring in some outside web expertise. If we do it by mail we only need to do some stamp licking and envelope stuffing. It is a lot of work, I know but I can not imagine it is any more than the struggle Tamara goes through (and I soon will) to coordinate two lists. We can keep our own list. If our members choose to not pay AIA National dues that is not our problem. As a volunteer organization, we have enough to do without that distraction.

11. Goals and Vision for 10 Years

A motion was passed that an off-site meeting to discuss Goals and Visions for the future of the Chapter shall be held sometime before the next Board Meeting in July. This may take place at the Switzerland Section Event.

New item: Feeling of the BOD as to the creation by National of an International Region

Failing that: a resolution for National to require the elected Secretary to represent the International Chapters on the National Board and providing an adequate travel allowance to make regular visits to the chapters. (item to be explored at Grassroots).

Alan Schwartzman pointed out that for a member of our Chapter to ever become a Regional Director (on the National Board), and eventually an officer of the Institute, the Chapter should either be in a newly created International Region, or be attached to a stateside Region, with a guarantee that a member of our Chapter will be elected periodically to the Institute Board. This item will be discussed further at Grassroots.