Meeting convened at 6:05pm on October 14 at the

Present: Peter Isaacson, Laura Baker, Viera Proulx, Jim Aman, John Meinke, Susan Dean, T.S.Pennington, Will Mitchell, Cathy Bareiss, Chuck Howerton, William Myers, Matthew Dickerson

The meeting began with introductions of the new board members.

The minutes of the previous meeting which had been electronically circulated prior to this meeting were presented for approval. Several minor changes were made including corrections of misspelled names, incorrect regions, and misspelled words. Item 9 changed from "State of Indiana" to "IRS". Item 11 was clarified.

Cathy Bareiss moved the minutes be accepted. Bill Myers seconded. Minutes were accepted unanimously.

Central Plains: (T.S. Pennington) Meeting will be in the Kansas City area at Longview

Community College in Lee's Summit, MO., on April 7-8. They are hoping for more

corporate sponsorship for the student web-page building contest. In 2001 they hope to be

hosting a meeting at Leg of the Ozarks, with 3 schools co-hosting the conference.

Rocky Mountain: (Peter Isaacson) This year's meeting is right here and right now in

Colorado Springs. They have concerns about small attendance, membership, and enrollment. Next year is Orem, Utah on Oct.20-21, 2000, and the following year is Rapid City, South Dakota, Oct.

19-20, 2001.

Midwest: (Jim Aman): Attendance at the annual conference is holding between 65 and 70. They will turn a profit against this year. Next year's conference is supposed to be at Valparaiso in

September, but they are having some trouble scheduling around other events at the

university. In 2001 they are scheduled for Olivette. And in 2002 it is scheduled for Miami

University.

South Central (Laura Baker): Will be in Corpus Christi on April 14-15. Planning

meeting is scheduled for November 12. They are scheduled for Amarillo in 2001.

Southeast (Representative Kevin Treu was unable to attend. His report was e-mailed prior to the meeting.) In Kevinâs absence, Susan Dean made a few comments highlighting the e-mailed report.

Northeast (Viera Proulx): There were fewer papers in 1999 than usual. It is believed that

this might be because our deadline was too early (with respect to. SIGCSE). That has been changed for this year. Speakers were Tracy Kamp and Andy Van Dam. There were best-paper

awards for students and faculty. Next year is the 5th annual conference, and will include

some really hot blues music. It will be at Ramapo College in NJ on April 28-29. For 2001 the conference will be hosted by Middlebury College, most likely on April 21-22.

Northwest: Rob was not present. Will gave a brief report in his place. There were 54 people present at the first conference. Almost all were local. There was one Californian from Humboldt,

and one Canadian. Next year the conference will be in Portland. They hope to garner more

participation from California. It was noted that "small" colleges in the west are larger than

small conferences in the east. The conference was well-run and well-organized, as was the

meeting of the steering committee following the conference.

The NECC report was given by Gail Miles via E-mail. Susan gave some highlights of

that report. NECC 2000 will be in Atlanta. NECC 2001 will be in Chicago.

Will said that Rob (NW) mentioned that he had gotten excellent support (unsolicited) for the NW conference. He was very appreciative. Will said that he can act as a last resort for conference coordinators who have questions and no place to go.

It was reported that Fred Springsteel is interested in a Missouri Valley conference for people from that area who have too far to travel to the Southeast or to the Midwest. So far 6 or 7 people in 4 schools have expressed interest including a provost. Will hopes to have an organizing committee meeting by December. They hope to have crossover from Central Plains and Midwest.

Will noted that this would leave one box in the eastern Ohio and Pittsburgh area where people would have more than four hours to go for the nearest conference, and wondered if we should try to get a conference for that area.

Jim said there are very few small colleges in eastern Ohio, and so there might not be a need for one in this geographical area. It was debated whether something was needed there, and wondered whether there would be people interested in a spring conference. There is a small window for when conferences can happen.

John said there is no more room in the proceedings.

It was noted that Jack Byler at Scranton is interested in bringing the eastern conference back into the consortium.

The question was raised as to whether the conference coordinator has the duty of telling the local conferences when to hold their meetings, or whether the local conferences make their own decisions based on local concerns. Will felt that the later was the better model, especially as the number of conferences grow. That opens the question of how many services we provide. How do we support the regions? Perhaps we make more use of regional people. He wanted to see other regions develop strong regional committees (like the Northeast region).

Viera said authors could be required to provide abstracts in some unified format to move more of the publication work to the regional (as opposed to the national) level.

John followed up the question of coordinating (not dictating) how local conferences choose dates, so that they don't all happen at the same weekend. One real advantage of this according to John is for cross-fertilization between conferences.

Viera mentioned that the committee may not have any choice about the dates. There are concerns with host institutions, as well as with holidays.

Cathy mentioned that she could not handle registration of more conferences in the fall. She feels that the board is already maxed out for the fall. In this area, the board must have some control.

Another issue is that when multiple conferences are on the same weekend, it makes it difficult for the editor to handle all the papers (all coming in at the same time.)

Chuck raised the fact that there are some at-risk conferences. He suggested we emphasize strengthening existing conferences before starting new ones.

John read that the eastern conference (not a member of CCSC) has gotten only 16 paper submissions at a recent conference. It may be that the eastern people are going to the northeast. This is more evidence that perhaps we need to improve existing conferences before opening starting ones.

Cathy said that conference coordination needs to be stronger. She needs everybody doing the same thing (with respect to. registration forms, etc.) Some of the informal knowledge needs to be shared more formally.

Viera pointed out that because Cathy handles all registration, she gets information like what people ordered for food. It doesn't make sense for the national coordinator to handle some of these things. It was proposed that we have uniform registration forms.

Cathy says that all these forms are already on-line. It is the job of the regional representative to get the information to the conference chair. If she can count on regional reps to forward the stuff, she will get it to them. There was general agreement that this was a good idea. Also, regional reps can give information to Cathy.

This opened yet another can-of-worms--where local conference web sites are hosted. Viera has a question about whether we can have a permanent host for CCSC. She said the local college ITS people don't want to deal with this. It should be done by a professional web-hosting commercial organization to provide a secure sight. Should we set up something like that for all regions. There could be a single site that ALL regions could use. That would save money for everybody since disc space is cheap. Get everybody to set their links to CCSC national. Let individual regions design their own pages, but host them all together.

Cathy would like to see only a single domain name CCSC.ORG that everybody would use.

Will and Jim said we need to disperse the load of managing the site, whether it is central or not.

ACTION: Chuck appointed Viera and Kevin (absent) to form a committee to study the "web-site issue" and make a proposal at the SIGCSE meeting.

Bill said the proposal should be passed through the finance committee.

Cathy said that she needs to know from regional representatives about anything that needs to be changed. She suggested (since she has e-mails of all members) that she sends a letter to everybody asking for volunteers. She asked what the board thinks of her training one conference to do registration for their own conference.

Will was opposed on the grounds that he doesn't want to see the money start going lots of places.

Cathy countered by asking for an assistant registrar. Laura volunteered.

Chuck wondered if this would be a good job for past-president. Cathy said the problem with this is continuity--training people to do the registration.

Bill said we need an audit procedure. He was nervous about having yet another person handle money before we have a formal audit procedure. Bill suggested that he and Cathy talk more and try to come up with a system to make things easier.

Chuck said that electronic registration has worked very well. People could register electronically, and then send their checks. Registrations would be "pending" until money came in. Cathy would be saved the hassle of entering data manually.

ACTION: Chuck appointed a committee of the volunteers Laura, Cathy, Bill, and himself to be on the committee. It will be chaired by Cathy.

As an aside, John mentioned that we need a copy of the by-laws prior to and after August 1,1999, signed by the then president.

The report was e-mailed prior to the meeting. John reviewed a few highlights of his report, including the air-ware over Bosnia which put some big hitches in the collection of papers. He mentioned again that somebody needs to coordinate conference deadlines, at least with respect to publishing and when papers will be due.

Will wondered about how conferences are bundled into proceedings.

Viera wondered if John could set deadlines independent of the date of the conferences. John and Bill both noted that this won't work because the deadline depends on how soon the proceedings need to be mailed.

Matt Dickerson asked why people get two copies of the proceedings for conferences that

we attend (one that we receive at the conference, and one mailed to us).

Several answers were given. Originally it was done to get bulk mailing rates. Other reasons

include that people might use the extra proceedings in a library for publicity. Another issue is just the extra work of pulling out proceedings from the mailing for people who have already received them.

John needs a responsible person in each region to work with. Regional reps need to make sure they have a publication person. In particular, this coordination should take place before any dates are published for authors in CFPs.

It was discussed whether we should have required editors (or author's chairs) for each region. Cathy is skeptical that it will happen unless it is required.

The publications committee will address giving, in our next published proceedings, recognition to our printer who has done a very good job.

It is suggested that the e-journal be removed from our forms (unless we find somebody who wants to do it).

We discussed formalizing Will's position as archivist. Will doesn't feel a need.

We discussed having each presenter at each conference send an abstract in ASCII for the web sites. The regional editor would take care of this.

There was an excited discussion about the use of WordPerfect when lots of authors have only MS Word. Regional editors might need to do some of these translations. Regional people need to be responsible. However the final thing going to the national editor must be in WordPerfect (they must all have a standard format).

There was a discussion about whether the standing rules should be printed. It was noted that the president-elect is the secretary, and that the secretary is supposed to keep the official list of standing rules to keep up-to-date. Is this an assumed position or appointed position?

ACTION: Chuck appointed Bill and John to be the committee on standing rules.

Kevin is absent. We have already had a discussion on the web site.

Regarding abstracts on the web page, local conferences are encouraged on a volunteer basis

to experiment.

8. TREASURER REPORT (Bill Myers):

All the conferences made money this past year, except the NW (which didn't have a conference.) The report was presented and discussed in detail. Bill clarified several issues.

It was noted that we took in about $5,000 more than budgeted, while also spending less than budgeted. It was also noted that the board has been under budget on travel, but over budget on board meeting expenses, journal mailing, and postage.

9. FINANCE COMMITTEE REPORT (Bill Myers):

There was a discussion of the fact that there is no deadline for membership renewal, and that the extra charge for conference registration for non-members is not consistent, and in some cases is larger than the cost of renewing membership.

Bill raised the issue that his bank runs specials including charge cards, and wondered about getting CCSC charge card. This saves us having to report to the IRS people who get reimbursements for more than $1000.

MOTION: Matt moved that Bill gets a charge card for the CCSC board. Viera seconded. Motion approved unanimously.

There are companies that specialize in getting people proceedings. We were contacted by a firm that wants to buy extra copies of our proceedings. Bill suggested we only charge them postage on the first copy we ship them. For library rate, it is about $1.00 per issue to the foreign address. It takes about six weeks.

Bill proposed that we set the following rates and fees for libraries and other parties wishing to receive issues of our Journal:

Annual subscription: $35.00 per volume desired

Add $2 (for postage) for each Canadian/Mexican address.

Add $5 (for surface postage) for each non-North American address.

Add $10 (for airmail postage) for each non-North American address.

MOTION: Viera moved that we take Bill's suggestion sent in his August e-mail. Seconded by Cathy. Approved unanimously.

Bill has the figures for this year's IRS return, written in pencil to be checked.

It has been proposed that we have a standard template for conference budgets. Bill opened this discussion. He has sent a standard template out to everybody. Each conference should use those categories, and fill it in. The purpose is to help each conference to not lose money. Bill will be looking at the budgets along with Cathy to see if the budgets look good and approving them.

Viera said that for the Northeast there is already a budget with some extra categories not on the template, but she doesn't see a problem with that. She did note that for our next conference there is no secretarial support from the hosting conference--which some previous conferences have had--and thus there will be some unexpected expenses. The question was: in cases when there are implicit college contributions (e.g. postage, secretarial, etc.) should this appear on the budget that Bill sees (and reports for IRS reasons). Bill answered no. That should be kept local.

Viera also said there should be a deadline for budgets since CCSC national will be approving them. That deadline will have to be more than a year in advance if the budget is going to be approved on time for the conference chair.

MOTION: All conferences (beginning with conferences in the calendar year 2001) be required to submit to the treasurer of the national board, by the spring board meeting of the previous calendar year, a budget for the conference.

Moved by John. Seconded by Viera.

There was discussion on this matter. Chuck pointed out that this might not be necessary because all conferences have been showing a profit. Viera said the problem is more than just profit vs. loss, but has more to do with helping the conference coordinators. In particular, there is often very little paperwork from one year to the next to help new conference coordinators.

Peter wondered how helpful it really would be to Bill to have this information in planning the budget for the national.

A finance committee was formed with Bill, Jim, and Susan.

Susan presented a proposal of a work-in-progress for audit procedures. The goal is to have an audit of the national board in conjunction with the spring board meeting. See handout.

Laura will be in charge of getting a committee.

Chuck made some initial observations about differences in participation as well as postage costs--sometimes inversely related. There was discussion about the differences, and trends in attendance at various conferences.

Concerns over number of paper submissions was also raised. For many board members, the decrease in paper submissions is seen as a bigger problem.

Though the conferences are all profitable and we don't see any emergency yet, Jim did mention that we'd be foolish to not take efforts to increase participation.

John sees one problem as that of poor long-term planning, and reminded us that several people in July couldn't even find the Rocky Mountain conference web site. We need to do a better job of advance publicity.

The board had a discussion trying to track down details on when mailings were done, and where the cost came from. In some cases, mailings were done first class because the programs weren't ready on time. This is a case when better advance planning might help keep costs down as well as improving publicity.

Peter raised the concern that papers for fall conferences come in during the summer, which is a bad time.

Viera went over the details for the Northeast about when the publicity goes out. The preliminary CFPs are ready 14 months in advance at SIGCSE, and then again at the conference 12 months in advance. A final CFP goes out during the summer. South Central also has a CF available at the conference a year in advance also. There are all believed to be helpful.

Jim said that lots of this work (such as creating good job descriptions) is out there, but we're reinventing the wheel too often. We really need a good set of job descriptions and recommended deadlines and make sure that these go to the conference coordinators.

Chuck suggested that fall conferences move back a few weeks to give people more time to get papers (and funding) ready for submission. Jim pointed out that for northern conferences weather is a concern if we move too late (past the end of October).

Will pointed out that for good advance planning you need to have two conference committees working at the same time. You cannot wait until the current year's conference before putting together the committee for the following year. Viera noted that subsequent conference chairs are involved in the current conference.

Cathy wondered whether all the meandering discussion of the past few minutes really was focused on concrete goals.

Will said we might be able to make better use of data from past conferences to do a better job marketing.

Peter noted that the location of the conference makes a big difference as to who shows up--though no necessarily how many. How do you hold on to people who come to one conference because it is close so that they will go the next year when it is farther away.

Viera wondered what percentage of people who don't come back to a conference still renew their CCSC membership.

Matt encouraged steering committees also to look into what people really need and make sure the conference is meeting real needs (and not our manufactured ideas of needs). Jim feels that we already do this well, but even when we give people exactly what they ask for, they don't necessarily come back.

Again the idea came back to geography--people come when the conference is close and no when it is far away. Peter said we can do more for people who travel a long way. Cathy said that morning workshops on Friday and afternoon workshops on Saturday help on this end.

Chuck wondered about having an e-conference: e.g. a single conference but one which is simultaneously hosted in several geographically diverse sites which are linked by some sort of tele-commuting link so that there are four difference sites that people go to for the same conference.

The general response to Chuck's suggestion is that what really brings people is the face-to-face interaction. Cathy proposed that maybe we offer more smaller informal CCSC-sponsored workshops for smaller geographic regions, both to help people out and also to build momentum.

Will suggested a tele-conference to show that we are up-to-date. Bill said we might do this in conjunction with a publisher, where we provide the sites and the publisher covers the cost of the mini-conference (in exchange for the publicity and chance to sell books).

Viera emphasized that doing more for involving undergraduates can be helpful--especially if faculty advisors are required to participate. It was suggested that we work to attract more junior/senior undergraduate projects. T.S. reminded us to keep community colleges in mind, as this is an ideal conference for them.

Cathy said we might spend money to increase our mailing lists. Bill said we might do something in conjunction with a publisher and use their mailing lists. Will said we might do more with our SIGSCE affiliation to reach more people.

There was an emotional discussion about the differences between what we do and what a typical SIGCSE paper does, and whether we really want to work to increase our audience by attracting SIGCSE presenters. Several people said that there are plenty of basic teaching strategies that come from people at big universities that everybody can use--despite their teaching load, classes size, etc. In other words, although we don't want to become another SIGCSE, that doesn't mean that people in larger universities don't have something of value for the CCSC conferences.

Chuck also raised the fact that there is a whole other market in addition to computer science, namely CIS/MIS/BIS. Do they have an alternate place to go? Can we reach them? Chuck claims there about 3 times as many of them as there are people in computer science.

Viera noted that there are two issues.

1. Is our CF going to them?

2. Do our conferences actually offer anything to them?

T.S. said his conference has gotten a diverse participation including a large number of people in library science.

Viera mentioned that the northeast may be offering workshops on teaching for graduate students. Jim said that they have offered workshops on interviewing.

Chuck has volunteered to chair an e-discussion to follow-up on these ideas and try to get something concrete out of it.

ASIDE: It was noted that chuck has appointed Rob Bryant as Northwestern rep. until they

have an election.

13. NOMINATION COMMITTEE REPORT (Susan Dean):

This is not a report, but more of a clarification. Susan wanted to know what positions need to be filled for next year. A brief discussion clarified the following positions to be filled:

1. President-elect
2. Publications-chair
3. Southeastern rep.
4. South Central rep.
5. Northwestern rep.

It was noted that the Northwestern region is actually an affiliated region according to the standing rules until they have their first conference. At that time they become a region.

I. Paul Myers was upset because he had to spend several extra nights at the spring meeting that have not been covered by anybody. The reason is that the rules say that we only cover one night at the spring meeting. Chuck said he needs to stay multiple nights to be at the board meeting (the night before SIGCSE) and the general annual meeting (immediately after the SIGCSE annual meeting).

Viera said she thinks we should cover people for all their stay if they are not reimbursed by other funds. Chuck said we need a very specific travel policy.

Bill shared some history of where the current travel policy came from. In particular, we don't want to be open to the criticism that CCSC exists to raise money for our travel. Also, it was expected that most people would go to SIGCSE anyway.

Matt commented that although he understands the policy, he would not be going to SIGCSE if it weren't for the board meeting.

Will said one issue is how do we cap our liability for travel.

MOTION: T.S. moved that the travel policy be amended so that it applies to all board and membership meetings. The motion was seconded (simultaneously by several people, including Viera) and approved unanimously.

MOTION: Cathy moved that we retroactively reimburse Paul Myers. The motion was seconded by John. It passed 10-1.

II. It was pointed out that we are not tax-exempt (even though we are an NPO, we are not established as a charitable institution). Therefore we need to pay sales tax. This amounts to about $200 per year.

The discussion was raised about whether we should try to incorporate in every single state where we do business to try to avoid paying sales tax.

John recommended that we defer to the treasurer in consultation with regional conferences.

I. John wants to know if individual authors of CCSC papers are allowed to put their papers on their web sites. It was noted that this permission is already implicit in the current copyright and

no changes are needed.

MOTION: Bill moved that we suggest to authors who post papers electronically to include a link to the CCSC home page along with the copyright notice. This suggestion will be added to the copyright release form.

Seconded by Susan.

After discussion, Peter called the vote. Matthew seconded. The vote was to vote.

It was understood that this motion leaves some flexibility for the publications chair to decided how this suggestion will be worded. Possibilities include, but are not limited to, "Authors who post their work electronically are requested to include a link to the CCSC home page."

II. There was a discussion about whether SIGCSE's downsizing will have an impact on CCSC. Will more people now come to SIGCSE as a regional conference, and therefore stop coming to CCSC? This was certainly perceived as a possibility.

III. Bill suggested that we reconsider how we decide where the fall board meeting is. Perhaps regions can compete for the privilege of hosting the fall meeting. We might also set a policy that the meeting hotel must be near a major airport with courtesy shuttle.

Cathy and others didn't like this idea because it would eliminate several conferences.

Bill suggested then, that perhaps the board looks at the locations of all the conferences, as well as other relevant information such as travel expenses and needs of the various regions, and then decides which would be best.

Jim wondered whether the meeting needs to be in conjunction with a conference. There was general agreement that it should.

There followed a discussion about how we choose the location, and it was agreed that the board should take several things into consideration. Representations should come to the board meetings with proposals for how they could host the meeting.

We then discussed where it should be in the fall of 2000. There was a consensus for having it in Portland in conjunction with the NW meeting. No other regions had a compelling desire to host it.

Bill said he could host the meeting in Spring of 2001, because he is close to where SIGCSE will be held.

Spring of 2000 board meeting is on the meeting of March 8, and the general membership meeting on the 10th, in Austin Texas.