ADHOC Steering Committee Meeting, June 2004, Göteborg

This page documents the second of two ADHOC meetings held in Göteborg in June 2004. This meeting was the first meeting of the ADHOC Steering Committee. Notes taken by Lorna Hughes.

Present

Minutes of the IFDISH Steering committee meeting

Date: June 15th, 2004

Location: Panorama Hotel, Gothenburg

Present:

IFDISH SC voting members: David Robey, (representing Harold Short) John Unsworth, Lisa Lena Opas-HŠnninen, Laszlo Hunyadi.

Non-voting members of the SC: Jean Anderson (ALLC Treasurer), Julia Flanders (Conference Committee Chair), Geoffrey Rockwell (Chair of the Publications Committee), Lorna Hughes (ACH President)

Apologies: Marilyn Deegan (Editor, LLC).

1. John Unsworth was nominated and elected Chair of the SC

2. The date and time of the next IFDISH SC meeting was decided. This will take place at the ALLC mid-year meeting in Scotland, 3rd-5th December 2004. IFDISH business will be discussed on the second day of the meeting (Saturday December 4th). All voting members of the SC will attend, as will non voting-members who are members of the ALLC executive Council (Lorna, Jean and Marilyn).

3. Action Items for the IFDISH SC for the next year

i. Governance, identity and structure of IFDISH: There must be continuing discussions about the identity of the organization, and in particular, solutions will have to be found to the questions about the law pertaining to the matter of the Journal's ownership, and the question of the way in which ALLC has been constituted as a public charity. These matters will have to be resolved by the ALLC executive council before other legal matters can be addressed, such as the drawing up of formal agreements amongst the organizations, which will allow the partnership of the affiliated organizations to be dissolved, at no penalty, should the need or wish to do so arise in the future (agreements that have been referred to in previous discussions as "prenuptial arrangements"). The governance document developed for discussion at the Gothenburg meeting (the "Guidelines") is to be the basis for going forward, and the SC is charged with going forward on this basis, while resolving legal questions. After the legal questions are resolved, John Unsworth, Harold Short and Lorna Hughes are charged with developing the next version of the "Guidelines", which will be discussed at the December 2004 meeting.

ii. Issues relating to Publications

a. The publications committee was charged with becoming a standing committee. Geoffrey Rockwell will serve as Chair.

b Ownership of the Journal. This should be resolved as quickly as possible, but the committee recognized that this will be a two stage process. The first stage will be the establishment of a firm agreement, followed by specific proposals that the AGMs of ACH and ALLC can vote on at the 2005 conference.

The publications Committee with appoint a committee to investigate this issue.

c. An online publication: The publications committee should investigate the establishment of a free e-journal. We should go forward on the assumption that the organization wishes to have a distinct electronic Journal, separate from LLC.

iii. Conferences

a. The conference committee was charged with becoming a standing committee. Julia Flanders will serve as Chair.

b. The Executive Council of ACH has approved the IFDISH Conference protocol and annex materials; the ALLC has not, yet. [NB: this item corrected by JMU (5/05), after consultation with Lorna Hughes and David Robey; formerly, it said that both ECs had approved the conference protocol]

c. The new protocols will be used by the 2005 Program Committee to guide them in their work, and this committee should try to resolve any problems with these protocols, in consultation with the IFDISH Conference Committee.

d. The IFDISH Publications committee should work on any modifications to these protocols that are required.

e. The ACH president has undertaken responsibility for resolving any problems that may occur as a result of implementing the new protocols, rather than this having to be the responsibility of the Program Chair.

f. The question of changing the name of the conference was discussed. It was agreed that the conference should be called "ACH-ALLC 2005"next year, but that in 2006, the conference should be known as IFDISH 2006

g. 2006 Conference: It was reiterated that it was decided at the ALLC executive council meeting that IFDISH will appoint the Chair of the 2006 conference. This appointment should be made in a timely fashion, to allow the Program Committee to begin their work early.

This had been discussed and approved by the ALLC Executive council, and at the ACH Council. The program Committee will have 4 representatives from each organization, ACH and ALLC, as has been customary, but the program Chair will be appointed by the IFDISH steering committee.

The ALLC representatives on the PC will be Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen, Paul Fortier, Alejandro Bia and Simon Horobin. The ACH representatives will be John Unsworth, Lorna Hughes, Kevin Hawkins and Stefan Sinclair.

4. Member Services

i. IFDISH should have a member services person. A member of the SC should be the coordinator of member services for IFDISH. Lorna Hughes and Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen will be interim co-coordinators of membership until December 2004.

5. IFDISH Website

i. A publicity team will be charged with outreach activities.

ii. An IFDISH Website will be developed. This should be publicly available, and the location of all documents pertaining to IFDISH.

6. Affiliated organizations.

i. The SC were given the charge to develop a boilerplate agreement for affiliated organizations.

ii. The relationship of COSH COCH to IFDISH must be clarified. They are, in many ways, a perfect test case of the sort of affiliated organization that we hope to attract under the new structure, so it is important that IFDISH's relationship with COCH COSH be carefully managed at this time, even though they are not yet fully integrated to the new organization.

iii. A far broader discussion about regional and affiliated organizations needs to be constituted: we need to address how we can most fruitfully have "affiliated" organizations under the new umbrella organization.

7. Process

It was reiterated that the convening of the IFDISH standing committee at the ALLC-ACH2004 conference was the culmination of a 2 year process of extensive discussions and consultations among the ACH and ALLC. A great deal of progress had been made when the ALLC Executive Council agreed to move forward with the new umbrella organization at their mid-year meeting in Hevitz in December of 2003. A great deal of progress had also been made at the ACH-ALLC 2003 conference. There is a need for the SC to move forward with a clear understanding of what was agreed at these meetings:

- that there should be pre-nuptial and similar legal guidelines framing the new organization

- that ownership of the Journal should move to IFDISH

- that there would be an integrated structure for the umbrella organization - an "organization of organizations".

- that there would be shared governance of a shared enterprise,

- if things change in any way, ownership of the journal should revert to ALLC.

There is a need for the newly convened SC to revisit the original framing documents that exist. These should all be gathered together in one easily accessible place, and regularly updated.

Both the IFDISH SC, and the broader community of the Associations, need to be kept informed. Documents must be distributed in a timely fashion so that everyone can read them. Part of the business of the IFDISH SC is to ensure that the Members of the Associations have information about IFDISH.

As the "Guidelines" are developed, they must be distributed and discussed.