Columbia University EWB – Executive Board

Meeting Minutes: Beyond Borders Debrief

Election Preparation and Redefinition of Roles

November 21, 2010

In attendance: Sonal, Sarah, Bruce, Bethany, Kevin, Alison (substituting for Lacey), Lucy, Dhristie

Special visitors: Kristina Lee, Christine Liu, Rebecca Ciez, Claudia Vergas, Derek Huang

1. PL Updates (None given today)

2. Beyond Borders
- Debrief: What did you like?

Sonal: Good Job: We started meeting in the beginning of October and had many people working. The alums came back! Flaws: Work burden was not evenly shared. Next year we’ll flyer more.

Kristina: Sit down dinner was great! More people stayed and listened to the speaker. Only complaint from non-EWB friends: Program presentations were a little too long. Flaw: A lot of the new members (freshman) did not come/were not involved.

Sarah: Amazing speaker, professional presentations. Comment: After 3 Beyond Borders, each one becoming more professional, at the next one, we are ready to invite Professionals and faculty. We could go back to the original goal and sell tables and make this a fundraising event. Well, we’d still have to cater it to the Columbia Community. If we do have Professors/professionals, intersperse them with EWB students. If we want to have professionals, we’d need to market it to them as an opportunity to meet incredible engineers that you can hire later.

There were about 8 people from NYU-Poly in attendance.

Rebecca: We could HEAR the speeches this year! I spent most of the night preparing the food in the kitchen. I suggest setting up preparing folding tables and setting up food assembly-line style instead of bothering with the kitchen.

Dhristie: Maybe we should have people sign up for kitchen prep next year.

But to people on the outside, it looked super-professional.

-Have servers meet in ADVANCE.

Kevin: Looked super-professional on the outside. But we need more advanced-planning next time. Next year: More people from other schools, and more professionals tabling. Advertise to students that professionals and student groups are here.

Claudia: Great! Sub-organizations need to be stronger.

Derek: Emphasis on presentations over performances was a great idea.

Dhristie: The tabling in the back was not uniform. We should specify to them what we want them to bring. i.e. “Bring a sign, bring a poster, bring a hand-out.”

Kristina: They have no excuse. I’ve been emailing them constantly. We tried to have a pre-meeting with everyone tabling.

We agree: Have a list of recommended things that Tablers should bring.

Alison: It looked nicely done, good lighting. The serving was so that everyone could pay attention. In the future: 1. Our program speeches went long. 2. Tabling: Put all of our program tables together. 3. To make it more professional: Assign people to different tables, so that when people come to sit down, they can sit with a name-tagged CU-EWB member. This will promote discussion.

Bruce: Really liked the speeches. I didn’t have a problem with the length, because it kept the focus on us.

Bethany: We need to have the space booked for longer. We had to shorten the event because of an event that ended at around 5 PM. No video next year, unless we update it. Prize for best table next year.

Sonal: The event review meeting is very important. The video gave us context.

Dhristie: Could we have a dress rehearsal for the event the night before?

Lucy: Maybe just publishing a schedule for us, beforehand. Everyone on stage should know exactly how much time they had.

Sonal: There was a lot of distance between the core members working on this and the rest of the Columbia community.

How do you get people in your program excited about this?

a. Alison: In Uganda, we just acted excited, and got everyone else in our programs excited about it.

b. Dhristie: The committee is great, but we need to divvy up tasks directly to the programs.

c. Rebecca: For the program meetings, create a short powerpoint to show everyone to get them excited and show them why they should get involved and be excited.

How can we remember what we learned this year next year?

a. Rebecca: At the Pitt conference, one girl had the whole event planned in a binder that she carried around with her.

b. We need a way to record this stuff.

c. Sarah: We need a uniform way to write our documents, and a way to store

Decision: We should book the room for a much longer time!

Get more freshmen involved in the event.

Video:

a. Work on the video in the coming year. Have it as a project in the coming year.

i. Can we hire someone?
- Follow Up (thank yous, eforms)
- President and Provost Fund
- Gatsby Fund

3. Elections

1. How should we hold the elections? How can we get people to go?

a. Advertise it as a networking-with-other-EWB-members event.

i. Then we can get to know the candidates from other teams.

ii. It should be on you to campaign for your position by going to the individual program meetings.

b. Last year was a success!

i. It’s up to the programs to get their members to come.

ii. If there are people running from every team, people were coming to support them.

c. Lacey’s Alison’s Suggestion: Equal allocation of votes. India members can have more friends come to vote for them. If you only know the people on your team, you’ll tend to vote for them.

Pick a date for the Information meeting for people running on Eboard.

Can we have online voting?

i. Using a doodle.

ii. Wouldn’t this further encourage people to only vote for people they know.

How much do we trust our membership? Do we have faith in them?

i. Sonal has faith in us!

ii. House of Representatives vs. the Senate

iii. Stress to your programs the importance of voting for the MOST qualified members.

SETTING THE DATE:

Pre-election meeting: December 3, Friday at 7 PM (then everyone from Uganda can go)

Elections: Saturday, December 11 at 2 PM.

Your First Meeting: December 12 at 5 PM.

2. FUTURE Structural Changes to the E-board

i. Should there be a Program version of each E-Board position that attends each meeting?

ii. Suggestions by “Unbiased” (wink wink) Committee of students who attended the Regional workshop.

iii. Split the PR and Funding role, or have 2 people split the job.

a. Maybe split PR into Website PR and hard copy PR.

b. Webmaster position!

i. Advertise to comp-sci/art people. Want to get involved?

iv. Should we have mini-PR and funding people within the programs?

a. Yes, but they shouldn’t have to go to every meeting.

b. Sarah recommends that even the training role should have a mini-person in each program. Alison: But this is the PL’s job.

c. Have the minis come once a month, or on an as-needed basis.

i. Consensus: Once a month. Then it is structured.

3. Role by Role

a. Treasurer-

i. Within Programs: Ghana and Uganda have them. India should have one.

a. Why you should have a treasurer: Know where all your grant money is going.

b. Secretary

i. Should touch base with program secretaries once per semester.

ii. We do NOT need to invite secretaries to E-Board meetings on a monthly basis.

iii. Bethany’s Suggestion: Only change in Secretary role: Have a system where new secretary forwards related cu-ewb emails to individual program secretaries.

c. PR VP

i. Come up with a template to give to the PR leads in the individual projects.

d. Funding

i. Each team should have a few members working on funding, anyway.

ii. Person on the E-Board will keep in contact with funding teams, and have them send in their grants to the E-Board.

iii. Should keep track of what grants which programs are applying to.

iv. But programs finish their grants hours in advance.

e. Education and Training

i. Doesn’t need people under them. The PL’s will say what they need.

4. Project Leads should be in contact with other Project Leads!

5. Who should organize the Professional Panel?

i. It should be a PRESIDENT, PM, PL job. They should be meeting once a month anyway!

6. Sonal’s Final Summary:

President: Vision. PM/PL meetings. Role as regulator! Making sure Program Reports are all handed in! (everything but grants)

Treasurer: Each program will have one and meet as a body as needed or 1^st Sunday of every month.

Secretary: Unchanged.

VP of Funding: Will have a subcommittee  that meets with funding people from each project. Corporate outreach. This will take a lot off the shoulders of the PLs.

VP of PR:

7. When should we elect internal program people in relation to the EBoard?

i. Preferably elect E-Board first.

5. SWE Email

6. BINDER!

Current E-Board: Do this for posterity!

Compile a massive TO-DO list! Write down things you’ve learned, things that your position.

7. Program Travel Applications: Need to go out w/in the next month!