General Meeting

[Paul Hesse]

At the forthcoming AQUA Conference in Port Fairy we will hold the
Association's (Bi)Annual General Meeting.

This will be a very important meeting and I would like your participation
at the meeting or by email.

This is a call for additional agenda items and notification of current
agenda items (in no particular order).

0. Accept minutes of last meeting.  Accept financial report.

1. Adoption of a new constitution, to meet requirements of incorporation.

2. Adoption of a seal, to meet requirements of incorporation.

3. Debate on membership of the Australian Geoscience Council

4. Choice of the next conference venue.

5. Debate on an electronic directory of Quaternarists/AQUA members

6. Election of a new committee

7. Debate on electronic publication of Quaternary Australasia

8. Life memberships awarded

9. Determination of annual subscriptions

Details

1.  At the last meeting, the incorporation of AQUA was approved.  This
requires that we adopt a new constitution.  A draft will be circulated at
or prior to the meeting.

2.  As part of the business of becoming incorporated, we need a 'seal' for
the Association.  There seem to be no design constraints, so we intend to
make this a competition!

Entries for the design of the Association's seal will be accepted up until
the day before the meeting.  There will be a suitable prize for the winning
entry.

3.  We have been approached to join the Australian Geoscience Council which
itself is a member of the Federation of Australian Scientific and
Technological Societies (I could be wrong here; FASTS anyway).  There is a
per-head levy to join, and for a couple of dollars per person we get a seat
with the big boys who lobby government.  Election to join AGC would
necessitate raising subscriptions.

4.  We need to select a location for the next conference.  Although not
strictly requiring approval at the meeting, it is a good opportunity to
take offers and to elect an appropriate Conference Secretary.

So far we have an offer from Jamie Shulmeister to hold the next conference
in New Zealand:

'I guess that I will turn that informal discussion with Paul into a cautious
offer of an AQUA meeting in either early Feb 2002 or early Feb 2003.  The
suggested venue would be Ohakune, which is a ski resort and carrot growing
town on the S flank of Mt Ruapehu - last erupted in '95 (the volcano that
is).  The town has heaps of accomodation in summer and it is definitely low
season -we would probably take over the town + it is located on the edge of
a very pretty National Park with old growth beech and podocarp forests as
well as the volcano.  Rotorua and Taupo the other obvious candidates, are
big summer resorts - hard to get into and pricey at that time of year'.

5.  Tim Barrows has suggested that members may find an electronic directory
of AQUA members (attached to the web-site) a useful resource.  Potentially
it could be used for on-line updating of membership details, addresses etc.
which would aid the mail-outs.  Of course this raises issues of
confidentiality and privacy.  Therefore we seek a discussion of the issue
at the meeting to test the mood of the membership and appropriate protocols.

6.  We need to elect a new committee.  The positions and current incumbents
are;

President  Paul Hesse
Secretary  Geoff Hope
Treasurer  Christine Kenyon
Publications Editor Kate Harle
Electronic/IT Editor Tim Barrows
Conference Secretary  Simon Haberle

If the Association adopts the new constitution then apparently we need to
appoint a vice-president.  We may be able to make organization of the
conference the duty of the vice-president and delete the position of
conference secretary to avoid inflating the number of committee positions.

Nominations are called for all positions.  Of the current committee members
all will seek re-election except Hesse.

7.  Simon Haberle has suggested electronic publication of papers from QA:

'An additional point that might be raised at the general meeting is the
possibility of promoting and publishing Quaternary Australasia as a
refereed journal via E-press. The ability to publish data and images on
the web (as opposed to hard copy) would seem to be one of the major
advantages of this and would be very useful for those with data heavy or
complex diagram research (modellers/pollen data/ocean core data etc...).

'One way of achieving this may be to move to web only publishing via an
E-Press organisation. This would not be an ephemeral source as we
currently have but a formally published site (i.e.. archived by
Australian National Library). Monash E-Press is currently being
established and have expressed interest in publishing journals such as
ours and may be a good venue for this (though there may be better
possibilities?). The editorial process and people remains the same but
Monash E-Press would provide an associate editor to put the material
together as it came in (i.e.. immediate publication of articles).
Anyway, this may increase the workload a little of an editorial board
but would reduce the workload of having to bring out a paper copy 3-4
times a year (i.e.. for Kate and Tim mainly, though I'm sure the
editorial work would balance this out). Of course we would still keep
the newsy articles etc.... Jim Peterson (who is on the library/e-press
committee here at Monash) is looking into the details for me and will
hopefully bring them to PF for consideration. He seems to think that
costs would be minimal and could be less than producing the hard copy.
There are a number of other Societies doing this at the moment (South
Connections Newsletter) and it seems to work well for them. Anyway, food
for thought.....

Tim Barrows comments;

'This would raise the question of where we see ourselves going as an
organization. Do we wish to publish just papers or do we continue
producing the newsletter style of information dissemination? The
former has always been a secondary, though regular role. I'd argue
that the latter is/has been a vital component of the organization's
role. To do both separately would require separate Editors. If we do
both together than what's the real difference with what we do now
with web access? We already have the ability to publish data and
color images via the website.

About 10% of AQUA subscribers don't appear to have functional email
addresses and therefore regular web access. I suspect that a large
number of other subscribers appreciate the flexibility of a printed
copy. Its convenient to take with you travelling to read etc, and can
be pulled off the shelf at will without turning on the computer.

Will the online journal have free access or a paid password? Will we
have to pay the associate editor? Do our Editors need more work
without being paid? How do we encourage people to join the
organization when there is no tangible document arriving in the mail
or if web access is free? Would people still join if they were paying
for just web access to a document and the honor of being a member?
Human nature being what it is, what's to stop people sharing
passwords etc. to avoid the costs? If we aren't getting
subscriptions, how do we maintain our current philanthropic role with
student bursaries etc?'

to which Simon replied;

'a response to some of the questions..

>Do we wish to publish just papers or do we continue
producing the newsletter style of information dissemination?

Yes I think we should do both, though the issue of having papers edited
and published to DETYA standards needs to be clarified. My suggestion of
going to an e-press (as now being set up by Monash) was simply to reduce
the technical load for editors and make the editing of papers a more
formal process...i.e. shift the journal part from an "ephemeral URL"
site to an "archived URL" site (terms apparently used by publishers when
referring to web stuff). Monash e-press will be archived at the
Australian National Library. Raising this issue now was simply because
Monash will set up an e-press this year and are interested in taking on
journals such as QA.

> Will the online journal have free access or a paid password?
Apparently free access.

> Will we have to pay the associate editor?
No

> Do our Editors need more work without being paid?
Potentially less work than now if the technical editing is done by the
e-press associate editor instead of current editors.

> How do we encourage people to join the organization when there is no
> tangible document arriving in the mail or if web access is free?
Web access is already free of course, as it should remain, but a thinner
(perhaps less work and cost) newsletter could be sent out as hard copy
to satisfy all.

> Human nature being what it is, what's to stop people sharing
> passwords etc. to avoid the costs?
This can already be done via the web, going to the library or by
borrowing someone's hardcopy...as it should be. We should be about
disseminating our information and publicising the benefits of Australian
Quaternary research as widely as possible....

and Kate Harle added;

'However, I do think some sort of hard
copy is necessary. I have now successfully used it to encourage atleast
three new members to join - I gave them a copy of the latest QA and they
were SO impressed with our organisation and our mag/journal that they
joined.'

please add your comments at the meeting.

8.  Life membership was awarded to Prof. Jim Bowler in 2000.



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          Dr Paul Hesse

           Senior Lecturer in Physical Geography
           President, Australasian Quaternary Association

           Department of Physical Geography
           Macquarie University, Sydney
           NSW 2109
           Australia
           Phone  (+61)  02-9850 8384  Fax. (+61) 02-9850 8420
           e-mail  phesse at laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au
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