MN IUG Steering Committee Meeting

Wednesday, July 7^th,    2:00 p.m.

Macalester College, Campus Center

Present: Doug Guthrie, Sharon Kinsmith, Kathy Blough, Ron Joslin, Paddy Satzer

Spring conference evaluations.

Ron distributed a summary of the feedback received from spring conference attendees.  Almost all feedback fell within the [good] to [excellent] range.  There were the expected complaints about the costs of parking, but the facilities received high scores. 

Treasurer’s report.

Our current account balance is $1,385.81.  Catering expenses for the spring conference have not yet been deducted from this total.  

III seminar opportunities for fall conference.

Paddy distributed information on six seminars available for purchase from III. These seminars are 2-3 hour PowerPoint sessions.  None of the topics appealed to the Steering Committee and the price tag was high, so Paddy will contact III again to see if there are other possibilities.

Fall conference planning.

The fall conference will be held Oct. 28-29 at Macalester College.  The main conference will be on Oct. 28^th with additional, longer training sessions taking place on the 29^th.  The training sessions on the 29^th will have separate attendance fees.  The Steering Committee agreed to pursue speakers for a handful of pivotal program ideas before the next committee meeting.  Ron described alternative spaces for the conference on the Macalester campus.  The Steering Committee decided to use the Macalester Ballroom for the morning sessions and the lunch on Oct. 28^th.  After lunch the breakout sessions will take place in Olin/Rice as in previous years.  All training on the 29^th will take place in Olin/Rice. 

The Committee generated a list of potential programs and speakers.  Potential  speakers will be contacted to see if they’re interested in presenting at the conference.  We will assess the situation at the next Steering Committee meeting.

Ron will work on getting us a catering menu.  The Committee discussed the possibility of getting vendors to sponsor breaks in exchange for distributing their product/services literature at the conference.

The next Steering Committee meeting will be at Macalester and we will visit the ballroom space.