Council Meeting Minutes: September 20th

by emily layng, Recorder/Secretary

Hello again. Here I am with the monthly recap of the Council meeting. With the closing of the CheckFree office in Waterloo, this was our last opportunity to meet at the venue where we met all of last year. We’re really going to miss the place, and we are grateful that we got to use it for as long as we did. Lori and Peter will soon no longer be working for CheckFree and will be starting their own consulting business together. We wish them all the best in their new venture.

Attendees

The first regular council meeting of the new year was a smaller group than usual. Those who successfully made it to the council meeting were: Debbie Kerr (President), Ursula McCloy (Employment Manager), Carol Lawless (Treasurer), Heidi Marr (Student Awards Manager), Lori Jankowski (Public Relations Manager), and me, emily layng (Recorder/Secretary). Some of the members that could not attend succumbed to the pressures of the fall flu season. Even one of the attendees, Carol, our treasurer, was technically sick, but since we were reviewing the budget, she sat as far away as possible and refrained from touching or breathing on any of the pizza. What devotion.

Illness aside, the meeting got under way at 6:45 pm, and it started with some administrative details like meeting times, locations, and selection of pizza.

Budget Overview

We then proceeded to the more time consuming and critical stuff like the budget. Carol had prepared a more simplified version of the budget than in previous years and she handed out a paper copy to each of the attendees. We then went through each line of the budget to see where we could reduce costs so that we could spend more money in other places, like the education workshop.

There was much haranguing and gnashing of teeth as we wrangled the budget into submission. Wrangled is now my favorite word, by the way, I heard it a couple of weeks ago and it keeps popping into my conversation. Please excuse me.

Budget Challenges

While our chapter is in better financial shape than many other chapters, we wanted to start our year with a balanced budget. When we were discussing the budget, the challenge was trying to predict how people would react to the choices that would be made later about the education workshop that would take place in February. If you have ever bought a house, you know that you are excited about buy a house but your hand shakes when you write the cheque.

Balancing the budget is the same thing. It’s a fine line between finding a great speaker that will get people excited about coming to our workshop and making the commitment to spend that kind of money to get that person to come. It’s also a challenge when the amount of membership rebates is lower than it has been in previous years. The wrangling part was deciding how much we could spend and still make enough money to balance the budget.

Other Items

While the budget was one of the main items on the agenda, there were a few other items that we discussed.

• Donald is busily collecting door prizes from several local businesses, so look forward to some cool prizes at the general meetings in the future. If your company has some door prizes to donate, contact Donald at program@stc-soc.org.
• The Education workshop/seminar is scheduled for February 16th and 17th in 2006 at the same location as last year. We have discussed some great speakers, but if you have some ideas about whom you would like to see, contact Kim Creed at education@stc-soc.org. Also watch our website for online polls relating to our education workshop.
• Some changes are being made to the awards for the Heidi Theissen Student Awards. Stay tuned for details.

The meeting wrapped up at 8:20 and we were on our way.

emily layng (Secretary/Recorder)

Emily is currently working at ATS, in Cambridge, and has recently been promoted to Team Leader of Systems 1. As part of a busy group, long days and short weekends are the norm. She has been a technical writer since 1996, and has created documentation for both hardware and software companies. Outside of ATS, she is involved with a local Astrology group that is putting together correspondence courses for learning Astrology.