MINUTES OF MEETING OF 4S COUNCIL
28th/29th June 2023
Agenda June 28th 2023, 9pm-11pm UTC
Emma Kowal called the meeting to order at 9:04 PM UTC.
ITEM 1 Greetings
In attendance: Emma Kowal, Amanda Windle, Marko Monteiro, Zheng (Vincent) Li, Yelena Gluzman, Barkha Kagliwal, Chihyung Jeon, Anne Pollock, Aneesh Aneesh, Vivian Choi, Maka Suarez, and Eugene Richardson.
Apologies
Michal Nahman and Lucy van de Wiel will arrive for item 3. Misria Shaik Ali and Canay Özden-Schilling and Pouya Sepehr send their apologies.
ITEM 2 Review Actions Table
Emma Kowal led the Council through a review of the Council actions table. Two further actions were added after discussion with Council. Action: All prize committee chairs to give dates on when the prize decisions are made and accepted so that announcements can be scheduled in the Technoscience newsletter. Action: Misria Shaik Ali to send profiles of stipend holders to Council.
*Michal Nahman and Lucy van de Wiel arrived at 9.14pm UTC.
ITEM 3 Approval of March 2023 Minutes
Kowal presented the minutes of the March 2023 Council Meeting. VOTE: The motion to approve the March minutes was moved by Marko Monteiro and seconded by Yelena Gluzman, and approved by (11) votes, with zero (0) against, and (3) abstentions (Maka Suarez, Barkha Kagliwal, and Aneesh Aneesh as they were not in attendance at the March meeting). The motion was carried.
ITEM 4 Update from Executive Committee
Articles of incorporation advice was sought from WTP lawyer regarding 4S volunteer liability cover.
Action: Amanda to add WTP advice to the operations manual: 4S indemnification does not automatically cover all 4S volunteers, in the event that a legal action is taken against a 4S volunteer, 4S can extend indemnification to volunteers if deemed appropriate by Executive and Council.
The Travel grant committee is being formed in June and will come together soon to start the grants process. Council were invited to reach out to Windle if wanting to join the committee.
ITEM 5 ACLS—American Council for Learned Societies
Kowal noted that we are the 80th society to be admitted to the ACLS. There is a 2k USD fee (dependent on membership total numbers), and there are two people that are representative (Amanda Windle) and delegate for ACLS. The Exec have discussed and endorsed Anne Pollock as the delegate for the next four years. She has a long history with STS and 4S, and will be a good person in the time of her presidency and afterwards to provide good continuity, and has had an ACLS fellowship in the past. The costs involved are for yearly in-person meetings in the spring (the next one is in May 2024 in Baltimore), and we would be paying for both roles to go to this meeting. VOTE: The motion to endorse Anne Pollock as the delegate for ACLS, and approve the ACLS budgetary costs was moved by Yelena Gluzman and seconded by Emma Kowal and approved by (12) votes, with zero (0) against, and (1) abstention (Anne Pollock). The motion was carried approved.
ITEM 6 Finance Update
Kowal presented the budgets for 2022, 2023, and 2024, and the Honolulu costs. In 2022 we did not cover our costs because registration was kept low to make it possible for all people to come together after the pandemic and to make the conference more accessible to scholars in Latin America. 4S used its own funds for travel grants that year. The conference in 2024 will very likely not cover 4S running costs because it is a joint meeting and EASST and 4S will split any profits 50:50. Kowal has made an argument to EASST that because 4S running costs are much higher than EASST running costs, 4S should receive a greater share of any profits. EASST has not agreed to this. This makes it imperative that the 2023 conference is able to generate funds to cover 4S running costs.
Kowal also discussed the new income streams that have been created in the past year: the OACIP (Lyrasis) that ESTS are partnering with for fundraising activities, an increase in funding from Sage for STHV, and the first new brochure for exhibitors and sponsors.
After the 2026 meeting, Kowal noted that 4S will have finished with hotel contractual responsibilities. Further discussion of this continued into the conference policy (see Item 10).
ITEM 7 Update on 4S Honolulu
Windle gave an update on the Sponsorship and Exhibitor brochure for 2023 and the increase in income for 2023 from $1,750 USD (in 2022) to $3,200 USD (2023) to date.
ITEM 8 4S/EASST Event Ethics for Amsterdam
Kowal presented the different ethics codes that EASST and 4S use, and showed that they are quite different. EASST wants to use their code for the joint conference. Vivian Choi followed-up with the discussion, that our concern was if we go by their policy, how much risk or liability would we be assuming? Choi suggested that the risk is minimal and recommended to agree to this decision. Action: Kowal and Windle to seek legal advice on liability for co-organised conference ethics. To ask: if there is a complaint from the conference (in Amsterdam) and EASST has their policy which isn’t as extensive, or process specified as 4S, does this expose 4S to unreasonable liability? If this is considered okay, then 4S would go ahead with the above plan.
ITEM 9 Elections update 2023
In Canay’s absence, Kowal presented that the elections were successfully conducted and thanked Canay for her leadership of the Elections Committee.
ITEM 10 Conference Policy Development
Choi presented the conference policy plan including a timeline and a series of questions for ongoing discussions. Choi invited Council to volunteer for the adhoc conference policy committee. Michal Naman volunteered to be on the conference policy committee during the meeting to work alongside Barkha Kagliwal, Lucy van de Wiel and Vivian Choi. van de Wiel asked about a conference survey and the kind of questions that could be asked to 4S members. Choi, Pollock, Kowal and others discussed potential questions for a survey of 4S members about their conference preferences. Action: Choi and adhoc conference policy committee to draft conference survey to be approved by Executive and sent out to members.
ITEM 11 Any Other Business
Maka Suarez asked about the frequency of 4S council meetings and if we were having less meetings. Kowal commented that the By-laws note the compulsory business meeting only. It is customary for a council to have four (4) quarterly Council meetings, but that there have been more than 4 meetings in recent years. There will be 5 meetings in mid-2023, there were 5 meetings in 2020 and 2022, and 6 meetings in 2021. Action: Windle will ask a question to the ACLS CEO discussion group about frequency of meetings, and to check on Roberts rules for that ruling, and add insights into the operations manual in 2024 (when 4S does a lot of policy and operations work next year). Action for all: Please move on booking your flights to Honolulu now.