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. MisriaShaik 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 actionstable. Two further actions were added after discussion with Council. Action:All prize committee chairs to give dates on when the prize decisions aremade and accepted so that announcements can be scheduled in the Technosciencenewsletter. Action: Misria Shaik Ali to send profiles of stipend holdersto 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 theMarch 2023 Council Meeting. VOTE: The motion to approve the March minuteswas 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). Themotion was carried.
ITEM 4 Update from Executive Committee
Articles of incorporation advice was sought from WTP lawyer regarding4S volunteer liability cover.
Action: Amanda to add WTP advice to theoperations manual: 4S indemnification does not automatically cover all 4Svolunteers, in the event that a legal action is taken against a 4S volunteer,4S can extend indemnification to volunteers if deemed appropriate by Executiveand Council.
The Travel grant committee is being formed in June and will cometogether soon to start the grants process. Council were invited to reach out toWindle 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 aretwo people that are representative (Amanda Windle) and delegate for ACLS.The Exec have discussed and endorsed Anne Pollock as the delegate for the nextfour years. She has a long history with STS and 4S, and will be a good personin the time of her presidency and afterwards to provide good continuity, andhas had an ACLS fellowship in the past. The costs involved are for yearlyin-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: Themotion to endorse Anne Pollock as the delegate for ACLS, and approve the ACLSbudgetary costs was moved by Yelena Gluzman and seconded by Emma Kowal and approvedby (12) votes, with zero (0) against, and (1) abstention (Anne Pollock). Themotion was carried approved.
ITEM 6 Finance Update
Kowal presented the budgets for 2022, 2023, and 2024, and theHonolulu costs. In 2022 we did not cover our costs because registration waskept low to make it possible for all people to come together after the pandemicand to make the conference more accessible to scholars in Latin America. 4S usedits own funds for travel grants that year. The conference in 2024 will verylikely not cover 4S running costs because it is a joint meeting and EASST and4S will split any profits 50:50. Kowal has made an argument to EASST thatbecause 4S running costs are much higher than EASST running costs, 4S shouldreceive a greater share of any profits. EASST has not agreed to this. Thismakes it imperative that the 2023 conference is able to generate funds to cover4S running costs.
Kowal also discussed the new income streams that have been createdin the past year: the OACIP (Lyrasis) that ESTS are partnering with forfundraising activities, an increase in funding from Sage for STHV, and thefirst new brochure for exhibitors and sponsors.
After the 2026 meeting, Kowal noted that 4S will have finished with hotelcontractual responsibilities. Further discussion of this continued into theconference policy (see Item 10).
ITEM 7 Update on 4S Honolulu
Windle gave an updateon the Sponsorship and Exhibitor brochure for 2023 and the increase in incomefor 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 ethicscodes that EASST and 4S use, and showed that they are quite different. EASSTwants to use their code for the joint conference. Vivian Choi followed-up withthe discussion, that our concern was if we go by their policy, how much risk orliability would we be assuming? Choi suggested that the risk is minimal and recommendedto agree to this decision. Action: Kowal and Windle to seek legal adviceon liability for co-organised conference ethics. To ask: if there is acomplaint from the conference (in Amsterdam) and EASST has their policy whichisn’t as extensive, or process specified as 4S, does this expose 4S to unreasonableliability? If this is considered okay, then 4S would go ahead with the above plan.
ITEM 9 Elections update 2023
In Canay’s absence, Kowal presentedthat the elections were successfully conducted and thanked Canay for herleadership of the Elections Committee.
ITEM 10 Conference Policy Development
Choi presented the conference policy plan including a timeline and aseries of questions for ongoing discussions. Choi invited Council to volunteerfor the adhoc conference policy committee. Michal Naman volunteered to be onthe conference policy committee during the meeting to work alongside BarkhaKagliwal, Lucy van de Wiel and Vivian Choi. van de Wiel asked about aconference 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 4Smembers about their conference preferences. Action: Choi and adhocconference policy committee to draft conference survey to be approved byExecutive and sent out to members.
ITEM 11 Any Other Business
Maka Suarez askedabout 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. Itis customary for a council to have four (4) quarterly Council meetings, butthat there have been more than 4 meetings in recent years. There will be 5meetings in mid-2023, there were 5 meetings in 2020 and 2022, and 6 meetings in2021. Action: Windle will ask a question to the ACLS CEO discussiongroup about frequency of meetings, and to check on Roberts rules for thatruling, and add insights into the operations manual in 2024 (when 4S does a lotof policy and operations work next year). Action for all: Please move onbooking your flights to Honolulu now.