AIAA SF Council Meeting Minutes Tuesday October 5, 2004
Council Members in Attendance: Chair: Prasada Rao Gogineni Vice-chair: Rick Kwan Secretary: Eric Mueller Webmaster: Corwin Lakin National Public Policy Committee: Norman Begrun "Acting" Career Enhancement Director: Bruno Geoffrion
Meeting Start: 5:30 pm Meeting End: 7:15 pm
Special Announcement: The thoughts and prayers of the council go out to the family of Srini Srinivasan, former council member and good friend. Srini passed away on October 8, 2004.
Reviewed last meeting's minutes: No change on newsletter delivery options Reviewed potential programs and scheduled Stanford/Ames hybrid propulsion group for January.
2003/2004 Section Awards San Francisco placed second in the Very Large category for Outstanding Section, second for Communications, and first for Pre-College Outreach. The total awards for the section are $900, and first place honorees will be presented their winnings at the awards luncheon of the 43rd AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting on Tuesday, January 11 in Reno, NV (at the Reno Hilton).
Banner The new AIAA San Francisco Section banners (2) have been received. The cost was $186.11, which came from CAT III funding. Two banners without the bridge would have been $93.
MathCounts We applied for funding for this program in the amount of $1500, but CAT III funding has run out for this year. There is still a chance they will grant it in October from 2005 funds. Prasad is following this up.
RAC Meeting The RAC meeting is October 9, 2004 in El Segundo, CA. Prasad compiled a list of activities organized by each council member over the last four months, which he will present there.
Awards Banquet, May 2005 Each council member is still requested to take a look at the Distinguished Lecturer catalogue (available on the AIAA website: www.aiaa.org) and select up to four people for the May banquet. The earlier we pick a speaker the more likely we are to be able to secure their attendance.
Sally Ride Festival Stanford hosts the Sally Ride Festival on Sunday October 17 and the council discussed having a booth there to increase awareness of the AIAA. The announcement we got from the organizers was:
"Our Science Festivals attract from 700-1300 people and primarily target girls in grades 5-8, their families and teachers, in helping to make science fun, and opening their eyes up to possible careers in the life, physical and engineering sciences. In just over two years of operation, Sally Ride Science Festivals and the Sally Ride Science Club have reached over 25,000 girls, helping to keep them in the science, math and technology pipeline.
"The Street Fair is a really fun and important Aspect of the Festival - it's made up of very cool, interactive and hands-on exhibits, from local professional societies, science and space centers, astronomical, robotic and Mars societies, and many more. And, of course, we encourage them to promote women as role models."
It was agreed that having a representative there would be a good idea, and that we should distribute balsa wood gliders, kites, etc. - anything to attract onlookers. Prasad and Rick volunteered to attend the festival.
Council Member Reports
Treasurer Budget looks good, nothing important to report.
Vice Chair We are getting a number of requests for job postings on the website and/or the newsletter. We have a career enhancement page, but it could be more up-to-date if we all submitted announcements on a regular basis.
Membership One idea for attracting new members and getting them involved in section activities was to offer a free dinner at the first dinner meeting the new members attend. This would hopefully encourage them to continue attending in the future, and would allow us to court them for the council. The economic side of the picture is more mixed: we only just break even on the dinner meetings by charging $20 for members, so this would come directly from our budget. The council agreed that we are not likely to get huge numbers of attendees looking for a free dinner, and that the increased chance of recruiting volunteers for the council is worth the price. We will mail each new member a coupon for a free dinner, but the offer will not be apply retroactively!
Pre College We are registered to have a booth at the Sally Ride Festival, and were encouraged to provide kid-friendly material there. See the above description of the event.
The Explorer School kickoff at Juanita's elementary school went very well; Scott Hubbard, an Astronaut, and other dignitaries were there.
AIAA members and council people were encouraged to participate in the DiscoverE program, which gets scientists and engineers to talk to elementary school students. If interested in presenting, got to the SVEC website (www.svec.org) and click into DiscoverE. One suggestion for an activity is to purchase a radio-controlled blimp, which is easily demonstrable and fun for children.
Education The Stanford AIAA section is being reconstituted, and will start holding regular social gatherings to attract students. There is also a plan to hold a "Get to know your Professors" activity, but the details for that have not been finalized.
Other activities that would be worthwhile for the education officer include encouraging student papers at the AIAA student conferences, hosting design competitions, and reviving the chapters at other major engineering universities (particularly UC Berkeley).
Evolution of Flight We need to find some closure on this one. Or open it back up and continue interviewing aerospace pioneers. The Ames Multimedia department should have a copy of the latest version of the DVD - we should get a hold of this.
Public Policy An important bill, HR3752, is moving its way through Congress. The bill encourages the development of commercial human space flight among other space-related activities. It has already passed the senate (I believe), but needs to be pushed through the house to become law, which may require prodding from constituents. Norm reports that the "magic number" of correspondences (emails, phone calls, letters) on a single issue that begins to get the attention of representatives is 7. If we can then identify key representatives and their associated AIAA chapter constituents then we will have a better chance of passing these important bills into law.
Web A meeting was held last month to discuss webpage issues - Corky, Bruno, Rick and George Henderson were in attendance. The conclusions of that meeting were: *We need to have people other than those who post material to write the material. That way we can separate the large tasks of writing, editing, compiling and arranging material for the website and newsletter. The writings should be done by whoever is most directly connected with the activity (e.g. the organizer or host). *We have to decide on which editing/word processing software to use. Word is not very portable, FrameMaker isn't understood or used by many people, and pdf is a good alternative but not perfect. *The Career Enhancement webpage needs updating. It exists and has some links, but is badly out of date. This is an important activity (one that generates unsolicited suggestions from the membership), so Bruno was tentatively assigned to be the "acting" career enhancement director. *Links to career pages (NASA, Lockheed, etc.) should be sent to Corky and/or Bruno.
Miscellaneous There was some discussion on whether to post the articles and associated correspondence that Rick generated about aerospace and VC interest thereof on the website or in the newsletter. It might even be something we would want to get into the mainstream media. There is significant interest in doing this, but also concern about taking on this large project when we're badly in need of more council volunteers, the format of the editorials, and where they would be most appropriately placed (newsletter, website, etc.)
The NACA reunion is coming to NASa Ames in the summer of 2005. This activity should be announced well ahead of time in the newsletter and webpage.
Next council meeting: November 2, 2004 Next dinner meeting: October 28, 2004.