On 02/02/15 16:33, Fabio Ciotti wrote:
Maybe we should ask the Board for guidance on whether to prefer political niceness over economic interest? Agree, we should think to a sort of organizational policy document. In the end deciding to have a meeting in US and another in EU is a political choice.
You can ask but in the end I think it is up to us. Budget-wise the Council has been extremely cost-effective over the last few years (with lots of institution contributions covering flights and such). We should spend members money in the most cost-effective manner possible -- but clearly sometimes having the political representation of the TEI in certain places is good. I don't think we really need to ask teh Board really, as with only a light hand on the tiller in previous years we've managed to stay fairly limited in our budget needs. All members should simply take any possibility of cost reduction through institutional in-kind contribution that is available. The whole discussion of location started with the premise that we were going to have one of the meetings alongside the TEI Conference/Members Meeting in Lyon. Therefore, we're going to be in Europe once already and making two transatlantic flights (for NA members) may be difficult for various reasons. If we assume that there will be some savings with institutions covering some members travel to the TEI Conference, then the argument from fiscal responsibility is demanding. I support the suggestion that we start coupling the Council Meeting to be (if possible) before the TEI Conference. I would propose as a policy that (while members are fairly evenly split between Europe and NA) we have one meeting per year in NA and one in Europe. Given the TEI Conference is peripatetic usually alternating between Europe and NA, then the spring meeting would usually be in the _other_ place. This means that for one meeting half the council is travelling further than the other half. Best, -James -- Dr James Cummings, James.Cummings@it.ox.ac.uk Academic IT Services, University of Oxford