In attendance: Alex Taylor, Daniela Liggett, Francisco Fernandoy, Jenny Baeseman, Kate Sinclair
Apologies received from Gerlis Fugmann

The ExCom officially welcomed Francisco back “in the office” after his field season in Antarctica.  Francisco updated the ExCom about the field school that took place at Bellingshausen Station in January 2010.  He reported that the summer school went well but also that there was some scope for improvement in the future, particularly with respect to better planning of the scientific programme.  He expressed gratitude to the Polar Birds research group from the University of Jena who were working on King George Island at the time the field school took place and who integrated field school participants in their field work.  A blog about the field school was kept by one of the participants and is available at http://lindsayontheice.wordpress.com/.

Jenny updated the ExCom about recent developments in Norway. APECS has finally been registered as a non-profit organisation in Norway.  This also enabled a bank account to be established for APECS.

Preparations for the IPY OSC in Oslo are well under way, but the workload has been so overwhelming especially for the APECS Director that a fixed-term part-time position will be created through the IPY International Programme Office (thank you, Dave Carlson!) to provide administrative and organisational support.

APECS will be present at the SCAR OSC in Buenos Aires, where Francisco and Jose are planning to organise at least one APECS event.
Further updates were provided by Alex on the complaints procedure, by Kate on the IPY final report that is a work in progress, and by Allen on the field schools project.  The Council members will be kept informed as these initiatives/projects take shape. 
As always, suggestions and feedback from you, the Council members, are always welcome and appreciated.

The call started with Silje, the newest APECS council member introducing herself to the Excom, and discussed her ideas for APECS over the next year.

After Silje left the call, the Excom moved on with their agenda. The IPY report is now complete and will be available in Oslo, and will be sent to the council members along with the council and Excom summaries. The new advertising materials for Oslo are also now finished, and Alex will coordinate the printing with the company in Oslo. Jenny will put up the new advertising material on the APECS website.

The Excom have decided to invite Stina, a former APECS council member, and Lassi, who has informally been part of the advisory committee, to both formally join the APECS advisory committee. Gerlis will send them an invitation letter shortly.

The Excom discussed the Internal Evaluations Committee document, and the thourght of adding a note on the website, or amending the council charter to include behaviour. They decided for the mean time to just put the Internal Evaluations Committee to a Council vote. Alex will post the document on the website, and email the council.

The MoUs with UArctic and IAI are on track to be signed in Oslo, the one with IASSA and SHARE is also on track to be signed shortly also. Given these new partnerships, a question was raised on which logos we now need to include on all advertising and website. We might want to consider only using logos of funders, which we will discuss at the Excom meeting in Oslo.

Marcos Tonnelli from Brazil can no longer attend the SSG Geoscience meeting, so Francisco will now take on this role, and will work with Stefan to see if he wishes to remain the official APECS rep.

IASC has put out a call for workshop proposals- deadlines of 31 August and 31 December. We discussed potentially putting forward another IMPETUS workshop in 2011 in St. Petersburg.

We were hoping to have a feature from SPRI in the newsletter in June, but will be postponed until August. July will feature activities from the Oslo conference and Francisco will provide photos and information to Ben for June’s newsletter.

The call ended with the Excom has putting off discussing APECS sustainability and using Project Fork to manage our files until after Oslo. Gerlis noted she is working on the Marta Muse Prize nomination for Jose.

In attendance: Allen Pope, Daniela Liggett, Gerlis Fugman, Jenny Baeseman, and Kate Sinclair

After a bit of a hiatus due to fieldwork and a busy summer conference schedule, the ExCom finally got back to some important business. We discussed the success of APECS activities at the SCAR conference in Buenos Aires and the many promising connections made there for APECS individuals and the organization as a whole. On that note, we are moving closer to an MoU with IASSA and SHARE. In addition, the ExCom made some progress concerning APECS future strategic plans and mindful of the fact that the current committee’s term is coming to a close resolved to have a Strategic Plan done by the time they leave such that the next ExCom can use it to move forward. We look forward to the next Council meeting (a busy one) which will include hearing from candidates for the next ExCom as well as some working group updates.

Attended by: Alex, Daniela, Gerlis, Jenny and Kate

The meeting started with an update from Kate on the Mentor database. All is going reasonably well and more than 15 mentors have already signed up on the website. To promote the database, the importance of involving the Council members in recruiting mentors had been stressed, and it was agreed that this effort should be increased. Special attention has to be paid to making sure that those mentors, who do not want to have their information displayed on the website, will be recorded on a confidential spreadsheet that can be accessed by the ExCom only.

Gerlis gave an update on the working group proposal. The final draft of the proposal is currently up for voting with the Council. So far, all votes were in favour of the proposal. There will be no annual themes created for the working groups right now to encourage different types of working groups to form. There are a number of working groups already in the planning (field sites, virtual poster session, acronym database and a few others).

Kate is currently working putting together an APECS IPY Summary Report on activities over the past three years. A first draft version of the structure was sent to the ExCom for comments. All ExCom members will contribute to the report. In addition, an Information Paper for the upcoming Antarctic Treaty Consultative meeting (to be presented by SCAR) will be drafted by Daniela to increase the awareness about APECS among Antarctic policy-makers.

We also discussed the current workload of the ExCom. Alex will compile a list of the tasks the current ExCom members have to keep a record of it and to make it more transparent of who is responsible for what. For this purpose the Priorities document of the current ExCom will be updated.

The Canadian IPY organizing team for the IPY-OSC 2012 wants APECS to nominate a qualified member to their Steering Committee. Nominations have to be made by early March. All ExCom members will come up with a short list of potential candidates, who we feel can appropriately represent APECS and balance out the Committee.

The ExCom also discussed new Council applicants. To get a better idea of new applicants and to learn more about their ideas and commitments, the ExCom decided to invite new applicants in the future for an ‘interview' during ExCom calls. We will urge new members to introduce themselves at their first Council call.

We discussed the necessity of creating a neutral Complaints Committee within APECS. We hope that this will provide a formal process whereby a complaint can be made about anyone involved in APECS activities. This will then be investigated in a formal manner and resolved as the Committee sees fit.

In attendance: Alex Taylor, Daniela Liggett, Jenny Baeseman, Gerlis Fugmann, Kate Sinclair, Allen Pope and Francisco Fernandoy.

This was the first call post-Oslo and lot of issues were discussed. The first words were to comment on our great experiences from Oslo and how great it was to meet the APECS members in persons. The next newsletter will be dedicated to pictures and report on the various APECS activities in Oslo. Big applause for Jenny, Alex, Hugues and all the people involved in the organization of this event.
After this point, the call started with the discussion of the up-coming Ex-Com elections. This year elections will be coordinated by Daniela, call for applications will by launched soon. The next point on the agenda was to discuss the on-going funding and strategic plan for the APECS sustainability. Our sponsoring strategies and documentation were largely discussed and over the next weeks some of the ideas will collected into an official document. A draft prospectus on the funding strategy written by Kate was presented and will be worked on by the rest of the Ex-Com member during the next two weeks. We discussed several options on what potential funders will receive for their contributions. Allen, for example, suggested having an exclusive part of the website to promote our partners and sponsors, as well as to have some features in the website´s front page.
We also discussed several new proposals for working groups (microbial ecology working group, APECS magazine) that we received.
New APECS activities are in their way! At least three panels are being organized: Jose Xavier and others are organizing a discussion panel in Buenos Aires during the SCAR OSC. UKPN is going to hold a workshop in remote sensing and the next panel in Chile is starting to take form for October of this year.

present: Alex Taylor, Allen Pope, Daniela Ligett, Gerlis Fugmann, Angelika Renner, Mariette Wheeler, Suhas Shetye, Jenny Baeseman, Kate Sinclair (joined later)

This was the transition call for the old and the new ExCom with both present and a lot to discuss. After a quick introduction round, the old ExCom gave some advice to the new people (have fun!). They also presented their ongoing duties that will have to be redistributed amongst the new ExCom members. The duties and tasks from a revised priority list of ongoing projects will be assigned to people over the next couple of weeks and during the next ExCom call. The old ExCom left after this, and we proceeded to electing the new APECS president. The vote went unanimously to Allen, congratulations!

The ExCom will meet in person on the weekend 12-15 November. Location is still to be decided, but likely Cambridge, UK, or Tromsø, Norway. Allen gave his speech on what he sees as priorities for the new ExCom to work on, namely the strategic plan for APECS, continued and improved communication within the organisation and with partner organisations, and strengthening of science and research activities within APECS.

Jenny had a wealth of comments and recommendations and suggested a press release on the transition to the new ExCom and council that has taken place the day after the IPY IPO closed.

The first item for discussion was the great activity from the Council. We appreciate the effort that Council members put into compiling their reports for us, and the achievements of the Council this year are really impressive. All Council activities have now been compiled into one document that highlights the activities since the beginning of the 2009-2010 term. We would like to post this on the APECS website, but will first send it to the Council for approval.

We also discussed ways for the ExCom to continue improving its communication and 2-way exchange of information with the Council. We are considering asking the Council to nominate a representative to attend ExCom calls so that they can report back to Council on our activities and bring any questions/concerns directly to us during our bi-weekly skype chats. We are also looking into systems that will enable us to organise and manage organisational documents more efficiently, because this will also help us to share information with the Council and members quickly and effectively. Both the Council points system and communication strategies will be added to the agenda for discussion on the next Council call.

The APECS Sponsorship Plan was also discussed at length. We have now received feedback from many Council members on the initial draft of this plan and are putting together budget information and a draft APECS prospectus. This prospectus will be a 2-3 page glossy document that will briefly highlight core APECS activities. This will enable funders to see exactly what types of tangible projects their money can contribute to. There will be more work done on this in the next couple of months in terms of coming up with a timeline and strategy, and we will keep the Council posted on the progress on this front.

The Oslo meeting is now coming up very rapidly, and plans are coming together for the Council meeting in Oslo. We still need to confirm the agenda and venue, but we'll definitely be in contact very shortly about this. Also, Allen and Bruno have been working very hard on putting together APECS's publicity materials to be launched in Oslo. These will consist of a variety of APECS banners, flyers, brochures and posters. In addition, we are finalising an APECS IPY Report (~50 pages) that summarises all of APECS's activities over the past 3 years. This will also be printed and presented at the Oslo Open Science conference. Of course, a number of APECS posters will also be presented by many of our enthusiastic and hard working members. Allen/Bruno have nearly finished designing a template for these so that all of the APECS poster presentations have a consistent look at the conference.

In attendance: Jenny Baeseman, Daniela Liggett, Gerlis Fugmann, Alex Taylor, Francisco Fernandoy, Allen Pope (Council rep), Kate Sinclair.

Jenny provided the ExCom with a written update about all of the activities leading up to the IPY meeting in Oslo. The planning for Oslo is coming along well, and they are still finalising many details for APECS events at the meeting. We are also writing a series of APECS IPY reports that will be presented in Oslo. Jenny was also in Antalya, Turkey last week for a meeting on creating a European Young Academy. It was a chance to share some of the lessons we have learned from the success of APECS with these other people. A final report from the meeting will be available in a few weeks.

The ExCom are also in the process of finalizing a procedure for the APECS Internal Evaluations Committee. This will consist of APECS Ex Officio Council members, who will be responsible for resolving any grievances that arise within the organisation. Once we have finalised the draft procedure, this will be sent to the Council for comment.

There is much momentum surrounding the establishment of APECS working groups and quite a few great proposals have been submitted. We discussed the scope of the Field Site Initiative at some length and hope to initiate this project in coming weeks. Allen Pope has also been working hard on the web content for the Field Schools project and we are still gathering material for this, but it should be all online soon.

The ExCom also discussed the Council points system, and all Council members will be receiving more information about this shortly. We all agreed that building a qualitative component into the points system is a good idea (this was raised at the last Council call). This qualitative information can then be converted into bonus points. The ExCom agreed that every 3 months each Council member should send in a paragraph outlining their activities. This will be combined with points gained from other activities (such as posting news items, jobs etc) to come up with an overall record of everyone’s great efforts. This is a way of identifying and, if need be, removing inactive Council members, but more importantly, will also serve as a way of mentoring and supporting people to branch into new activities. We also discussed the possibility of using this ‘review system’ to reward active APECS members by contributing financially to their participation in international APECS activities at conferences.

Other business discussed on the call included a new MoU which is being finalised with IAI and UArctic. We are also in discussion with SHARE and IASSA about establishing an MoU. In addition, Gerlis is attending the first IPY 2012 Steering Committee meeting in Oslo this weekend and will keep us posted on those discussions. Lastly, we are wrapping up the APECS design competition, and had some fantastic submissions. Winners will be announced very shortly!

In this meeting, we welcomed Allen Pope to the call. Allen has been a very active Council member and has offered to help the ExCom in the busy lead up to the Oslo IPY conference, and has been appointed by the ExCom as an interim ExCom member for the time that Kate is taking maternity leave later this summer.

We began the call by talking with Erli Costa (a Brazilian APECS member) about her Council application. Erli has some great ideas about how she wants to contribute to APECS in Brazil and we unanimously voted to approve her application to the Council. We also received a Council application from Punyasloke Bhadury (India), and although Punyasloke could not make the call (due to fieldwork commitments), we were all very impressed with his application and are happy to vote him onto the APECS Council.

Gerlis gave us an update on the establishment of the Working Group programme. There are now three working group proposals posted on the APECS website with 2 more under development. This initiative will be widely advertised to all APECS members in the next couple of days, and we think that this will be a great opportunity for members to get more involved in APECS.

The ExCom are working on two major reports: An IPY report and an APECS info paper requested by SCAR for the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting. The IPY report will be 50-100 pages and is part of APECS' obligations as an IPY project. This will outline all major APECS activities and initiatives over the past 3 years and will be very useful in future months in terms of developing a sustainability plan for APECS and writing an academic paper about the development of the organisation.

We are also in the process of developing an APECS Complaints Committee. This will be composed of neutral Ex Officio APECS Council members, who will implement a formal process whereby anyone within APECS can lodge a complaint. This will be reviewed by the Committee who will make recommendations about the best way to resolve the issue.

APECS is also in the process of nominating two representatives to organizing committee for IPY 2012 in Montreal. Gerlis has kindly offered to join the Steering Committee (it was suggested that our most senior member be assigned to this task similar to procedures in APECS with the two previous IPY conferences) and she will be supported by the Director in this role. Nominations are also open for an APECS member to join a) the Programme Committee (the application process is being managed by the RAC), and b) the Communications (and Outreach) Committee. We have advertised these opportunities to all Council members, but will also open this to all APECS members to increase the pool of nominees before a decision is made on the applications. The deadline for nominating the APECS representatives to these committees is March 12, 2010.

Finally, Jenny and Gerlis have been doing a lot of research into other options for technology to support the Council Calls. The Adobe system is continually improving, but we need a good back-up system for when we do have issues. The best option so far is the Powwownow business plan. There is a one time set up fee and this gives us access to a web conferencing system and a desktop sharing system, which would be very useful for Virtual Poster sessions. Powwownow would also enable us to record conversations and, for the virtual poster session, this means that we can post discussions online at a later date. The ExCom approved the recommendation to go ahead with Powwownow, and Jenny will finalize the contract with them so that we can begin using this for future calls.

In attendance: Allen Pope, Daniela Liggett, Francisco Fernandoy, Gerlis Fugman

As much of the ExCom has been unavailable due to fieldwork, conferences, and an earthquake in New Zealand, this was a quick call. Discussion focused on making sure plans are in place for smoothly transitioning to the 2010-2011 ExCom and Council. Just a quick reminder that applications for the 2010-2011 Council will close on 15 September, and we encourage interest from ALL APECS members. We are also developing an APECS Strategy Plan, but this is still in early development stages. The next ExCom meeting will be at the end of September, shortly after the next Council Call.