ANNUAL CONFERENCE PROGRAM COMMITTEE MINUTES January 24, 2004 PRESENT: Sam Wormley - Chair, Anne McCleery (All Soul's Local Arrangements), Diana Allen, Eric Severson, Gina Dugan, Julie Handberg (Unity Local Arrangements), Mildred Larson, Phillip Lund NOT PRESENT: Janne Eller-Isaacs MINUTES TO: Nancy Heege, Sarah Greene CHECK IN ADOPT AGENDA REVIEW AND APPROVE MINUTES Corrections to minutes of Oct 25, 2003. Theme for 2005 conference is "Unity in Diversity", not Unity and Diversity. Clarification regarding honorarium for guest speakers. This applies to the unique circumstances this year having two speakers from the UUA who cannot accept honorariums. The customary honorarium adopted by this committee is $300 per speaker. Workshop tracts changed to workshop tracks. Minutes approved. REVIEW OF PROGRESS 2005 CONFERENCE - Julie Handberg April 8-10, Unity Church, St Paul, MN Please note correction to theme: Unity in Diversity: Source of Hope and Courage. Hotel will be Radisson Riverfront, main hall and good space with 8 breakout rooms. Based on 120 rooms reserved, rate is $89/night for 2 people, $99 for 3, $109 for 4. Parking fee $9 per day (3 days.) Fifteen minutes from airport, overlooking the Mississippi River, spectacular views of St Paul skyline including capitol, cathedral, science museum, pre-conference walking tour for families and early arrivals. Volunteers - Julie will begin defining committee needs and recruiting volunteers from Unity Church. Suggested one main local arrangements committee to oversee the sub-committees. Julie will be the liaison to our group, Annual Conference Program. Ames Local Arrangements had about 50 volunteers when they hosted. Projected Attendence - Julie will talk with Nancy Heege and Mildred Larson about numbers to expect in a Twin Cities conference location. 2001 attendance was 231. Other helpful hints for local arrangements planning: Good communication with Awards Committee Entertainment - Twin Cities talent plus ideas from Unity music director Structuring awards into the conference - Phil shared changes in awards at GA Registration fees - there will be presenters, exhibitors, commuters as well as full conference Budget - due by end of October 04 for PSD Board's approval in early November. Annual Conference Program group meets 4x times per year, summer, fall, winter & conference UPDATES FROM DISTRICT OFFICE - Phillip Lund YAC met in January. Last year YAC took over youth programming at the conference, added a flier to the conference brochure/registration form, stayed at the Rochester Church. Linda Horton, Adrienne Vlach and Phil shuttled more youth than at Ames. YAC wants more integration. This year with the timing of Boone, not as many youth will attend the annual conference. What does youth fee pay for? Will there be a youth room at the hotel? There is a need for one Friday night and Saturday. YAC will encourage youth to attend. Phil is working with Allison Hartnet and Sara Sautter, DRE at Shawnee Mission, to prepare a youth flier to be mailed with the annual conference brochures. This is an exciting opportunity for YAC to be involved with local hosting congregation's youth group in the planning. Approximately 20-25 youth in Kansas City. For the 2005 conference, expect a lot of youth to attend due to active youth program at Unity. The advantage of early planning for youth involvement is the Unity youth can structure activites that youth won't want to miss. Phil will find out the date for 2005 Boone Conference. REVIEW OF PROGRESS 2004 CONFERENCE - Anne McCleery April 23-25, All Souls, Kansas City, MO Adult registration fee $115 for early bird, youth $45, childcare $35. After April 1, registration fee $125. Hotel $109 plus tax per night. FUTURE CONFERENCES 2006 in Iowa City, IA 2007 in Twin Cities metro area, host congregation tbd LUNCH - Thank you to Bloomington Valley UU congregation for the use of their kitchen for our potluck lunch. REVIEW OF PROGRESS 2004 CONTINUED - Anne McCleery Tweaking of brochure: Move return address to open top left corner, opposite the fold, layout suggestions, front cover less busy, move photo to back by mailing address. Tweaking of conference schedule: Discussion of the location of events and the shifting between All Souls and the Marriott Hotel. The committee discourages this in the future with this year being an exception due to the close proximity of the church and hotel. Traffic, safety and accessibility was discussed regarding large numbers of people crossing the street. Discussion of Sunday service and forum schedule: Designate first service as conference service with the conference choir singing. All Soul's choir sings at the second service and conference choir members are welcome to stay and sing at both. In the brochure we will need to designate non- conference events with an *. Service for the Soul Friday night* Forum Sunday morning* Second service Sunday morning* Empty Bowls Lunch Sunday noon*. The Empty Bowls lunch will be the youth service project on Saturday. Conference attendees are welcome to support the Empty Bowls lunch. The committee had concerns about whether attendees would stay as late as the forum, second service, followed by lunch. Generally people are anxious to get on the road on Sunday. The Empty Bowls Project sounds intriguing and the committee felt attendees would like to support it even if they couldn't stay for the final lunch event. Anne will include the option of participation with the exhibit and donating a bowl without committing to stay for the lunch on Sunday. Anne will check with All Soul's and the youth about donating the Sunday collection to the Empty Bowls project. Other tweaking: Anne will talk with Mildred about Awards, banner parade, conference evaluation form and program. Anne will assign hospitality hosts to guest speakers Tracey and Peter who will coordinate their transportation to and from the airport. Rev. Vern Barnet will serve as emergency back-up speaker and if his services are used, he will receive an honorarium. Gaia will be providing the labyrinth so First Universalist won't have to transport theirs. Labyrinth is 36 ft in diameter and needs a 40 ft room. KUDOS Sam expressed special thanks to Diana Allen, outgoing committee member, for her hard work and dedication serving this committee, particularly in the area of workshop organization. Diana, you will be greatly missed! Diana will pass information to Eric Severson who will take over workshop coordination duties. UPDATE FROM DAVID LEPPIK - WEBPAGES, DATED JANUARY 20, 2004 "The PSD technology standards taskforce met today, and we've compiled a list of technical requirements for the servers-primarily web servers-PSD currently uses or plans to use. The goal is to have the flexibility to consolidate our servers if and when it makes sense to do so. One thing pushing the process forward is that Stonetree is ready to rewrite their software, but they are waiting to find out which scripting and database software our committee recommends. Unfortunately, we had to make guesses about technical requirements for the youth site and annual conference site. This list is intended not only to list what is currently being used, but what is likely to be requested in the future. Therefore consider your past and present usage, present needs, and future plans. Our taskforce makes a report on Monday, so please get back to me with modifications before then. If you have questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to contact me or any of the other people on the taskforce, all of whom are cc'ed on this email. Technical Requirements for PSD-Affiliated Servers Young Adults - Static web pages. 2. PSD Main Site Static web pages Scripting for forms, questionnaires, etc. (no current legacy language) High bandwidth to support downloads of large PDF files Ability to handle credit card payments, (probably outsourced) Streaming media? (Still considering possible uses) Disk space for large archives Password protection for private website sections (HTTPS?) Online meeting support: no idea how to get there, but very valuable Databases, both public and private Ability to generate directory and resource guide from database Stonetree 14. Static web pages 15. Scripting; no current legacy language - re-write pending 16. Database 17. Authentication for administrative interface (HTTPS might be overkill) 18. Youth Site 19. Blog (currently PostNuke; PHP-based) 20. Content Management System (currently MD-Pro; PHP-based) 21. Calender 22. History Site 23. Static web pages; lots of archives 24. Word version of history book online, so congregations can recommend updates 25. Annual Conference 26. Static web pages 27. Online registration UPDATE FROM PROGRAM COUNCIL - MILDRED LARSON Great to have you join us! Discussion of new members for this committee as Diana's term ends June 30. Mildred is in communication with Carol Jackson regarding the needs of this committee. EXPENSE REQUESTS Any outstanding requests? Please turn in to Sam. KEYNOTE SPEAKER FOR 2005 ANNUAL CONFERENCE Recommended Rev. Dr. Michael Schuler from First Unitarian Society, Madison, WI. Phil will ask him to be the Friday evening keynote speaker. Update 4/14: Rev Dr Schuler has said yes. CONFERENCE EVALUATION FORMS Reminder to Kansas City local arrangements to add the question "What themes do you suggest for future PSD Annual Conferences?" NEXT MEETING To be held in Kansas City at the annual conference, exact time to be determined. Update 4/14: Next meeting Saturday, April 24, 6:00 PM at the Marriott Hotel. Recorded by Gina Dugan[pic]