Present: Amanda French, Jeff McClurken (former Council member), Patrick Murray-John, Tim Sherratt, Kathryn Tomasek, Micah Vandegrift
Absent: Frédéric Clavert, Tom Scheinfeldt (former Council member)

Patrick and Amanda gave a general introduction to the Council, including its mission, responsibilities, and logistics. Last year the major accomplishments of the Council were writing and adopting an anti-harassment policy and moving the THATCamp website to Reclaim Hosting.

Amanda was elected the new Chair of the Council. Patrick will remain the RRCHNM representative.

Amanda reported on a piece of old business, namely the Proceedings of THATCamp. We need to incorporate it more into THATCamp subsites and write documentation about how it works to encourage use of the Favorite button that feeds the Proceedings and to increase awareness of the site: Amanda will undertake (again) to do that. Micah will follow up with the person who’s interested in co-editing a manually curated issue of the Proceedings and report back at the next meeting.

Tim reported on last November’s THATCamp Canberra: had 60-80 people and was generally successful. Digital humanities is much more organized and formal than it used to be, which has changed the nature of THATCamps to some extent. Amanda reported on THATCamp Virginia and THATCamp CAA. Patrick reported on plans for THATCamp Prime (RRCHNM), which will be focused on attracting intermediate advanced practitioners of digital humanities. This might raise issues of exclusivity and elitism, but the Council has no strong objection at this time, especially if participants self-identify their level of expertise.

The next meeting of the Council will be Monday, August 10th, at 8am Eastern US time, 10pm Canberra time, and 1pm Paris time.

Many heartfelt thanks to Micah Vandegrift for taking these notes at the THATCamp Council meeting on 4/22. The next meeting is scheduled for June 16th (Bloomsday!) at 3pm Eastern.

THATCamp Council Meeting 4/22/2014, 1pm

Attendees: Amanda French (Chair), Patrick Murray-John (Incoming Chair), Jeff McClurken, Anastasia Salter, Frédéric Clavert, Micah Vandegrift

General introduction by Amanda
– Congrats and thank yous.
– two things council goals: 1) moderate forums/social media, 2) everything else (Revising Charter, Proceedings, Documentation, misc projects), 3) community support email address.

Going over the logistics of the Council
Amanda – get us all access to email/twitter, privileges to moderate the Forums.
*Council will monitor the Twitter/hashtag, respond as we can.

Picking a Chair (to assume chairship after this meeting)
– Patrick Murray-John nominated and voted in.

Allocating responsibilities (forum moderation, Twitter account, etc.)
info@thatcamp.org – email address will forward to Patrick as well as to CHNM sysadmin
Amanda will make sure logistics work out
Micah: Do we try to attend THATCamps in our regional area?
Generally we are encouraged to attempt to attend when we can. — see the Council Charter thatcamp.org/council under “Responsibilities of the Council”

Agreeing on how often to meet
Quarterly
Probably try to meet more regularly in busy seasons (mid-Fall semester, mid-Spring semester)

Making revisions to the Charter
adding a method to remove a Chair
“Any THATCamp Council member can convene a meeting to propose the removal of an unresponsive or neglectful Chair. The current Chair must be invited to that meeting in a timely manner. The convening Council member will serve as Acting Chair of that meeting and must post the meeting agenda with a rationale for proposing the removal of the Chair publicly at least one week beforehand. Five Council member votes in favor are required at the convened meeting in order to remove a Chair.”
language proposed and voted in by the Council. Will announce to the community. If there are comments/issue with this language, it will be added to the next agenda.

removing the section on first election procedures
Jeff will serve 1 year term; allowed to run again.
Patrick, Tom and Amanda will rotate off after one year.
clarifying “openness” of meetings, clarifying policies on recording meetings and posting recordings
Chair has the responsibility to “Ensure that community members who request to join a public meeting have appropriate access to the meeting”
do we record meetings? how? how to share?
default will be that we do not record meetings, but Council can vote at any time to record a meeting. Voted and passed.

Discussing whether to delete the THATCamp Google Map and the THATCamp Google Calendar
– We decided to keep them for archival purposes, but they will not be updated as the functionality has been integrated into the THATCamp site.

(new item) Fundraising
– Background – most of it was used to provide travel support thru fellowships/scholarships
– What is the role of the Council on fundraising?
– Logistically complicated when involving $$. CHNM as organization to funnel? Explored in the past, and not possible.
– Add a help page to the site encouraging home organizational support from the outset
– Amanda will work out text for a Help page and send it around

Adopting a Code of Conduct (anti-harassment policy)
We explored how and why this is an important step to take.
CHNM forked Code4Lib’s on github
Amanda will take that text and move to GDoc
We’ll coordinate and work over the text, announce to the community and work to ratify.

Agenda Item for next meeting?
– Strategic communication plan? who is responsible for responding to journalists?

Scheduling next meeting
3pm EST April 16th

VOTES:

1st votes were for changing charter 1) remove 1st election language and 2) add language removing chair

2nd votes on new language for resp. of chair to make sure meeting is open, i.e. has access

3rd a) remove responsibility of the Chair to record meeting, b) add option for any council member to propose recording and Council will vote.