SEDS-I(nternational) meetings

[Daniel]

Hi all,
In order to be a live body one must have meeting - So in order for SEDS-International to become alive, we must meet at least once annually.
(note: All the message I posted today were done while i'm extremly tired - plz forgive me)

I hope most of you know www.unsgac.org and know SGS - the convention of the young space professionals from around the world. SGS is going to happen again in bremen, 2003. I suggest we setup our yearly meeting in accordance with SGS - since a lot of ppl will be there already.

Plz say what you think.
It will be easy to arrange esp. that alot of SGS ppl are involved with SEDS and vice versa.

[Skulled]

I think that is a great idea. Maybe if we can put some effort, we can make arrangements to have the first International Meeting during the SGS in Bremen 2003.

But i guess this will require a lot of planning and organizing. So how do we plan to get that done? Any suggestions?

Have a nice day.

[Daniel]

Hi,
I think it will be easy to arrange as loads of SGS organziers are connected to SEDS.
The question is what is our purpose?

[Skulled]

Well, the primary purpose would be structure SEDS as a whole into a more efficient organization. Although forums, emails and other kinds of communication devices work, nothing is as efficient as people meeting face to face.

This could be used as the perfect oppotunity for representatives from different chapters to come together and devise a structurally efficient running plan for SEDS.

Other than this there is much more we can put our heads together for if we put the effort in. For another example, we need to devise a better way to get chapters across the world involved in international SEDS projects.

I am pretty sure there are other purposes as well. So if you any of you others have any suggestions, please feel free to share.

Have a nice day.

[neubjr]

Here at MIT we are trying to put together a SEDS conference for April 25-27th. We were hoping to make this for two purposes:

1. gather great speakers on various space topics to draw in students with interest in space and SEDS.

2. Gather as many active SEDS members as possible to hold meetings to form SEDS into a more cohesive and active organization.

I think that we can really put a great SEDS conference together here, but want to make sure that we can get some speakers here and have people attend. One of the big problems for any SEDS conference dealing with international chapters is the distance. Like for chapters here in the US and Canada, it will be hard to get many people to go to Europe, but then I guess the same can be said that it will be hard to get many people from Europe to come to the US.

If we can get what we are proposing together at MIT I think it would be a great event for SEDS. Do you think people from Europe could be able to make it to Boston for something like this? It would be kind of a central location given many active SEDS chapters are on the west coast of the US.

I also wanted to make this conference somewhat of a fundraiser for SEDS as I mentioned in another thread. Shortly we will put together a preliminary webpage for the conference we are trying to put together. I REALLY want to get as much input and participation from SEDS members around the world in this. MIT can help us greatly in planning and setting everything up. We just have to get the speakers and get the participants here.

I totally agree that SEDS does need to hold some conference/convention to get the whole organization together again. I think that we need to have something Specifically done by SEDS for this too.

I have never heard of SGS before. It seems like a nice event, but would it not be better to set up something specifically from SEDS for SEDS kind of thing? This would allow us to make it a fundraising event as well as an organizational event for SEDS.

We are definitely going to hold a conference here for the spring. If most people think that it would not be the best to try to make this a general SEDS organization Conference, we can scale it down and focus just on students in our area, but I am really thinking it would be great to push this further if we can.

what do you think of all this??

-Joshua.

[Skulled]

I think the spring conference is a great idea and we should push more for this and decide later about the SGS event and whether to make SEDS part of it or not.

Concerning the Spring Conference, the problem with International Chapter representatives being able to make it or not, is more of a question of funds, or atleast i believe so.

It would depend on what kind of sponsorship or so we can get for the international representatives to come to Boston for a two day conference. It shouldn't be that big a problem since there aren't many coming from outside the US or Canada. But still if this is taken care of i believe we should be able to attract more people to attend the conference.

If we knew more on what kind of financial back up we have for such a conference, it would help a great deal. It would be great if we could put this up together into a big event with maximum profit for SEDS activities.

I am wiling to help as much as i can. the most important thing to do now would be to set up a proper organizing committee and plan the conference to the greatest depth. There is not much time to April, around 4 months left, so if there enough people willing to help out and get involved, it should turn out into a great event.

That's about it for now. Email me with anything you have on the conference as of now and we can try plan this into an general SEDS event, which i believe would be the best. My email is Vinod Devanathan (v.devanathan@iu-bremen.de) .

Have fun and keep your suggestions coming in, all of you.

[Daniel]

Hi,
I think the spring conference is a great idea for SEDS-USA.
But It will be hard for ppl to get there ....

Regarding SGS - it is much easier to get to - For exmaple the last SGS which was in houston a lot of young ppl were there...
and that's cause SGS is part of IAC - and is part of the UN... So it is much more easy to get funding for it then to get funding for a student conference...

[andyquinn]

I have to agree with Daniel here. It would be nice to have a this as part of the MIT conference but from a practical point of view it will be easier for most international chapters to send people to bremen (particularly the one in Bremen).

A lot of UKSEDS members will be there anyway with ESA sponsorships to go to the IAF congress/SGS anyway.

[neubjr]

I wholeheartedly agree with all of this. I will be happy to push the MIT conference as a SEDS-USA event (but anyone from international chapters who want to come, sure are welcome).

Then we will have to somehow work out how SEDS-USA and SEDS-I will collaborate/cooperate. As there should at some point be something set down for this. maybe we can work this out over the forums, or something like that, but in the future for SEDS to be a well run functioning organization there must be something set down (by-laws of some sort) for how to deal with USA-International cooperation items.

-Joshua.

[andyquinn]

I think we all agree that some sort of SEDS-I structure is needed. I think it would be best to try and sort out some sort of structure through these forums and possibly chat sessions (depending on convenient time zones etc) but when we do get together wherever that may be we should actually get some sort of written constitution sorted out.

As for meeting up. If I can get some money together I may well try and get myself to MIT in April. It seems like it will be interesting and I would like to be there.

However even if I dont get an ESA sponsorship I should be able to get to Bremen later in the year.

[neubjr]

On the SEDS website: www.seds.org/seds/ (http://www.seds.org/seds/) there is a constitution that was drafted up back in the day. this can be found at:

SEDS constitution (http://www.seds.org/seds/constitution/index.html)

I think that this website and constitution in the past has been used for the entire SEDS organization (USA and international). The website has not been updated in a while (hence some chapters not being noted on there and some chapters being noted who are no longer active).

I do not think that we should really make a big split between SEDS-USA and SEDS-international. In the past I don't think there really was a split at all. But definitely take a look at the constitution. I do not see a need to draft a new SEDS constitution unless people want to drastically change how SEDS is organized (I.E. make separate governing bodies for SEDS-USA and SEDS-International).

-Joshua.

[neubjr]

my mistake, I just looked at the constitution again, and it is written just for a SEDS-USA structure. But perhaps this constitution can be modified and expanded to include all SEDS chapters.

-Joshua.

[andyquinn]

I have looked at the constution you mentioned before. I think that it is best for chapters to have there own constitutions depending on there circumstances. Similar to the way UKSEDS branches work. These are usually set up as student union societies and as such they have to have a constitution that suites there SU rather than nessecerilly UKSEDS (we have never had any problems though).

I do not think that we should really make a big split between SEDS-USA and SEDS-international

I would think that an SEDS-I organiseation would include all chapters equally rather than differentiating one from another at all.

In my opinion there should be an international governing body of sorts. That would be considering SEDS as the international body with the individual chapters as part of it.

Obviously each chapter should be an autonomous body though. As centrally organiseing things on an international scale is impractical.

[Daniel]

I agree - It will be very hard to have the same constitution for international bodies. Just look at the small things, let's say election date... it will be very hard.

I think thats SEDS-I should be a co-oridnating body which will be the framework between international chapters and will also support space activites in countries across the globe.
Also SEDS-I and UNSGAC should be in good relations.

There should be a structral tree where SEDS-I is at top, but more of an advisory council and less as an executive one.
Underneath should be the SEDS-National and then according to country the rest of the structure will follow suit:
USA - Regional - College
UK - College (I think ?)
Israel (no regions ;) )
etc...

SEDS-national should be the one with the power to decide things, the SEDS-I should be less governing...

[andyquinn]

I think thats SEDS-I should be a co-oridnating body which will be the framework between international chapters and will also support space activites in countries across the globe.

This does seem to be the best way to go about things. A possibility thta comes to mind is havingf a designated elected official from each chapter as a representative on a kind of international SEDS advisory council or something. The primary job of these people being that they just talk to each other and help facilitate more direct cooperation when it would be useful.

Having them as elected officers of there individual organisations would ensure representation without the need for a centralised election.

[neubjr]

so some sort of SEDS structure would look like this:

SEDS-International Body
consists of a group of representatives from national SEDS bodies. Not for governing purposes, but just as a forum to exchange ideas and aid in collaboration between SEDS-national chapters.

SEDS-National Bodies.
Each SEDS national body would be a governing organization consisting of an elected board from its member chapters. This would facilitate projects between member chapters and keep some working financial balance to pursue the helping expand the exploration and development of space. Each national body should have a constitution and organizational system. The elected board nationally should be chosen from members of the university chapters.

SEDS-University Chapters (or regional).
These are the individual chapters that compose the national organizations. each chapter has its own constitution or method of organization consistent with how its own university wants student group to be run. Chapters can run individual activities but also participate in national activities.



This is how I am seeing things because the USA has already had a National organization for some time and has been running with individual chapters at local universities. The national organization needs to have some more structure here right now, but that is being worked on. I agree that there should be some International body to facilitate cooperation and everything like that, but that the international organization should not be responsible for governing any thing in itself.

Joshua.

[Skulled]

The proposed structure is very good i think. The SEDS-I should be more of a body which does not govern anything in particualr but is responsible more towards to the cooperation and parallel growth of chapters across the world. This body therefore would be primarily for smooth and efficient planning of the general structure of SEDS.

As pointed out there has been a National organization in the USA which has been responsilbe for local chapters running through the country. The major point now to be addressed is the presence of such national organization which are directly responsible for the chapters in its region. This could be achieved without much trouble since, there aren't that many chapters elsewhere other than the USA.

If representatives from the different chapters could get together and devise a structure to be implremented, this would make the great leaps in the expansion across the world and running efficiency of the current chapters much easier and better.

Another important point to be addressed i believe is introducing SEDS to developing countries in a more detailed fashion. The current chapters are mostly concentrated around the USA or around Western Europe, with very little or no representation in other parts of the world. This could be done pretty easily by engaging in educational outreach programmes directed towards the other parts of the world by the present SEDS chapters.

Let me know what you guys of think of this.

[neubjr]

First, one question? When you use the term "chapter" are you referring to a chapter based at the individual university (ex. MIT SEDS) , or are you referring to the National chapter of SEDS (ex. SEDS-USA).

Secondly, I totally agree that we need to expand SEDS to other areas of the world, but also to other universities within areas already covered. THere are a great number of universities in Europe and the USA, Canada etc... that do not have a SEDS chapter.

However, before we begin making a push into SEDS expansion into other areas, I think that we need to focus on organizing SEDS as it is now. I do not know how the situation is in Europe but in the USA the SEDS-national has not been active at all in the past several years. We are just now in the process of getting the national organization together again to the point where it can be fully operational (not there yet). One problem here that has led to the lack of national activity that much of the governing board of SEDS-USA left at once (graduated) with no one to step in to fill their shoes. So I personally want to make sure that SEDS-USA is up and fully operational again before moving into the SEDS expansion sector.

[Daniel]

Just as a sidenote -
In the longrun, there is no reason that SEDS-I will govern International projects, like the exo-planets project.

But in the short term that's just too much.
We should first put down the basics and we have a nice start here...

Another point is to decide how many represntives per country, i.e. the US and Israel should not get the same number. So i would say that at first stage there should be something like 1 rep. per 10 chapters or so...
At a later stage we might get those rep. to become SEDS-I board to elect a few ppl to serve as executives (SEDS-I director, SEDS-I projects, SEDS-I communication, SEDS-I new chapters etc...)

Another important point that skulled said is that once we have the basics down it will be much easier to proceed....

[Daniel]

I agree with Neubjr, the Israeli chapter is a new one (a bit more then a year) and we still need to get more ppl in before we can "donate" ppl outside...
Regarding the problem that neubjr raised - I still think the SEDS-US is making a mistake going mainly to under-grad, and not to grad/ph.d. students...

[Skulled]

By chapter i mean local chapter, like MIT SEDS as you quoted. For any national organization, i used the phrase regional organization, or atleast i thought i was using that. :).

I completely agree with your stand getting the SEDS structure running before stepping onto the exapnsion phase. But the main reason behind my mention of it is that exapnsion provides a thrust. The activity of local chapters might be due to the lack of a sound oragnization coordinating the efforts of different chapters.

So if there were a advisory (SEDS-I) body covering the activities of all the chapters and providing support to the national oragnization, it is much easier for the national organization to keep the individual chapters active and running smooth.

The expansion and educational outreach would help in getting the local chapters active and with desginated tasks and projects. This would kick out the inactiveness of the individual chapters and start a major restructuring process easier.

As for the situation in Europe, i believe there aren't that many chapters or national organizations, with the exception of UK. And the present chapters are situated aorund the UK and western Europe, other than this i don't believe chapters exist anywhere else.

[neubjr]

I'd like to think that the SEDS chapters at each university go for both undergrad and grad students. I know at MIT we have about 50-50. But it is the undergrads who have gotten most involved with the group in terms of organizing events etc....

It is important to have both undergrad students and graduate students. Hopefully chapters do not focus their intent on either of these two, but attempt to entice both undergrad and grad students to join the group.

Joshua.

[andyquinn]

The structure in general seems quite good. In fact UKSEDS largely already comes into this structure except that our membership structure is a little different. We do have a top level organiseation with branches (chapters) at universities. But we also have individual members who do not have to be affiliated to a branch. And only individual members are elligible to stand for elected positions. So essentially we have 2 classes of membership, Individual and branch. The branches themselves do have voting rights in the organiseation but there members do not unless they are also individual members.

This seems more confusing now I have written it down so if you dont get it please ask.

Anyway. I do agree that we need to think about consolidation first before expansion.

Having said that an Indian guy who is currently working in the UK at Jodrell Bank on his Phd came to the UKSEDS conference and said he would be interested in setting up a chapter at his university (in bombay I think) when he returns to India. I dont have the exact details to hand.

The point being that whilst actively seeking new chapters would be over stretching when someone actively show an interest we should follow it up.

[Daniel]

So actually what you is that the first goall of SEDS-I would be to expand its memberships, both in established countries and new places.

I like it...

Regarding the chapter organzation, I think we should publish some guidelines for new countries -- so it will be easier for them, but in the end every country will be free to do as it will.

W need to sum up this tree into one document, which will detail the structure of SEDS-I.

I also think that the first person need for SEDS-I is a webmaster, which will then prepare a site for SEDS-I or renovate the current site (prefable IMO) to seperate better SEDS-I from SEDS-USA.
After that we can use personal contacts to start establishing chapters in other countries and then declare that either MIT conference or Bremen will serve as the first meeting of the renewed SEDS-I

[Daniel]

Hi all,
I have made a short file describing the structure of future SEDS-I
Feel free to change it .

[Skulled]

I like the proposal you have put forward. i think it is a really good organizationla structure. I saw that you had left a box empty with question marks.

I feel that two other things SEDS-I should be actively involved in is running some kind of publiched material, like a newsletter or jounral on a regular period. Another thing is fund raising, which i believe we should concentrate on, to the best extent as they would be main sources for international Projrects and it would help a lot in expansion and outreach projects, not mentioning the presence of conferences, so that the representatives from chapters or national organizations can meet and discuss SEDS-I strategies a more competitive and detailed level.

what do you guys of think of this?

[neubjr]

I like the structure that is being laid out. I have a couple things to mention now:

I guess in the past there has not been any SEDS-I structure at all, it was all started with SEDS-USA back in the day and has now been expanding. Previously I thought that there was already some SEDS-I structure, so I'm just stating this for myself basically :) So I think it is great to actually get a SEDS-I structure together now.

First main thing I want to discuss is getting a SEDS webpage / webmaster. The SEDS-USA site is currently being hosted by servers at the University of Arizona. This site also is greatly out of date. If we could find someone willing to renovate the SEDS-USA site then mostlikely a SEDS-I site could also be hosted on the same server. http://www.seds.org/ (www.seds.org/) currently is the University of Arizona SEDS page. The SEDS-USA page is www.seds.org/seds/

So I think that somehow SEDS web structure needs to be re-worked so that www.seds.org/ is the front page for SEDS-I and then within that you would have www.seds.org/USA/ , www.seds.org/UK/ etc.... and then each university chapter would have its page hosted by the university with links to the SEDS site.

Second point I want to bring up is that if we are putting down a SEDS-I structure, sometime in the future we should be looking into how to make this "official" SEDS-USA is officially incorporated as a Non-Profit corporation through the state of Massachusetts (we still need to file some of the back papers on this I think... Chris how is that going???). Having a non-profit status for SEDS-USA has helped greatly in the past and once we really get going again I'm sure it will in the future.

SEDS-I I feel should also somehow be incorporated in this form. However, I have no idea how to deal with international corporations and also how one would deal with setting up a corporation that is comprised of other corporations (i.e. SEDS-USA and any others). This may not be very necessary right at the beginning, but shortly it will become very helpful to have an official Non-profit corporation if we really want to make SEDS-I the umbrella organization for all SEDS. Again, I think it might be a problem with other corporations in existance (SEDS-USA). Maybe someone else knows more about the business aspects of this all better.

Besides that I think things are going along quite nicely. Anyone have ideas on where to host the SEDS site, or how to renovate the www.seds.org. I think renovating the current SEDS web structure is best, and possible moving where it is hosted from.

I will ask around to see if anyone has time to really work as a webmaster. Maybe we can put out a call or something for one.

[neubjr]

Originally posted by Skulled


I feel that two other things SEDS-I should be actively involved in is running some kind of publiched material, like a newsletter or jounral on a regular period. Another thing is fund raising,
what do you guys of think of this?

I totally agree that we need to work on both these as well. (Again, we should make sure that we have a structure and a network of people set up before we really dive into the fundraising and Newsletter -- the webmaster will be KEY to all of this as it will be important to have up-to-date information that we can send out to all the SEDS members at all levels). SEDS-USA used to publish "NOVA" which was the official SEDS newsletter. It was sent out to all the chapters and had input from all chapters. However, NOVA has not been published in some years. I think it would be great to start this up again, but we'll need to find someone in charge of working it and have the structure set up to get it out to enough members that it matters.

Fundraising, I am always a big advocate of. We should always be fundraising. Once we get a structure really set together we will need to have a "fundraising committee" of sorts. I hope to make a good deal of money from the MIT conference (not sure how much this will be at all) I'll post more on that in the fundraising thread shortly.

-Joshua.

[Daniel]

Reviving this :)
Is there an option anyone here can organize a Tele-con for SEDS-I?
I think that working with tele-cons is very effiecnt and can make a lot of progress on starting SEDS-I

[neubjr]

telecons are very useful and much better than internet meetings. Unfortunately we don't have that ability at MIT yet... We need to work on funding here for that kind of stuff.

Also maybe we can get back on to a track of what kind of organizational things need to get done for SEDS. I.E. more regular newsletters out to people/chapters, better communication, etc... etc... I guess those kind of things would be best discussed in a telecon and how to do them. But for now maybe the forums will work as to getting things together.


As to forming better communications between SEDS chapters and SEDS executive organizations, I have been trying to keep an updated list of SEDS contacts together. I think it will be good to have some regular newsletter type thing sent out to these contacts so I will start doing that. And hopefully build a better list of contacts from doing so. Then we can work on furthering other ideas from that. I will send out an initial contact email later this week.

Joshua.

[K6-III]

Do you think you might be able to add MN-SEDS to the list???

Also, increased activity and communication would be very much welcome...

[andyquinn]

As to forming better communications between SEDS chapters and SEDS executive organizations, I have been trying to keep an updated list of SEDS contacts together. I think it will be good to have some regular newsletter type thing sent out to these contacts so I will start doing that.

The ukseds publications officer is thinking of creating a sort of newsletter to be sent out across europe to try and encourage the creation of more SEDS organiseations in the area, you may want to ask her for help in a SEDS-I newsletter. Thats publications@uk.seds.org her names Jo Catena.

Also on the point of contacts, in UKSEDS we have forwarding email addresses that always point to the person in a particular role, ie chair@uk.seds.org goes to the chair, and committee@uk.seds.org goes to the whole committee. It would be good if all SEDS chapters could set up similar forwarding addresses. It can also be usefull to know those people who seem to have been doing seds stuff forever though as well as the guys currently in charge (like Chris Lewicki and our own Mark Bentley from UKSEDS).

[Daniel]

Hi andy,
That will be great is someone can make a newsletter like that!
It should be similar to Euroavia news but smaller, mainly focusing on international project and chapter news IMO and not actually a news and articles paper.

Regarding telecon, I can try to setup one but it will be hard (currency)
I also like the idea of mail forwards. (althougth committee@uk.seds will become vaad@maslul.org :) )

[neubjr]

Hey guys, I have been working on getting out email updates to chapter contacts and presidents. I have still not added the international contacts to the list, but I will do that tonight.

I just sent out one email to the

seds-chapters@seds.org
seds-presidents@seds.org

lists. Once I add the international contacts that I know about to these lists they should be fairly comprehensive of SEDS today. I don't really have time to put together a whole newsletter but I was going to work on having regular email updates. After adding the International contacts to these lists I will send out another email just asking for updates on what chapters have been up to. Then I'll compile them into a somewhat coherant email newsletter. And we'll start things up with that.

If someone wants to actually put out a snail mailing SEDS newsletter again I can help provide contacts for that.

Joshua.

[K6-III]

Expect an email later today.