CAA2004 ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING Minutes

The 2004 Annual General Meeting was held on Friday 16th April 2004 at PIN, Prato, Italy. The meeting started at 15.35 p.m. with Nick Ryan in the chair and about 80 members present.

1) Minutes of the 2003 Annual General Meeting held on Friday 11th April 2003 in the Wappensaal of the Rathaus, Vienna, Austria.

These were accepted.

2) Matters arising from the minutes.

Were dealt with during the chairman’s report.

3) Chairman's report.

The chairman reported that the committee had met on two occasions (Friday 11th April 2003 in Vienna, Austria and Saturday 9th December 2003 in Prato, Italy) and had conducted most of its other business by E‑mail.

The chairman announced that CAA2005 shall be held in Tomar in Portugal.

The proceedings of CAA99 (Dublin) were finally published. Kelly Fennema and Hans Kamermans acted as editors.

The CAA2003 proceedings were ready, and finally, after a lot of hassle, delivered in Prato but could not be distributed due to a misprint. The BAR number was S1127 and should be S1227. The proceedings will be sent by mail.

The CAA conferences seems to be acting more and more as host for business meetings. ARENA and EPOCH are two examples.

Future ventures. There are expressions of interest from Germany for 2007 in Berlin and Valencia in Spain. It looks as if in the near future we will leave the European continent for the first time.

4) Treasurer's report.

CAA has € 5000 in the Dutch account and 7400 pounds in the UK. The UK account owes 4000 pounds to a creditor. CAA has spent € 3500 on 21 bursaries for the 2004 conference.

5) Election of officers and auditor.

Chair: Nick Ryan was nominated, agreed to stand and was re-elected unopposed.
Treasurer: Stephen Stead was nominated, agreed to stand and was re-elected unopposed.
Secretary: Hans Kamermans was nominated, agreed to stand and was re-elected unopposed.
Membership Secretary: Kelly Fennema was nominated, agreed to stand and was re-elected unopposed.

The following are ex-officio members of the Steering Committee for 2004-2005:

Franco Niccolucci (CAA2004 organiser & CAAIt)
Gonçalo Leite Velho (CAA2005 organiser & CAAPortugal)
To be decided (CAA2006 organiser)
Sascha Schmidt (students & low income)
Dora Constantinidis (students & low income).
Juan Barceló (CAAEs)
Vinod Nautiyal (CAAIndia)

There is a volunteer for auditing of the books.

6) Membership.

All participants who paid, or had it paid for them (bursaries), the CAA membership fee (part of the conference fee) are members of CAA until the end of next year’s conference. This fee is used for bursaries.
This year CAA has 228 members.

7) CAA2005.

Gonçalo and Alexandra Leite Velho gave a presentation on the next CAA conference in Tomar, Portugal. The title will be “The World is in your Eyes” and it will be held from 21th to the 27th March.
In the morning the sessions will be devoted to a discussion of specific topics with a position paper and 3 or 4 other papers, while in the afternoon there will be ordinary sessions.
The social programme will comprise a medieval dinner, various night shows and tours to Alto Ribatejo, the Coa engravings and the Roman civitas of Conimbriga.
The conference fee will be low, and some lunches and dinner will be included. Accommodation will be in the 5 star Hotel dos Templarios (176 beds) and various hostels.
The organisers are trying to find funding for students from the third world.

8) CAA2006

There was one bid for CAA2006. Jeff Clark presented Fargo (USA). The theme of the conference will be digital discovery, exploring new frontiers in human heritage. Jeff showed snippets of a DVD which the future organisers produced.
The cost of a hotel room will be between € 70 and 80, an inexpensive meal will be € 4 to 8, medium priced € 8 to 11 and expensive € 25. The airfare can be, if you are lucky (like Jeff was coming to Prato), € 340, but more likely will be between € 560 and 660 for a roundtrip.
The organisers are looking for sponsors for meals and busses, and will start an advertising campaign in the USA.
Tentative dates are 18 – 22 April 2006.
Hopefully there will be few immigration problems.
65 members voted in favour of Fargo, 3 against and there were 12 abstentions.

9) Report subcommittee proceedings.

The members are:

Steve Bullas
Martijn van Leusen
Gary Lock
Torsten Madsen (chair)
Tobias Tonner (student representative)

Martijn van Leusen gave a summary of the results of the work of the subcommittee proceedings.  

The subcommittee wants a more formal structure for the production of the proceedings (refereeing etc.)
There should be guidelines for referees.
They want to make a distinction between innovative and non-innovative work. Another possible distinction could be between completed research, work in progress, tutorials, demonstrations and tools.
Do we still want a book (with a CD) or should we publish the contributions on the internet? If we publish on the internet how do we ensure the permanency? Are we going to digitize the proceedings retrospectively?
If we opt for both a book and publication on the internet, we should not give the impression that we will publish the less valuable articles on the internet.

Franco reported that, given the choice for the 2004 proceedings, 111 participants wanted a book with a CD and 117 choose the cheaper option of only a CD.

The chair asked the subcommittee to come with a proposal next year taking into account the remarks made by the members.

10) Webservices.

Tyler Bell will investigate the possibilities of web services for CAA members.
This will include, among many other things, the streamlining of the bursary applications.

11) Any other business.

The delegates were missing a list of participants for the conference. Franco will mail the list to all participants a.s.a.p.

Dora Constantinidis had the impression that there were fewer students than last year, and wanted to know whether that may have been the result of less support for students. Steve Stead reported that in fact the opposite was true and that more bursaries were given to students than in other years.

The chairman thanked the CAA2004 organisers Franco Nicolucci and his co-organisers and staff for another excellent, interesting and successful conference.

The meeting closed at 16.30 p.m.