AFS Fisheries Information and Technology Section

Executive Committee Meeting Minutes  December 15, 2021

Attendees: Kayla, Paul, Tiffany, Patrick, Chelsea

• AFS Baltimore Review
  • “COVID Effects” Symposium (Tiffany)
    • Small group of presenters, but it was very well attended.
    • Great talks and great discussions!
  • Annual Business Meeting
    • SWOT Analysis Follow Up (Tiffany)
      • Strengths-keep going with these
      • Weakness- specific invites to past presidents (easy to address)
        • Mail poet- switch to paid option
          • Action item: Chelsea to explore options for code to automatically update list based on specific criteria – how to create monthly list and recently lapsed membership list
            • Joined and paid through date
          • Action items: Chelsea to send “it’s been a while” email – option to Unsubscribe list
        • $200/year for 1500 members- we would quickly get to the same issue
        • FITS ubiquity in who we are
          • Rebranding FITS
            • What should it be referred to as?
            • Avoid an acronym. Not inclusive
            • Broad enough people know what this section is about
            • Action item for all: Think about words that describe what our sections does to discuss at January meeting
          • Opportunities
            • Collecting data on Conference symposia room attendance numbers
            • Room size planning
            • Opportunities on developing more efficient ways to collect this data
            • Action Item: Paul to continue to develop ideas and ways FITS can be involved.
          • Update on volunteer opportunities
            • CFTC
            • Citizen Science Task Force
            • Awards committee
              • Travel award and two lotteries (membership in December and registration)
            • No inquiries yet
          • Action Item: Kayla to send ExCom annual business meeting minutes for approval, then post to website.
          • Action item: Kayla send out announcement of volunteer opportunities.
        • Partnership travel award (Kayla)
          • No entries
          • Current application period open until February 28, 2022
          • For meetings between: May 1, 2022 through October 31, 2022
          • Action item: Tiffany to write up for application deadline
        • Membership lottery
          • For 20 Early Career and regular/retired current members to receive FITS membership
          • Action item: Tiffany to randomly generate winner list based on most recent member list.
        • By-law change (Paul)
          • Updated on the website
        • FishR-FITS partnership (Paul)
          • Jason Doll leading this effort
          • Paul to attend meeting in January
        • Other business
          • AFS Spokane:
            • Symposium ideas (Proposals due Jan 28, 2022)
              • Patrick’s idea
                • How vendors use integrate research to advance technology
                • Who are leading or cutting edge technology?
                • Tech of the future
                • Innovations of fisheries tech
                • “McIver’s of the fisheries world”
                • We need to develop a concept title and text to shop around for invited presenters
              • Workshops
                • Data management
              • Center for Fisheries Technology and Collaboration news (Rebecca)
                • No updates
              • Citizen Science Task Force (Paul)
                • No updates
              • History webpage collaboration with the History Section (Paul)
                • No updates

 Update From Rebecca via email: 

First, I hoped to make a formal request: for FITS to upgrade its Mailpoet from free to Premium. We can get Premium for $200/year for 1,500 subscribers or $250/year for 2,000 subscribers. If we want to grow our Center for Fisheries Technology effort, we need an expanded mailing list, and we will likely go over our 1,000 subscriber limit very quickly. I think we could do the $200/year option to start, and adjust it in the future as needed. I plan to finish setting up a dedicated CFT newsletter today or tomorrow, and start sharing pertinent news from our vendors as soon as possible. I think they will find a lot of value in this, and the fisheries folks who want to keep in tune can do it separately from the FITS member newsletter. Please let me know if/when you approve this request, and thank you very much!

Second, since the Baltimore meeting, we have had 3 new vendors with 11 products! I’m adding them all today and hoping to kick off the newsletter with that content.

Finally, here are my notes from the last CFTC checkin, and we have another scheduled for Friday at 12pm Central. We plan to do monthly brief check-ins to keep people on track.

General
* A shared email account has been set up for us all to use in our communications:
centerforfishtech@gmail.com
* We will plan on this meeting same time/day next month. However, Rebecca will send out a doodle poll to see if there is another option that works for everyone. Given the holidays, December will probably be an exception regardless.

User Outreach (Alex)
* Working on contacting 4 new potential user groups/week, can be a lot of copy-pasting so an AppSheet tool similar to that used for vendor outreach would be awesome
* Steve will help Alex set up an AppSheet tool that can 1) be used by all user outreach volunteers, 2) can automatically send messages to new users, and 3) customizes messaging depending on whether the user is a student, professional, or other
* Can invite up to 9 other committee volunteers so please let her know if you want to assist with customer outreach

Vendor Outreach (Steve)
* Set up an AppSheet tool for tracking vendor outreach status, can invite up to 9 other committee volunteers so please let him know if you want to assist with vendor outreach
* 8-9 vendors contacted at the AFS Baltimore meeting, although some were already recruited and just need to take more advantage of what we’re offering. Rebecca highlighted the current free nature of the service, our desire to serve as a connection to their customers as not just a money drain, and our desire to share pertinent news as appropriate (e.g., Hinchinbrook’s new electronic measuring board tech)

Website/Technical Support (Rebecca)
* Imagery has been a little wonky on the site – Rebecca will follow up with Beth Beard (AFS) and Grant (WP consultant) to see if he can fix the category image aspect cropping. She will also go through each product listing to verify image galleries are working correctly. Target to finish that before next meeting.

* Rebecca will get back into setting correct user permissions for committee members. That was also a Grant question, so she will follow up with Beth instead.

FOR NEXT TIME: Rebecca received feedback that “CFTC” is too long and difficult to remember for folks. Notice our email is centerforfishtech. Do we want to change to the CFT? The FTC? Something else entirely? Should we change our URL as well? Currently units.fisheries.org/fits/solutions