January 26, 2006 at the Pipe Trades Training Center (780 Commercial St., San Jose, CA 95112) in the Large Conference Room

Total Attendance: 20

GENERAL

President Ron Kane opened the meeting with introductions at 7:00 PM and mentioned that he would be traveling less in the near future at least.

AGENDA

No Changes

MINUTES

Corrections to the October 27, 2005 Council Meeting Minutes are as follows:

• Felicita suggested that the following correction be made to this exchange of motions at the end of the discussion on the “Expansion of the SVEC Area” —
  Motion: Manesh
  “Form a committee to study the expansion of the SVEC boundaries for the inclusion of societies in the periphery of Silicon Valley in Northern California”.
  Second: Elise
  Move to Amend the Motion: Felicita
  “Form a committee to study the expansion of the SVEC boundaries to evaluate the criteria for membership and awards.”
  Second: Elise
  Approved: Unanimous
  Motion: ?
  Second: ?
  Approved: Unanimous

• Felicita suggested that this motion should be taken back to the next Board of Directors Meeting for a vote since it originated there. Ron agreed.

TREASURERS REPORT

Treasurer Ed Kaminski distributed copies of the SVEC budget spreadsheets to those present. Contact Ed at kipski @ prodigy.net for an electronic copy of the spreadsheets. Ed also presented the following information.
• The Council is in good financial shape at this time although there has been no significant income or expense associated with the Engineering Banquet yet.
• Need membership dues and banquet registrations.
  Motion: Manesh
  “Approve the Treasurers Report”
  Second: Felicita
  Approved: Unanimous

OLD BUSINESS

President
Ron had no report this evening.

Vice-President
Barbara announced the next Technical Symposium to be held on April 6 at His Lordships. We still need vendor exhibitors. The speaker will be Larry Dubois from Stanford Research Institute (SRI). He will talk about energy and new technologies. Barbara will have more information about this in the future.

2006 Engineering Banquet
Jessica reminded everyone that the Engineering Banquet will be on Friday, February 24th this year at the Hyatt Santa Clara (used to be the Westin Santa Clara). There will be four distinguished inductees this year. A fifth inductee slated for this year will be inducted next year since he was unable to attend the banquet and you must be present to be inducted. The Keynote Speaker this year is Dr. Buchman. He will speak on the Gravity Probe-B. Over 150 people have indicated that they are coming so far although she has not received any checks yet. One HOF inductee will be bringing more than 50 people with them. We need to keep the publicity up. The price goes up $10 per person tomorrow. Elise sent out e-mails to all the societies. We need help with the 10 scholarships and sponsorships for the scholarships as well. Contact Connie Fang for more information about scholarships and sponsoring scholarships. SEMI is the only sponsor so far that sent a check ($2500). We also have a pledge from Novellus ($20K) but we have not received a check yet. UC Berkeley bought more than one table. We need to get more company sponsors. The companies who have the inductees tend to be the large donors and it is difficult to get donations the following year.

Some additional new items of import:

• We need a new curator for the HOF posters. Steve doesn’t want them back. They need to be kept in an indoor, Class A, environmentally controlled area or they will not survive. They are in a case that is owned by the Council. It takes two people to move the case now, since there are so many posters.

• Sam will take care of getting the plaques as always. Sam will sign the plaques as the Chair of the HOF Committee. This is Sam’s last year as Chair of the HOF Committee. Bernard Woodrow will be Chair next year.

• Ron suggested that we give Pipe Trades Training Center a plaque for allowing us to use their facility for meetings. We can discuss this more later.

• Jill Wilker from Playing at Learning contacted Jessica and suggested that we award the scholarships to the winning student team at the banquet. They had their first robotics competition this past weekend and the winning team will be going to the national competition. We may even be able to have the winning robot at the reception as well.

• Carolyn Koenig mentioned that the Tech Museum is interested in doing something at the banquet as well. They are interested in reaching out to the technical community for membership to support their educational activities. They want to give a family membership to the inductees and the KOF. Carolyn also recommended to them that they could give IMAX tickets to the scholarship winners. We have talked to the Tech about hanging our inductee posters there in the past but it has been fruitless so far. Our old Tech address is no longer valid. The door/address is no longer open. The administrative person at that door was laid off. We have to use the 201 address now. Michael Wright indicated that the new address is on the letterhead.

• Felicita mentioned that there is a new publisher at SJBJ. They seem to have not interest in publishing our Engineering Banquet Special Issue as in the past. Everyone is out of town and Mark Eaton told RendeŽ that it is out of his hands. Jessica is still deciding how to use Ron and Barbara at the banquet. Felicita advised Ron that he needs to write a President’s Message for the Program Book and that he needs a recent photo of himself as well. Registration will be handled by students from ASME @ SCU and SWE @ SJSU so far. Barbara asked Elise about the contact and cutoff for Full Calendar. She thought the cutoff was February 1st. Getting in Full Calendar will get us in the SJBJ. Elise will follow up. We still need help in all areas. Please contact Jessica at jteachw @ yahoo.com if you can help.

  Hall of Fame (HOF)
  No report. Sam was not present.

  SVEC Expansion Committee
  No report. Cliff was not present.

  Keeper of the Flame (KOF)
  Nothing new to report.

NEW BUSINESS

President
Ron was talking recently with a HOF inductee about putting together an engineering display that promotes engineering. The Tech doesn’t want to do anything like that. We, the SVEC, need to make that one of our missions. Recently, Ron was watching a panel discussion on KQED television that featured the provosts of several Bay Area Colleges and Universities. The topic was the state of engineering. They all painted a dire picture of engineering in the future. The brightest young people today want to become professional athletes, doctors, lawyers and even crime scene investigators. Engineering is not a “cool” occupation identified on TV shows in an attractive manner. We should identify some provosts and see if we can come up with a concept for the Tech to attract top students to an engineering education. Ron talked with Jay Pinson about this idea and Jay’s advice was to wait until the Tech’s new president comes on board before approaching them with the provost’s idea. KRS Murthy said that he will take the lead on this effort with KQED. Ron suggested that we invite the provosts to the banquet. They will have to pay their own way of course. We should consider Berkeley, SCU, SJSU, De Anza, Foothills and UCSC.

Vice President
Barbara is recommending that we consider The Enterprise Network (TEN) as a home for the SVEC. We need a place to display the HOF inductee posters along with perhaps some little memento that represents the inductee’s early thinking that led to their success. Most importantly, however, it would be a training center for all of us to use. TEN had a $10M building donated to them and a $2M donation for operations and maintenance. They are willing to house our engineering center and training center. We could have our next Council Meeting there to try it out. She needs our approval to pursue this idea. We would have a space on the 4th floor. The Sobrato Family donated the building located in the Bunker Hill area. Felicita asked if we could store the president’s 3-4 boxes there. Barbara said she didn’t think they would be secure in a cubicle. Ron suggested that perhaps we could get a locked cabinet to store the material. Barbara will investigate the possibility of having the next Board Meeting there in March and then the Council Meeting in April. The ASME is already having meetings there and the IEEE could have meetings there in the future. The IEEE must have a huge volume of meetings that would benefit by this kind of space. Barbara’s long term goal is to get the IEEE to have all their meetings there. Elise inquired about access to the building. Bill Ludwig works all the time. He will come in and unlock the facility for you but you need to enforce security on your own. We may eventually be trusted with a key or get access to lock box of some sort. A longer term view is an engineering center. Ron mentioned that the provosts on the KQED TV program also mentioned that we need an engineering center. Barbara originally thought of having the patent library in the engineering center as well. That may be possible again since the Cogswell College option seems to have fallen apart for them.

Long Range Planning
What are we doing long term? What is SVEC’s goal or mission? Ron and Barbara and John Gale have spent some time researching the original goals of the SVEC with an eye toward how to create more continuity year to year and not to change the original goals. We will talk more about this later. The engineering center is one way to do this. Education is another way to do it.

Other New Business
Carolyn Koenig asked if the HOF members are listed on the website. Michael Wright said that they are listed on the website. Barbara asked if their biographies are listed and Felicita indicated that they are. Michael Wright stated that he doesn’t have the biographies of the last several years of inductees. Ron asked if we could print the citation that was written about them on their HOF induction posters as well. Michael didn’t see why not, if he can get a copy of them. Greg West has the information on the most recent inductees electronically.

Society Announcements


• Nanotechnology — No meeting in February; possibly a full day conference though.
• IEEE — Section Meeting, Wednesday, February 1st.
• AIChE — Winery tour next Monday; $10 a person; in San Jose.
• ASME — No Announcements.
• AIAA — No February meeting; tour of the United Airlines Maintenance Facility (Avionics) the day before; February 23rd; Galileo Fellowship Program for high school students is kicking off now to encourage the study of aeronautics.
• SAMPE — No Announcements
• CETA — No Announcements.
• SEMI — No Announcements.
• SVEC — Engineering Banquet, February 24th; Banquet Committee Meeting tomorrow; Connie Fang needs more scholarship applications, she has about 20 now.
• SME — No Announcements.
• SWE — Designing Women, Children’s Discovery Museum, Saturday, January 28th; Workshop on Discover-E, February 1st.
• ASMI — Next meeting February ?
• CSPE — Mathcounts, February 4th, Math Competition.
• SFPE will no longer be members of SVEC.

  Ron asked for a motion to adjourn the meeting.
  Motion: Manesh
  Second: Ed
  Meeting Adjourned at 8:30 PM

NEXT COUNCIL MEETING
Tentatively: April 27th at the Pipe Trades Training Center.

Minutes submitted by