Meeting Notes from Tucson SPIN organizational meeting 02/10/00

In attendance were: Cindy Mansfield, Bob Keys, Kurt McMillen, Wally Pipp, and Elaine Fisher.

Cindy Mansfield opened the meeting.

Elaine told us about the meeting room at Sunquest where we will be holding our regular meetings. It is normally set up for classes, seating 20, but can be arranged for theater, seating 60. The group decided that 20 would not be enough for the meetings and it should be set up for Theater.

Cindy and Wally passed out slightly different versions of the "Speaker's Meeting Guidelines". The General Meeting Agenda Outline was revised to the following:

5:45 - 6:30 Registration and Networking; Refreshments

6:30 - 6:45 Organizational Announcements

6:45 - 7:15 Software Experiences - Extemporaneous Sharing

7:15 - 8:00 Speaker - Title

8:00 - 8:30 Open Forum; Continuation of Q&A with speaker

Discussion continued on whether the Refreshments should be "Soda and cookies for $2.00" or "Food and drink for $5.00". No final decision was reached. I am adding an Action Item for each person on the original committee to send me an email vote of whether the first meeting should be "$2.00 Soda and cookies" or "$5.00 Food and drink".

Elaine has an Action Item to verify that we can start at 5:45, because classes typically end at 5:00 and the room needs to be set up by their maintenance staff.

Elaine told us that security for her company typically needs to have a list of names prior to entering the facility. She has an Action Item to see if this can be relaxed for our meetings. If not, we will have to get definite RSVPs from people planning to attend the meetings.

Program Planning continued with discussion on how to get members and speakers. One suggestion toward getting attendees and speakers was to leverage off the Phoenix SPIN meetings. Another idea is to request topics from our members and seek speakers from our members who would be best speaking on the topic. Suggestions for topics from our group may be sent directly to Wally.

We agreed that we need to have the April and May speakers lined up prior to the March meeting.

Kurt agreed to present on RPD (Rapid Product Development) at one of the meetings.

Someone suggested that Tom's journey with Allied Signal from CMM Level 1 to Level 3 in 2 years would be a good presentation.

Other topic suggestions were Code Management Tools and Requirements Management Tools.

Cindy reported that Gene had been in contact with the UA Computer Science Chair, Peter J. Downey, who agreed to publicize our SPIN "throughout the department students, staff and faculty." Cindy suggested that we might get even more UA participation if we solicited him to speak at one of the SPIN meetings.

Wally suggested that he and Kurt would continue to solicit for contacts at Raytheon that might know potential members in the Ft. Huachuca community.

Bob reported on advertising.

The AZ Daily Star will publish a first meeting notice for no charge (Business and/or Accent Section). They need approx. 3 weeks lead time.

StarNet will post an announcement on their web site for approx. 2 weeks at no charge.

ITASA would like us to function as one of their Special Interest Groups. They would like us to have our club leader join their club. It was suggested that perhaps we can get Raytheon to put up the membership fee. We may be able to get ITASA to help publicize our first meeting, regardless. ITASA newsletter is at: http://www.itasa.com/itasa/nl.htm

We decided to invite Bob Hagan, ITASA Board Co-Chair to come talk to us at our next coordination meeting. Bob has an Action Item to invite him.

Bob told us that he will be leaving on a trip soon, so he won't be able to coordinate with AZ Daily Star with the meeting notice. I took the Action Item to get the information from him and submit the information.

We decided that the meetings will be held on the Third Thursday of each month (with the exception of Nov/Dec, which will have one meeting on the first or second Thursday).

Anthony requested last meeting that we come up with three domain name choices. Mike & Tom suggested (through Cindy's email) the names www.TucsonSpin.com and www. SpinAroundTucson.com. The group decided that they wanted '.org' instead of '.com', and we didn't like the second name. Therefore our three choices are:

1. www.TucsonSpin.org

2. www.TucsonAZSpin.org

3. www.TucsonSWSpin.org

Anthony has an Action Item to see if any of these are available, and acquire one for us.

Anthony also told us that he could handle incoming email for our organization. He asked us to come up with names for the accounts. I am assigning myself an Action Item to come up with a list of logical email address names to use for our club.

Mike & Tom have an Action Item to come up with a web design for our group. We wanted to make certain that they have examined other SPIN websites as examples for ours. I have an Action Item to email them with a list of websites that they can look at.

We need to review the web design before it is finalized. Mike & Tom have an Action Item to show us what they've done so far.

Later in the meeting, we came up with a short list of items that need to be on the site:

Kurt gave us copies of his draft Charter. We all have an Action Item to review it and make comments on the content. I am attaching it to the email with these minutes. He would like to get them back ASAP.

Membership Committee Chair Bob Keys

We discussed soliciting for speakers by posting 3X5 cards with information on the Tucson SPIN at professional meetings that we will be attending. Because I will be attending the first applicable meeting, I have an Action Item to draft a card.

We agreed that the next meeting of our organizational group will be at Sunquest on 2/22 from 6-8 p.m. [ed. This has been changed to 2/24 by Cindy, because the Phoenix SPIN is meeting on the 22nd]