Minutes of SWANA Rocky Mountain Chapter Monthly Board of Directors Meeting

7:00 am, May 15, 2007, The Egg & I, 6818 S Yosemite, Centennial, CO

ATTENDANCE:

Present: Debby Barton, John Briest, Leonard Butler, Roger Doak, Stephen Gillette, Susie Gordon, Neil Nowak*, Cathryn Stewart, Tom Strickland

Absent: Kathy Andrew, Laurie Batchelder Adams, Dick Sprague

Others Present: Erin Doak (Webmaster), Addison Briest, Jack Briest

Notations: * - Member arrived after meeting called to order

** - Member had to leave before meeting was completed.

Minutes are in the order of the agenda and not necessarily in order of discussions.

CALL TO ORDER: Meeting called to order at 7:06 as 8 of 12 directors present for a quorum.

ADOPTION OF AGENDA: Butler/Strickland moved/seconded to adopt the agenda. Motion carried unanimously.

MINUTES:

April meeting minutes previously approved via email.

TREASURER:

Gillette provided a balance sheet listing all assets, liabilities and equity of the chapter as well as current checking and savings balances. Current balances are checking of $10,943.64, savings of $17,977.12, T-loans of $10,000, and one E-loan of $6,153.25 ($5,000 principle plus $1,153.25 interest).

COMMITTEE REPORTS and ASSIGNMENTS:

Membership: Andrew not present so no report given.

Technical Program/Meetings:

Annual Meeting: Stewart will send updated agenda to Board members and has asked for comment back by Friday 25 May 2007.

Meals: Catering is okay and completed

Tour: Carpooling encouraged but there is adequate parking and the landfill is about 10 minutes from the train depot.

Agenda has been broken into seven “tracks” for various topic presentations. Discussion held on Track Five being dedicated to Special Wastes. Track Seven is intended as the Future vision and may have a panel discussion or something to incorporate Charles Johnson’s presentation. One suggestion was to have the panel discussion during the box luncheon on the last day and actually adjourn the meeting at 1 pm on Friday. Because no tour number is needed, item D was eliminated from page 2.

Technical/Luncheon Programs: Evergreen Analytical Labs is not available in June to host a technical session. Patty McClellan suggested a November or December technical session held in the afternoon with a tour of their facility in the late afternoon and maybe an evening program or gathering. STL has not responded to date. Recommendation was made to host a technical session in July on the Section 16 implementation plus any other immediate changes needed to be addressed such as the passage of HB7-1288 on fees to be collected effective 1 July 2007. Doak will check on speakers for such a technical session.

Erin Doak made the observation that if presenters would put a title slide including the name of the talk, the author and/or presenter, the company, and the date of the presentation, then the information would be even better when posted to the web site.

Educational Scholarship/Grants: Application is to be up and running by May 16, 2007 on the web site.

Nominations: Butler has begun work on the annual ballot. Each board member listed will have about 2 or 3 sentences of “introduction” for the ballot this year. Butler asked that each board member send him 3 sentences on themselves for his use in the ballot preparation.

Legislative: Gordon stated that the e-session on 4 May was reported by Sprague to the board members on the United Haulers versus Oneida Herkimer involving the Supreme Court decision on flow control issues. Colorado HB7-1288 did pass and was expected to be signed imminently. The section 16 rule on residential batteries, oil and tires was going to the commission today for approval. And the geotechnical working group was ongoing.

International Board: No report.

web site/Webmaster: Erin Doak, Chapter’s webmaster, made a presentation on past, current and possible future activities for the web site for the chapter. After his presentation, discussion held that it is time to consider improving the advertiser’s information to give them tangible information on the value they are receiving for their support of the chapter and the chapter’s web site.

Current Statistics: The account for the chapter was upgraded from 500 MB to 1500 MB with a 80 GB monthly transfer rate. Our monthly cost is now $17.95 versus $9.95 for the increased space. We currently are using about 27% of the available space. Usage of the web site is growing. In April 2007, there were nearly 4000 requests for pages. To date we have had 6,244 different computers access the web site, during the period of May 7-14, there have been 255 different computers accessing the web site.

Most Viewed pages (in priority of access): Home Page, Calendar, Presentations, Minutes, Contacts, Newsletter and Ads

Most Popular Presentation: Liner and Cover Construction by Curt Ahrendson.

Search Engines directing traffic to the web site: Google – 51%, MSN - 24%, Google in China – 13% (with many going to the Liner and Cover Construction Presentation), and Yahoo – 12%

Future options for the chapter’s web site:

Email Services: The web site can be used to send and receive email. It can include spam filters, virus scanning and auto responders. Each Chapter member could have an email address at ColoradoSWANA.org. Messages could be sent out from the chapter to members with an originating address of ColoradoSWANA.org which would be the next level of professionalism.

Ads: Currently unable to track or give statistics to individual advertisers and the current configuration is limited to one page. Future options could include ad tracking for each ad with the advantage of logging in and seeing how banners are performing, the number of impressions (times seen) versus the number of clicks (people accessing the ad information), and can export statistics to excel spreadsheets. Ads could also go to multiple pages throughout the web site and could include animation or text or both. The ads could also be rotated like a screen saver where a different ad would pop up each time the web site is accessed. Ads could also have start and end dates (automatic expiration dates could be incorporated) or expiration depending on the number of impressions or number of clicks. Ads could be shown on multiple pages or could target ads to the content of the page. Another option would be to utilize Google AdSense which would pay a commission to the chapter to have ads placed on the web site.

E-commerce: Expand to allow payment online, for a minimal fee, to help with registration efforts. Paypal has a potential usage with costs of 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction. There would be no monthly fee or set up fee. Individuals could use credit cards OR paypal for registrations. Paypal pays to the bank account.

Site Search Engine: As the amount of material on the server grows, the ability to search for specific items or topics would be a good resource.

Home Page Enhancements: There are several things that could be done to improve or modernize the home page to include links such as “People who liked this also looked at..” which would be automatically updated by the server. There could also be a subscription to the web site using RSS (Really Simple Syndication) to help find new content.

Membership/Advanced Options: Have portions of the web site functions limited to members only, such as email or member directories. This could be expanded to improve communications between members or to members such as through forums, wiki collaborations, picture galleries, blogs, email lists, polls, member location maps, calendars and comments on presentations which could be moderated or not. This area could also have member generated content similar to MyGreenSpace.com, FaceBook.com and WildPaddle.com.

RECOMMENDATIONS: Erin was asked to prepare summary with recommendations and costs. He verbally suggested the easiest and best improvements would involve member email and advertiser support. He will provide information to Briest for the June Board meeting.

Newsletter: The summer issue deadline for articles is still Friday, 1 June 2007. Status of assigned topics and assignments are as follows:

President’s Corner: Briest - Will be ready

Annual Meeting (location and content): Gillette/Stewart - Summary will be ready

Summary on February Luncheon Workshop: Doak - Summary will be ready

Road-E-O: Briest/Lovato - Still working on the details of location and dates

National and Colorado Connection (WasteCon): Batchelder Adams

Legislative Wrap-up: Gordon - Will be ready

Scholarship: Doak/Gordon - Application will be out on web site, short summary will be ready

CAFR Summit Summary: Strickland volunteered to prepare a summary

Hazardous and Solid Waste Commission: Butler

Board Member Nominations: Butler - Working on it

Bio on the newest board member (Nowak): Butler

Implementation SB 5-141 Doak will ask Jerry Henderson and Cindy Smith to write the article

Geotechnical Stakeholder meetings: Briest

Any photos or pictures should also be sent to Sprague for possible inclusion in the newsletter. He will try to incorporate some of the Rocky Ford photos.

Web site advertisers will also be listed in the newsletter.

OLD BUSINESS:

Road-E-O: Date for the Colorado Road-E-O has been narrowed to either the second or third weekend of August. The issue is finding a location to host the road-e-o. The chapter will host the insurance and provide a stipend for the winner to the national Road-E-O, winner will have to be a member of SWANA. Details are still being worked on by the Road-E-O committee.

Chapter Call: The next scheduled Chapter call is 13 June 2007.

Future Planning: The chapter is pretty much on track except for the number of technical sessions. The consensus of the Board members is that with the June session, summer season, Waste Con and annual meeting, a third session is not doable this year.

Geotechnical Stakeholder Meeting: Next meeting is scheduled for May 30. Briest and Butler are involved in the meeting.

NEW BUSINESS:

Flow Control Conference Call: Sprague emailed the presentation to Board members. National SWANA has also posted the presentation for members to access.

Next Board Meeting: The next Board meeting will be the third Tuesday, 19 June 2007 at the Egg and I beginning at 7 am. The bulk of the meeting will be to finalize the annual meeting agenda, trivia panel and details on the annual meeting to include assignment of facilitators.

ADJOURNMENT:

With no further business, Gillette/Gordon moved/seconded to adjourn the meeting. Motion passed unanimously and the meeting adjourned at 9:05 am.

Respectfully submitted,
Deborah Barton
Secretary