INFORMATION & SURVEYS COMMITTEE MEETING
WEDNESDAY 30TH JANUARY, 2002,
11.00 AM AT FITZROY SQUARE
MINUTES
Present
Iain Simpson (Acting Chairman), John Dean, Steven Yeats, Liam Penny, Stephen Holmberg.
The Acting Chairman welcomed Liam Penny and Stephen Holmberg as new members of the committee.
Apologies
Peter Schofield, Huon Gray (Virtual), John Gibbs
Communication
It was agreed that all future committee communication should be via e-mail. All e-mail addresses should be active and used on a daily basis. Stephen Holmberg provided his new e-mail address as follows;
SILK/Bonzai/Nameless
Steven Yeats provided a background of the Website development to date, the growth in usage and the technology backup to date. This lead to the major discussion of the meeting relating to the new Website development plan.
Web site contract (SIFT Ltd)
An overview of the strategic direction for IT in the Cardiac Society was given and the major commitment and investment of the society to this strategy. SIFT have been confirmed as the successful applicants from the tender exercise and an outline of SIFT as an organisation, their philosophy, track record in community web development and the outline of initial proposals for the Cardiac Society Website development were given by the Acting Chairman. The key role of the Community Manager and their relationship to members of the Committee were stressed. It was emphasised that this development was not only a major strategic development for the Society but would result in a significantly greater involvement and time commitment from members of this committee on an ongoing basis. Proactive and reactive involvement with the Website development and the Community Manager would be required and it was indicated that those who felt unable to commit to this should not feel embarrassed at resigning from the committee at any stage. It was felt important that the initial enthusiasm and momentum was continued. Individual contributions can be monitored via the Community Manager in liaison with the Chairman allowing a continued review of the committee membership and refreshing this as necessary. All of the members present indicated a commitment to remain actively involved at this stage and the Chairman will contact the others personally to seek similar reassurance.
The timescale of the SIFT proposals for Web development are targeted around a launch of the Website at the Annual Conference in May. Involvement of the individual committee member in the pre-launch phase will remain on an ad hoc basis.
Member information
Liam Penny has been given responsibility by Council for the Members Database and has joined the Information & Surveys Committee with this remit. Liam gave a report on the current state of the database. Of the 1,026 ordinary members of the society, around 500 have not replied as to whether their information, or part of it, can be published in the members handbook. A mail-shot from November had resulted in a response from around 200 leaving around 300 members outstanding. It was agreed that this information from members was critical and that a strategy to encourage and acquire e-mail addresses from as many members as possible was essential for the proactive and reactive aspects of the Website development. It was indicated that most of the outstanding information was from established consultants. A proposal was made to write again to all members indicating the need to have this information to enable to Society to draw up a list of members relating to support for distinction awards and discretionary points. This may encourage an improved response and was accepted as a proposal. Steven Yeats and Liam Penny will action.
Specialist Registrars should be actively encouraged to join the Society and proposals were made to write to Regional Specialty Advisors and also to establish contact to SpRs via the audit individuals from the Hospital Database when this was fully established.
Hospital staffing & facilities survey
We now have a list of 442 hospitals and have identified members of the society from each Region who are willing to act as Regional Audit Personnel. They will help find a responsible individual for each hospital to allow completion and annual update of this database. The hospital based, regional network approach to this was felt to be the most practical way to provide this key information on an ongoing basis. Huon Gray is actively involved in the progress of this and will report further at the next meeting.
Annual conference
On-line abstract handling
Steven Yeats provided an update of the on-line abstract handling which was a major success. The plan for next year is to improve the “look and feel” of the submissions and appearance of the abstracts for marking purposes, but generally the view was that this development had been a huge success with no major problems encountered. Steven Yeats and the IT team were congratulated.
Workshops
A series of 2 or 3 IT related workshops were proposed for this year’s annual conference. The idea is to have one hour workshops at lunchtime and there was active discussion about possible content. It was felt important to encourage those with minimal IT skills and to use the Workshops to illustrate and promote the new Website and its Community concepts. A “How to properly use Powerpoint” workshop had widespread support particularly as it was now used in most presentations yet few people will have had any formal training on its use. Learning the “proper” way to use Powerpoint was likely to be instructive to both new and established users. A basic workshop on Internet and e-mail was felt appropriate and either a separate workshop on Internet (and possibly Pubmed) search engines and their use, or integrated into the basic workshop depending on the time allowance for 2 versus 3 workshops. Steven Yeats also indicated the plans for a Cyber Café during the meeting.
It was thought important that the new Website, its development concept, the Members Database and the Workshops should be heavily publicised prior to and at the annual conference.
Video Link
Huon Gray joined the committee via a video link (initially soundproofed!) and again emphasised the need for full commitment from the members of the committee for the new Website development.
Any Other Business
None
Date of next meeting
It was agreed that the next formal meeting of the committee should be at the annual conference, probably on the Thursday 16th May at lunchtime. The exact time and location to be confirmed.