VPPC Organizing Committee Meeting Minutes

Saturday September 13, 2008

12pm: Lunch, 12:30pm-2pm: meeting, EST

  1. Introduction of committee members

In person: Chris Mi, Sonya Gargies, James Gover, Abul Masrur, Kevin Taylor, Aisha Yousuf, Taehyung Kim, Mark Steffka, Mark Ciechanowski, Doug Melton, Ravi Warrier, Charles-Lizhi Zhu, Pingan He,

Telephone call:Fang Peng, David Gao, Jay Iyengar, Zhenhua Jiang

  1. Approval of agenda, and add/delete agenda items
  1. Roles and goals of each committee members
  2. General chair Chris Mi
  3. Vice ChairJames Gover
  4. Program ChairFang Z. Peng (MSU)
  5. Technical co-chairsDavid Gao, Taehyung Kim, Abul Masrur, Sonya Gargies
  6. Special session chairs goal: 10 special sessions with average 5-7 papers
    Mark, John, O’keefe, Pingan, Gao Liu, Janhua, need more, define topic
  7. Treasurer Pingan He
  8. SecretaryKevin Bai
  9. Publicity chair Aisha Yousuf
  10. Tutorial/Awards (John Shen)
  11. Government relations(O’keefe, goal: 50 papers, 70 attendees)
  12. Industrial relationsMark Ciechanowski, and Mark Steffka
  1. General Chair – Chris Mi
  2. Has a confirmation from a number of speakers but we still need more plenary and keynote speakers. Also, we need industry, academia, and government involvement. Planning on a whole day of two half day plenary session.
  3. Keynote speakers for lunch and dinner. James also suggested that we have a closing keynote speaker or a closing plenary session that will really help pull the attendance.
  4. Chris also sent e-mail to Nissan and Honda but hasn’t received a reply back yet.
  5. Sept 7 is for the tutorials, test-&-drive, exhibits open to public, reception.Sept 8-10 are the conference. Plenary speakers on 9/8 and 9/10. 9/11 is half day on energy sustainability policy and sustainability.
  6. is the mailing list for all the committee members.
  7. Chris went through the paper submission site EasyChair and gave a brief overview of how to use it. Technical chairs are already setup and they will be able to see a different view to manage the papers. Everyone on the committee should get familiar with the EasyChair website.
  8. Each technical co-chair would have about 150 papers to review if we reach our target number of papers.
  9. Chris Mi will do the opening of the conference and then turn it over to Dr. Peng.
  1. Program Chair – Fang Peng
  2. Website is setup and it is ready for submission.
  3. Paper submission will automatically be divided into sub category.
  4. Test paper submission was successful.
  5. Technical co-chair should have received an e-mail from the VPPC EasyChair.
  1. Tutorial Chair – Ravi Warrier
  2. Tutorials are free to attendees.
  3. Ravi contacted Oak ridge national lab and South west research institute.
  1. Publicity
  2. Mass e-mailing to our societies PELS and VTS; as well as past conference attendees. (Chris)
  3. Send articles to the newsletter editors ofpower electronics society, vehicular technology society, Industry applications society, magnetic society, power and energy society, and industrial electronics society. (Aisha)
  4. E-mail to the past conference attendees. Chris Mi can send Aisha the list of past attendees. (Chris)
  5. Mailing list of the committee members as well and some additional mailing lists.
  6. Contact SAE to send a hard copy to all the SAE members. Just don’t provide the mailing list. Find out the prices for sending out those mailings. (Aisha)
  7. Michigan government website. Also nextenergy website. They might be interested as well.
  8. Press release for all the universities in MI. Also, send the information out to all the ECE department chairs in the Michigan area as well.
  1. Sponsorship & exhibits (Jim Budwey and Kevin Taylor)
  2. Jim has a cover letter that he has been sending out to some companies along with the package. Kevin and Jim need contacts for the companies for exhibits and financial support.
  3. Chris has talked to Ansoft and ST Microelectronics, and they have agreed to sponsor the conference.
  4. We are looking for companies to allow test and drive their new products. It will be free for companies and attendees and the conference will buy the insurance.
  5. One of the major expenses is buses for shuttles. We should contact companies with hybrid busses or something so they can come and do that shuttling. Mark Steffka will look into getting some hybrid busses from GM. Mark will look into the ford hydrogen busses. (Mark)
  6. Exhibits will be free of charge to the general public Tuesday after the Labor Day. Send out coupons to SAE or something and that will allow free admission. Otherwise it will be $10.
  7. University exhibits will be same time, same place, but they will be free.
  8. Even though the exhibits are free for the public, they would still have to register just so we have the names and contacts of the people who attended.
  9. Sonya will send some more contacts to Jim Budwey
  10. Social events (James Gover, Chris Mi)
  11. Banquet at the HenryFordMuseum was organized but they seem to be not enthusiastic. So James will follow up and see what is going on.
  12. Chris Mi sent the contract that we received from HenryFordMuseum to IEEE for review. IEEE had some questions and Chris sent feedback to the Henry ford but they never replied back.
  13. Should we have a band or something or should we have a ford rouge factory tour? Maybe at the GM ren center and the band from the GM? Mark Steffka will try to get the GM band.
  14. People will be eating and mingling with the exhibits at the same time during reception.
  15. Detroit Visitors Bureau will give a bag of goodies to the attendees with a Detroit map, etc.
  16. We need to decide on a gift to give to the attendees. (Chris will contact Chunbo Zhu, Secretary of vppc08 to see whether we can order the laptop bag they give out this year.
  1. Energy Policy Session planning (James Gover)
  2. Get the governor for the opening ceremony
  3. national academy of engineering has a study on energy policy and we can get someone from there
  4. Another person from IEEE-USA energy policy is invited as well.
  5. James wants to have this session free of charge open to public
  6. He is hoping to have 15 minutes for each speaker to talk and then have an open panel discussion.
  1. Special Sessions
  2. So far we have 7 special sessions and we are open to more.
  1. Online registration (Scott Lytle)
  2. Add Link to the conference website for students to apply for the student travel grant
  3. Our website is being blocked by the Chinese government. We got another website hosted through IEEE that can be opened from China.
  1. Onsite registration (Kevin Bai, and students at UMD)
  2. Chris plans on bringing some students and also expects the committee members to be present there.
  1. Hotel
  2. The hotel requires 300 nights total. The hotel cost is $125/room-night and we just need to have 100 people stay there for 3 nights each. We have already signed a contract.
  3. We got this number from analyzing the data from the past conference.
  4. There is an extended stay America across the street where the students will be housed. It has like 4 people staying in one room. The room cost is $60 and four students can split the cost for $15/person.
  1. Program Printing
  2. Tayheung Kim is looking for companies to print the program booklets and CDs.
  3. We should try to get the tutorial powerpoints on the CDs as well.
  1. Next meeting date
  2. Have monthly teleconference and a live meeting. Every second Saturday of the month around at the same time as this meeting.
  3. Next meeting is tentative scheduled for October 11
  4. Future meeting dates: 10/11; 11/8; 12/13; 1/10/; 2/14; 3/14; 4/11; 5/9; 6/13; 7/11; 8/8;
  5. Each committee is expected to give an update at the monthly meeting.
  1. University Exhibits
  2. We need educational or research exhibits to come talk about their program in grad school etc.
  3. Hardware exhibits from the universities as well including design projects and SAE cars.