AGM Report

Report of WISENET Annual General Meeting 2001
 

The AGM was held at 6:00pm on Monday 7th April 2001 at Search and Discover, the Australian Museum, Sydney. The facilitator was Rosemary Sutton, National Convenor.  

Present:   Rosemary Sutton, Julie Evans, Anne Skates, Margaret Hartley, Julianne Crowley, Rebecca Mason and Diana Temple braved the wet, traffic-snarled Sydney conditions.

Apologies: Sarah Miller, Doreen Clark, Leeta Caiger, Nicola Elliott, Carrie Bengston, Elizabeth Elenius, Barbara Goldflam, Judith Pollard, Andrea McAdam, Annette Gough, Sue Turner, Pru Bonham

 

 The minutes of the 2000AGM were accepted.

Reports were received on Activities and Projects (Rosemary Sutton) and the Journal and Membership (Julie Evans).  A summary of the financial position of WISENET was provided.  The treasurer was absent overseas and the Auditor had not returned the financial statement in time for the meeting. Members present accepted the summary and resolved that the completed Financial Report would be presented to members for ratification as soon as possible (See page **).  

Under General Business, discussions were held about the composition of the Central Link Team and membership. Elections for the Central Link Team were not possible as there were no nominations for some of the positions, most notably the National Convenor.  The dispiriting problem will be discussed at a future meeting.

 Following on from some successful events in 2000, it was also suggested that WISENET continue and seek out new collaborations with other women’s groups, eg. Women in Medicine, Engineering, Physics and Water.

Before adjourning for a well-earned dinner, the meeting concluded with a talk by Julie Evans, journal editor and meteorologist with the Bureau of Meteorology, whose topic was Olympic Weather.

 

1. Report Of Activities, 2000. 

Last year was a successful one for WISENET with a number of events in Sydney and the revival of Canberra and Melbourne local groups under the leadership and enthusiasm of Anna Robinson and Jo O’Neil. It is fair to say however that recently both Julie Evans and I have flagged of late with both of us going from part-time to full-time employment and moving to new positions. Julianne Crowley took a well-deserved break from membership secretary to finish her PhD.   Fortunately, we have had lots of support from Margaret Hartley and Diana Temple

I still believe that the main challenge facing WISENET with so many members busy with work and family and/or other commitments is to find ways to share the load so that we can all do a bit and achieve a lot!

Roundtables
There is still a need to replace the defunct Round Table organised by Office of Status of Women, and the OSW grant funding. The government has replaced these meetings, formerly of about 50 women’s non-government organisations, with a more exclusive arrangement, and gave funding to just four national secretariats, limiting easy political access for us. Networking with other women’s NGOs however can be effectively carried out through the Pamela’s list, an email network run by the National Coalition for Women's Justice. I have had to resign from it to limit my emails, but Janet Salisbury and Jo O’Neil represent WISENET on it. The ALP women's caucus has held some good meetings which WISENET has attended. I attended a budget breakfast last August at Parliament House, meeting up with two of our members there, and Jo and Anna attended meetings with Carmen Lawrence.

Affiliations
We are affiliated with FASTS which provides scope for representing issues of interest to women and having Sue Serjeantson as President of FASTS and Jan Thomas as Vice President was a definite plus. We congratulate Sue for her recent switch to a position with the Academy of Sciences.  For the past two years FASTS has organised a Science Meets Parliament session, and plans to also run one this year.  The date has been now confirmed as 21st and 22nd of August.

 We are also affiliated with WIP and several of us attended the Women into Politics dinner in Sydney - another way of making connections and better for being non-partisan. The WIP dinner is an enjoyable night out, with women politicians from Liberal, Labor and Democrat parties giving entertaining brief speeches.

Grants
Unfortunately, we were unsuccessful in a grant application for a Science and Technology Awareness Project.  The proposed project aimed to encourage girls and women in rural and regional Australia to pursue science studies. Our thanks go to Sarah Miller and Jean Weber for their efforts on the grant.

Web site
Jean Weber has once again giving very generously of her time to keep the site updated and put more of previously published journal material on the web. She has also given it a fresh new look, while still keeping the download times to a minimum for those members paying STD rates or with slower connections and older PCs. The WISENET website continues to be hosted at the University of Sydney, and we thank both the University particularly Graham Johnson for this. Does anyone have time to put some effort into publicising the website, getting it into the search engines, and so on? Jean Weber could offer advice on how to go about this. http://www.usyd.edu.au/wisenet/

Networking And Communication with Members
We have continued to produce the WISENET Journal three times a year, since it provides the major point of contact with many members, though increasingly we also use email and the web site. Often we receive notice of interesting talks which are disseminated via email, for example from FASTS, or in Sydney, from the NSW branch of the Australian Science communicators. Do keep us up-to-date with your email address.

WAIS 2
Next year we hope to have the Second Women Achieving in Science conference in Sydney probably in August. Dr Pauline Gallagher (CSIRO-SA) is the prime organiser, in conjunction with Dr Julie Wells (NTEU) and Ms Jan Thomas (FASTS) and WISENET.

 

Report on Sydney Activities

This last year, we were able to share the load of the Sydney Convenor position by different members of the WISENET Sydney group each organising an event.

"Science Is For Girls"
Leeta Caiger  of WISENET and the Australian Water association organised the speakers for a Science Careers event  run on both on May 15th and 16th, working together with the Powerhouse Museum who provided the venue, publicity to schools and general co-ordination. The theme chosen for the "Science is for Girls" program was "Eternal Life"  Following a talk from the keynote speaker, panel speakers gave short presentations and then answered questions from the girls. It was well received and appreciated by the audiences and we would like to thank all those involved.

Memory Enhancing drugs - The issues!
Julie Crowley and Diana Temple together with ANZAAS and North Sydney Boys High School organised an evening panel discussion on memory enhancing drugs. A report together with web site references was written by Julie in WISENET J. 55:22 (2000).

WISENET/ RACI Breakfast
In September, Doreen Clarke invited WISENET and RACI members to her home for breakfast on a lovely Saturday morning. We enjoyed the cereals, toasts croissants and fruit platters and a great networking event.

Trivial Matters!
In November over 80 scientists, engineers and water industry people met for a fund- raiser trivia night at the Occidental Hotel in Sydney.  The evening was coordinated by the Dr Mehreen Faruqi (NSW Convenor Women in Water), Ilsa Kuiper (Women in Engineering) and Leeta Caiger (WIW and WISENET).  The aims were to bring together a cross section of the water and science industry for an enjoyable evening and to raise some money for the Bega Women's Refuge. The evening started in a civilised fashion, with quiet and orderly behaviour from the participants and easy questions from the MC.  As the night progressed, alcohol flowed and the questions become harder with stiff competition between tables on the points table. WISENET did very well using a combination of our collective expertise in "trivia" and judicious "bribing" of the hostesses and MC. Over one thousand dollars was raised and it was such a success we are hoping for another Trivia night in November this year.

WISENET Christmas party
A smaller event than usual (it was hard to find an evening that suited most people) but just as enjoyable with Margaret Hartley spoiling a group of eight or so of us with lovely food on balmy evening on her verandah overlooking Wattle Bay. 

JOURNAL Packaging
Julie Evans provided the venue each time for packaging the Journals.  A glass of wine and some nibbles together with the pleasant company make these evenings another opportunity to enjoy the company of likeminded women.

Canberra Activities
The Canberra group got together for a second lunch on Wed 18th of April with 6 members attending. They’ve decided to make it a regular event. WISENET members who happen to be in Canberra are welcome to join them at the Street Theatre, 1.00 pm on Wednesday 13th June, 15th August ,17th October. An end of year function will probably be held on 12 December (Christmas).

Melbourne Activities
Jo O'Neil has been emailing Melbourne members about their preferences for meetings. She needs a good venue and has not yet had much response. Sue Lewis has offered support.
 

Rosemary Sutton

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2. Membership Report
 

 
In past years WISENET has tended to carry non-financial members for several years, but we have now decided to be more ruthless in our pruning of the database.

Final reminders have recently been sent our to members still not financial for 2001 and the remaining 78 non-financial members who will soon be removed.

Our membership has been dropping in recent years.  The graph shows the history of the membership, based on reports by Diana Temple, Carrie Bengston and Julie Crowley.  In some years, the total numbers have been estimated from subscriptions received.  Prior to 1991 membership was not renewed annually so the totals are less reliable. This downward trend is a concern but in the past three years there have been 95 new members and an additional 10 new members so far this year. 

We need to raise the profile of WISENET in order to attract more members.  The forthcoming WAIS conference in Sydney will help but we need to discuss other strategies as well.

We relying more and more on emails to communicate with members and currently 134 of our members have provided email addresses.   We urge everyone to let us know their email address and keep us up to date with any changes.

In 2000, the maintenance of the membership database was the work of Julianne Crowley, who is currently preoccupied with writing up her PhD.  Margaret Hartley has been handling the mail and writing all the receipts.  Thanks are due to both Julianne and Margaret for all their work.
 

Julie Evans

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3.   Journal Report


In 2000, the three editions of the journal originated in different cities:

Journal 53 was put together by the Wollongong team comprising Wendy Russell, Sharon Robinson, Lesley Head and Brian Martin and was dedicated to the memory Toni O’Neill. 

Journal 54 was a special edition devoted to the Women Achieving in Science Conference (WAIS), held in Melbourne in November 1999.  Rosemary Sutton, Julie Evans and Diana Temple assembled the papers from the conference in Sydney, with the help of Pauline Gallagher form the CSIRO Staff Association.  Additional funding from the CSIRO Staff Association and the NTEU, enabled us to print copies to send to all conference participants and members of the NTEU as well as have a coloured cover.

J55, the first WA Edition, was edited by Tricia Gardiner in Perth and had a special focus on activities and events in Western Australia. 

WISENET has been approached by the Jessie Street National Women’s Library requesting that we provide them with some of our back copies so that their collection of the Journal could be complete.  We were pleased to be able to fill all the gaps.

According to Kinetica there are only two libraries which hold a complete set – Jessie Street in Sydney and the Australian National Library in Canberra.  It is also curious to note that Journals 1-22 are listed as WISENET: journal of the Women in Science Enquiry Network  [ISSN – 0815-0753] and Journal 23-present as WISENET Journal / Women in Science Enquiry Network [ISSN-1440-0006].    This change coincides with a marked change in the format of the journal. 

Despite the different origins of three journals, the layouts were all handled by Andrew Netherwood in Wollongong and WISENET would like to thank Andrew for his creative input and continued support of the journal. 

Julie Evans

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WOMEN IN SCIENCE ENQUIRY NETWORK
WISENET INCORPORATED
INCOME & EXPENDITURE ACCOUNT
FOR THE YEAR 1 JANUARY 2000 TO 31 DECEMBER 2000
GENERAL ACCOUNT		1999			2000
INCOME
Bank interest		13			30
Subscriptions		7248			6284
Donation		563			0
		7824			6314
LESS EXPENSES
Audit	190			170
Pox Box Rental	45			48
Bank Charges	15			17
Co-Ordination Exp	522			141
Journal - Printing	4118			5720
- Layout/design	699			1402
- Postage	427			545
- Other	204			0
Sundry Expenses	120			320
Subscriptions	438			408
		6778			8771
SURPLUS/DEFICIT FOR YEAR		1046			-2457
GRANT ACCOUNT		1999			2000
INCOME
Grant		0			0
Bank Interest		0			1
Other		0			20
		0			21
LESS EXPENSES
Bank Charges		2			2
SURPLUS/DEFICIT FOR YEAR		2			19

 

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