Also see:
The HMEI Booth and Members' Booths at the 86th AMS

MINUTES OF THE HMEI GENERAL ASSEMBLY HELD AT THE 86th AMS IN ATLANTA, 2006

9.15 Tuesday 31^st January 2006
Georgia World Congress Center,
Room A310,
Atlanta, Georgia, USA

The HMEI 2006 General Assembly at AMS-86, with Chairman, Ben Dieterink, and Executive Secretary, Bruce Sumner, on the podium. Photo thanks to Mr. Yuji Hayashi, Oriental Electronics, Inc.

Attendees
Ben Dieterink - Chairman - Kipp & Zonen
Bruce Sumner - Meeting Secretary
Eric Papillon - Degreane-Horizon
Phillip Currier - Degreane-Horizon
Patrick Charpentier - Modem
Rémy Pepin - Modem
Richard K. Thigpen - GCOS
Sven Andersson - Metek GmbH
Florian Schmidmer - Graw
Chris Stock - Gill Instruments
Richard McKay - Biral
Tom Curran - Lockheed Martin Sippican
Denny Chrismer - Lockheed Martin Coherent Technologies
Jim Roby - Lockheed Martin Coherent Technologies (formerly CLR Photonics)
Bryce Ford - Lockheed Martin- MS2
Wade Loseman - Sutron Corp.
Ed Figelman - Sutron Corp.
Gary Wagner - All Weather, Inc.
Joe Parini - InterMet
Robert Rissland - The Republic Group
Toshi Hasegawa - EKO Instrument
Jan Hörhammer - Vaisala OYJ
Fred Clowney - InterMet Systems
Ulrich Nellen - SELEX - Gematronik
Gerhard Pevny - Logotrinic
Fred Branski - NOAA/NWS
Amit Thakkar - Pawan Exports
Lloyd Anderson - Oriental Electronics
Yuji Hayashi - Oriental Electronics
Naomi Tamura - Oriental Electronics
Tom Young - R.M. Young
Bruce Baker - NOAA/NCDC
Bob Wright - Environmental Systems & Services
S. Watanabe - Meisei Electric Co. Ltd.
Takashi Saito - Meisei Electric Co. Ltd.
Yuji Hayashi - Meisei Electric Co. Ltd.
Ralph F. Petragnani - Belfort Instrument Co.
Troy Wells - Belfort Instrument Co.
M. Serizawa - TOTEX Corp.
Aki Nakazato - TOTEX Corp

Welcome
The HMEI Chairman, Ben Dieterink welcomed members and friends to the meeting. He stated that if there was any voting required, only members had voting rights.

Mr. Dieterink proposed that Bruce Sumner be appointed as the meeting secretary. This was accepted unanimously.

Acceptance of Previous Minutes
Mr. Dieterink stated that the previous minutes had been emailed out to all members in plenty of time for them to read. He asked if there were any changes to be recommended to the minutes of the Bucharest General Meeting. There were none. He proposed that the minutes be accepted as presented. The members unanimously accepted this.

Chairman’s Report
The chairman made a short Chairman’s report. He reported on the number of members that HMEI now has and stated that since the last general meeting 13 new members have been accepted into HMEI. He welcomed to HMEI those new members who were present.

Mr. Dieterink advised that there are now 10 councillors and that two additional council members were accepted at the last General Assembly. He introduced all councillors to the meeting by having each stand up and introduce themselves, which they did.

Mr. Dieterink gave a short summary of the international meetings that HMEI attended during 2005, and mentioned in particular the Intercomparisons that have been attended, namely of Radiosondes in Mauritius, of Rainfall Intensity gauges in laboratories in France, Netherlands and Italy, and of Pyrheliometers in Davos.

The Chairman said that one of the main benefits of being a member of HMEI was that members, expert in their fields are able to attend WMO Expert Team meetings.

He also advised that attending such meetings did mean that the expert had to produce a short report of the meeting for the benefit of the other HMEI members. He said that a template would be sent to each member who attends a WMO meeting, and that the report only has to be a page or so in length.

Mr. Dieterink advised that this year there appears to be fewer international meetings. He mentioned CAS in Cape Town and advised that he would attend this. Also he advised that CIMO would be held in December in Geneva, but without a Meteorex Exhibition. 

There was a discussion on the length of these meetings and how it was often difficult to attend a long meeting. Mr. Dieterink stated that he would only be available at CAS for a few days, as 10 days is impossible for a single person to attend.

Mr. Sumner advised that the Expert Team meetings were up to a maximum of 5 days, but WMO is trying to have shorter 3 and 4-day meetings, with other meetings being held by correspondence (email etc). The members felt that this was satisfactory as they could generally spend this much time at an expert meeting. But the two-week Commission meetings were considered difficult. Mr. Sumner again advised that it is best for two or three people to go the Commission meetings and share the load. The meeting felt this was a satisfactory solution.

Presentation of Financial Statement, Audit and Budget
Mr. Dieterink asked the Executive Secretary to present the financial statement, budget and audit.

The financial statement was presented, showing a small profit at the end of 2005. 2005 and 2004 were compared, and it was obvious that the financial situation is improving year by year. This was stated as being due to increase in membership, and thus more subscriptions.

The Executive Secretary presented the budget estimate for 2006, and advised that there is an anticipated small surplus at the end of 2006, without the addition of voluntary contribution. All people had made voluntary contributions in 2005 were thanked. However it was noted that HMEI would be very pleased to accept voluntary contributions from members in 2006.

The Executive Secretary presented the audit for 2003 to 2004. He advised that the audit was required by the rules of association to be presented to, and approved by, the General Assembly. The auditor, Revisor Sarl, was unable to present the audit in person, thus the Executive Secretary presented it on the auditor’s behalf. The audit was presented to the General Assembly. There were no comments on the audit as presented. However the Chairman pointed out that the paragraph regarding Social Security risk has been discussed by the Council, and it had been decided that HMEI would continue as it has been doing, but that the Executive Secretary is now being employed on a yearly remuneration and that this should minimize the Social Security implications.

Mr. Dieterink asked that the audit be accepted as read. The meeting unanimously did this.

The general assembly decided that the same auditor would carry out the next 2005 audit for HMEI.

Other Business

Member Survey and Projects for 2006
The member survey was presented to the members. There were no comments on the survey. The Chairman advised that the survey has helped the Council in determining that the current direction is correct. The Council has decided that a more probing questionnaire will be prepared in early 2007 to help determine members attitudes and future strategies.

The Chairman then brought to the meeting the issue of banner ads. He advised the meeting that the Council had decided to put this project on hold, and that all HMEI efforts for 2006 would go into another project, the HMEI Member Products Catalogue.

Mr. Dieterink then gave a detailed description and rationale for the need to produce an extended version of the Member Catalogue, which would give benefit to all members and to users.

He advised that there is an intention to obtain written confirmation from WMO on their willingness to produce and distribute the HMEI catalogue on CD-ROM. He advised that this willingness was based on the fact that the catalogue would contain product pages of a type that would satisfy the requirements of WMO. He advised that he intends visiting WMO in the near future to obtain this guarantee.

Mr. Dieterink then advised that the catalogue would be developed with internal resources, but that additional resources would be required to enter and maintain the additional product pages as specified by WMO. To help cover this additional resource requirement, it has been decided by Council that each page will cost a small amount. It was asked from the floor how much this was expected to be, and the Chairman advised that this had not yet been firmly established, but the Council felt that an amount of 30 to 40 euro per page would be sufficient to raise the required revenue to add and maintain the additional pages. There was general agreement to this proposed amount.

Mr. Dieterink advised that if the catalogue proved successful, that HMEI may want to hire an external contractor at some later date to produce a fully relational database of the catalogue.

Members’ Attendances at WMO Expert Teams
The next topic discussed was the attendance of members at WMO Expert Teams and other international meetings. Mr. Dieterink again noted that the ability for members to be able to attend relevant expert team meetings was one of the big benefits for HMEI members. There was agreement with this comment, from the membership.

Mr. Dieterink asked the Executive Secretary to advise the meeting, which of the WMO Commission it is intended that HMEI will begin attending as manufacturing experts in 2006. Mr. Sumner advised that WMO consists of 8 commissions, CIMO, CBS, CHy, CAeM, CAgM, CAS, CCl, and JCOMM, and that each of these commissions has 4 to 5 expert teams, making in total about 40 expert teams that members could attend. The meeting was advised that the 40 teams will be advised to the members, and that they would have the ability to nominate for membership of these teams as experts from HMEI. Mr. Sumner advised that he had obtained written and verbal approval from all Presidents of WMO Commissions that HMEI could attend any and all of these expert team meetings.

The HMEI Secretariat will create a list of who’s who in WMO for the information of the HMEI membership.

Dr Bruce Baker from the U.S. Climate Reference Network, National Climate Data Center, advised that AMS has an instrument meeting in January 2007. The meeting wished to know more information on this meeting, and Dr Baker said he would find out more and advise HMEI.

Gerhard Pevny advised that the believes it would be beneficial for the HMEI Secretariat to attend EGU in Vienna in April in order to make contact with potential new members and to generally introduce HMEI to as many people as possible. He advised that he is prepared to pay for the accommodation expenses for the Secretariat to attend the meeting. Mr. Dieterink expressed his gratitude to Mr. Pevny for his kind offer.

Close of Meeting
Mr. Dieterink advised that the next General Meeting of the HMEI would be held in May 2007 during the WMO Congress. He closed the meeting at 10.30am.