MINUTES OF THE HMEI General Assembly,
held at the Conference Centre Geneva (CICG)
May 9th  2007 

 
The HMEI General Assembly May 2007. Please click to enlarge.

Fifty-eight people attended this meeting, representatives from both exhibitor companies and international organizations.
Please see the list of attendees at the end of this report
The meeting welcomed guests with breakfast, provided thanks to the HMEI Chairman.

Opening by the HMEI Chairman at 7.30am
The HMEI Chairman, Ben Dieterink, welcomed members and visitors to the meeting.

Minutes of previous Meetings
Ralph Petragnani from Belfort Instruments proposed that the  minutes of the General Assembly in 2006 be accepted, the General Assembly passed these unanimously. Rolf Magg proposed the acceptance of the Minutes from the Member's Meeting in San Antonio in 2007, these were also passed unanimously.

The Audit for 2005
The Chairman presented this audit and proposed it be accepted by the General Assembly, this passed unanimously. Bryce Ford from Lockheed Martin proposed that the next 2006 audit be done by the same auditors, which was unanimously accepted.

Voting on New Councillors
The Chairman proposed that there be an increase in the number of councillors, by 2 people, to 12 in order to share the increasing workload of the growing Association. It was accepted by a simple show of hands vote.

There had been resignations form three previous councillors. Therefore there was now a need for five new councillors. There being five nominations for councillors in accordance with the rules of the association, these five were duly elected into the vacant positions.

The five new Councillors are:
Fred Clowney - InterMet Systems                                              
Bryce Ford -Lockheed Martin MS2 (USA)
Bernard Kirby - All Weather (USA)
Rémy Pépin  - Modem (France)
Gerhard Pevny  - Logotronic (Austria)

Presentation of Financial Statement and Budget
The financial statement current as of May was shown. This demonstrated that the financial situation of HMEI is now considerably improving and now allows for more work and representation of HMEI in exhibitions/conferences in both Europe and and China during 2007.

Other Business

• It was noted by the Chairman that the conditions for exhibiting were not ideal in the Geneva Convention Centre (CICG), as had been noted by several exhibiting members, especially on the lower level of the exhibition. He advised that the difficulties were due in large part to the Center itself and its configuration compared to the number of exhibitors at MeteoHydex. The HMEI Secretariat had pointed out the problems to the organisers of the exhibition and there had been some amelioration of the signage and in announcements in the main auditorium of the Conference to the attending delegates, to make them aware that the exhibitipon was on both the ground and the lower level of the conference centre. However this had not solved all of the problems of exhibiting at CICG. If St Petersburg is chosen for the next CIMO session and METEOREX exhibition in 2008, HMEI will coordinate with the convention/exhibition organisers in an attempt to ensure a better exhibiting experience on that occasion.
• The Chairman advised that he and the Vice- Chairman had met with Dr Jack Hayes prior to this meeting and that Dr Hayes had confirmed the ongoing support by WMO for the HMEI. The WMO support will particularly include continuing to provide a free office space, indefinitely, for the HMEI Secretariat within the WMO Building. This will be formulated into an official agreement.

8.10am The Chairman announced a break for 5 minutes

8.15 am Resumption of the meeting
The Chairman welcomed arriving guests from WMO and from other non HMEI member exhibiting companies. The Chairman also noted the apology from the WMO Secretary-General, who was unable to attend this meeting due to WMO Congress commitments, but who had noted his regrets and had wished HMEI a successful General Assembly. 

Talk by David Thomas - Project Manager for the WMO Information System (WIS)
Mr Thomas gave the audience an overview of WIS its function and organization within WMO member NMHs and its relationship with the Global Earth Observation System (GEOS).
He also asked the manufacturers present to consider the need for metadata and requested that manufactures consider strongly the need to ensure their equipment could provide this needed metadata in its data output.

Please see the presentation on WIS here.

Presentation from Dr John Nash - President of the WMO Commission for Instruments and Methods of Observations (CIMO)
Dr Nash used his presentation of the CIMO President to the Congress to give an overview of the CIMO work and the areas were this work interacted with the manufacturing community.

He stressed the need for sustainability of equipment in the various countries. He also emphasized the need for CIMO and the NMHs to keep contact with manufacturers. He acknowledged the pre-eminent role that HMEI has in this. He outlined some of the work that has been done and is planed to be done, together with the manufactures' collaboration.

Please see the presentation of Dr Nash here. 

Comments from other WMO guests at the meeting
Dr Jack Hayes, the director of the World Weather Watch (WWW), also made a statement, in which he strongly encouraged manufacturers to interact with World  Weather Watch (WWW) through HMEI.

Dr Fred Branski  the Co-Chairman of the Expert Team of Migration to Table Driven Code Forms, also spoke a few words of support for HMEI and its work, and asked that if any members had questions regarding BUFR to please contact him through HMEI.

HMEI Member Products Catalogue enhancement
The meeting was informed by the Executive Secretary of the proposal for the enhancement for the HMEI Member Product Catalogue. The meeting was shown a demonstration of how the new enhancement would work and the costing to complete this. The costs to members for this was also given.

Michal Weis from IBL suggested that fixed page Catalogues were no longer optimal for the Internet and suggested that a database format be followed.

The discussions on the enhancement also included possible collaboration/merging of the HMEI Catalogue and the CMA World Meteorological Instrument Catalogue. Meetings for discussion of potential merging will be held with CMA, CIMO and the HMEI Chairman, Vice-Chairman and Executive Secretary. The results of these discussions will be reported back to members at the next General Assembly.

The next General Assembly of HMEI
The Chairman announced that this will be held during AMS in New Orleans, USA, January 2008.

The Chairman closed the Meeting at 9.20am.

Meeting Attendees:
HMEI Members:
Adolf Thies - Thomas Stadie
All Weather - Bernard Kirby
Attex - Victor Ignatov
Baron Services - Rick Braswell
Belfort Instruments - Bruce Robinson and Ralf F. Petragnani
Campbell Scientific - Dick Saffell and Brian Day
Degreane Horizon - Eric Papillion
Delta-T Devices - Tony Peloe and Dick Jenkins
Eijkelkamp Agrisearch - Piet Derikx
EKO Instruments - Osamu Sakamoto
Environmental Measurements - Malcom Howey
Environmental Systems & Services - Bob Wright and Colin Cookes
Geonor - Øyvind Klevar and Ivar Fredriksen
IBL Software Engineering - Michal Weis
IMKO - Peter Blume
International Met Systems - Fred Clowney
Jenoptik - Dr Werner Reiland and Holger Wille
Kipp & Zonen - Ben Dieterink
Leosphere - Laurent Sauvage and Marion Cayla
Lockheed Martin - Bryce Ford
Lockheed Martin Sippican - Tom Curran
Logotronic - Gerhard Pevny
Meteo France International - Christine David
Meteolabor AG - Rolf Magg and Thomas Brossi
Microstep-MIS - Jotet Omelke and Dušan Mazurek
Modem - Rèmy Pepin and Patrick Charpentier
Muir Matheson - Kevin Chrystal
Pawan Exports - Amit Thakkar
R. M. Young - Tom Young
Selex- Gematronik - Ulrich Nellen
Telvent Netherlands (Almos) - Foeke Kuik, Jacco Mulders and Alessandra Liberto
Totex - Aki Nakazato and Hiroshi Mizumoto
The Republic Group - Robert Rissland
Vaisala – Jan Hörhammer
VCS - Dr Peter Scheidgen
Jinyang Industrial Co. Ltd. - T. Woong Kim

Guest attendees from other companies:
Ataco - Pavel švidrmoch
Flow-Tronic - Jean Scaillet
Wittich & Visser - Niek-Jan Bink

Guests from WMO Congress:
Republic of Korea - Lee Chun Woo
UK Met Office - Dr John Nash (WMO/CIMO President)
USA NOAA/NWS - Fred Branski (Senior Data Manager) 
WMO - David Thomas (Project Manager WIS)
WMO - Dr Jack Hayes (WWW Director)
WMO - Dr Miroslav Ondras (Senior Scientific Officer WWW)

HMEI Secretariat:
Executive Secretary- Bruce Sumner
Administrator - Christine Charstone

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