MINUTES HMEI GENERAL ASSEMBLY 2008
ROOM 7.3, SECOND LEVEL, LENEXPO EXHIBITION COMPLEX,
ST PETERSBURG, RUSSIA,
FRIDAY 28 NOVEMBER 2008

Forty-eight people attended the General Assembly, including both HMEI members and other friends of the Association. Please see the list of people in attendance at the end of this report.

Opening of the General Assembly
At 9.10am Mr Dieterink the HMEI Chairman welcomed members and guests and introduced the special guests from WMO, Dr Wenjian Zhang - Director Observing and Information Systems Department (OBS), Dr John Nash - President of CIMO, Dr Ondras - Chief Observing Systems Division (OSD) and Dr Rudi - Senior Scientific Officer Instruments and Methods of Observation (IMO) 

Acceptance of Minutes of previous meeting
The Minutes of the previous meeting were proposed to be passed by Jan Hörhammer (Vaisala) and the proposal seconded by Bryce Ford (Lockheed Martin). The Minutes of the last meeting were then unanimously passed.

Acceptance of New Members
Atmospheric Systems Corporation (USA); China National Huayun Technology Development Corporation (China); DeTect Inc. (USA); and Nippon Electric Instrument, Inc. (Japan) were approved and welcomed as new members to HMEI in 2008.

Resignation of Councillor
The Chairman noted that Bernard Kirby the Councillor from All Weather had left that company and had therefore resigned from the HMEI Council.

HMEI 2007 Audit
The audit for 2007 was presented and approved. A letter of thanks will be sent to the Auditor.

Financial Statement and Budget
The financial statement for 2007 after being audited showed a plus balance of 20,385.07chf, compared to 15,836.85chf in 2006.
The provisional budget for 2009, predicts an outgoing of 79,470chf, and incoming amount from membership payments (based on the current number of members) as 79,000chf.

HMEI activities in 2008
It was stated that HMEI participated in 13 meetings this year. Most were WMO Expert Team meetings, but there was also the WMO Executive Council, the Commission for Hydrology, a visit to the Vigne di Valle Intercomparison site, AMS, EMS and a COST meeting. Three of these meetings also held exhibitions that HMEI as an Association exhibited at, as well as many of the HMEI members individually. The HMEI reports of these meetings and activities are available at the Reports link on the HMEI website. The reports are also sent to members via the HMEI bi-monthly newsletters.

Guest Speaker on topic of the 3rd World Climate Conference (WCC-3)
The Guest speaker was unfortunately unable to attend. However the HMEI Executive Secretary, in the guest speaker’s absence, informed the meeting of about this conference.
It is considered to be a very high profile conference by the WMO. Attending WCC-3 there will be many high representatives of countries worldwide and from the Meteorological and Hydrological and Climate services worldwide. The conference organizers are very keen to have a very good and well attended major exhibition. They have enlisted the help of HMEI to maximize the information about the exhibition going to manufactures. The WCC-3 will be held in Geneva, Switzerland, 31 August to 4 September 2009 at the Geneva International Conference Center.

Address by Dr Zhang the WMO Director of OBS
Dr Zhang introduced himself, talking of his work in China and his new position in WMO . He expressed his pleasure and that of the WMO Secretary General for the support the HMEI has given to WMO programs and the exhibitions associated with WMO Commission Technical conferences and exhibitions TECO/METEOREX.

Dr Zhang mentioned the new WIGOS observations network that WMO is implementing.
He stated that WMO would like to encourage manufactures to take a look at the state of the art technologies equipment to meet the future improvement of observations that WIGOS hoped to achieve.

Dr Zhang said that WMO looked for ever stronger connections and cooperation with HMEI to improve the relationship between the WMO members, users of hydro-meteorological equipment and the industry making this equipment.

Address by Dr Ondras
Dr Ondras talked about the new WMO structure and explain for the meeting the role of the new WIS and WIGOS structures within WMO.

The HMEI Member Catalogue
The Chairman invited the Executive Secretary, Bruce Sumner, to give an update on the enhancements made to the Catalogue. Mr Sumner noted that member paid extensions to the Catalogue had been taken up by 7 members so far. He encouraged more members to put in extensions on their entries to make an ever improving Catalogue, useful to users of our industry’s equipment and an excellent communication for members to their target markets.

The HMEI Members' Brochure
The HMEI Chairman, Mr Dieterink, presented an overview of his suggestion for a hardcopy brochure presenting the HMEI Member Companies. The costing and idea was outlined for the membership. Mr Dieterink asked for feedback from members on this proposal. Some members asked how this was different from the online Catalogue and that perhaps this was an unnecessary repetition of that. It was decided to look further at the concept, costing and design of the Handbook and return to the topic at at the General Assembly at AMS in 2009.

Other Business
WMO Regional Training Centers
The Executive Secretary talked about HMEI talks with the WMO Regional Training Centers and his initiatives to see if HMEI members could be involved in theses activities. More information will be given on this as it comes to the HMEI Secretariat.

Cost of exhibiting at METEOREX 2008
Feed back from HMEI members had raised some concern about the costs of exhibiting at the METEOREX exhibition.

The Chairman therefore asked for members to feel free to give feedback from the members exhibiting at the meeting about their experiences, so that any concerns could be passed on to the exhibition organisers.Also it was noted that some HMEI members had not come to this METEOREX to exhibit because of exorbitant costs, outside of simple normal budgeting concerns. Other companies had had to only bring such exhibition material for the stand at METEOREX this year as could be carried in hand luggage with the company attendees.

It was noted that nevertheless for most HMEI members the exhibition was well presented and had been very satisfactory for those exhibiting, with many good quality contacts available.

Dr Nash spoke of how the METEOREX venues were selected, which have certain constrains. He expressed his thanks for the HMEI members support of the METEOREX exhibition.. Dr Nash invited HMEI to attend future meetings for the selection of venues to see this process in action.

WMO Intercomparisons
Dr Ondras spoke of the WMO Intercomparisons both those just finishing and future ones coming up. He thanked HMEI members who had participated in the Intercomparisons. He also noted that when HMEI members had participated in Intercomparisons, WMO was able to write, when requested, references for those companies for tender opportunities.

Close of Meeting
The Chairman then closed the meeting at 10.10am.

Meeting Attendees
Apologies:
Atmospheric Systems Corp - K. Underwood
The Republic Group - R. Rissland

HMEI Members:
Adolf Thies - Thomas Stadie
Baron Services - R. Braswell
Campbell Scientific - I. Thornton
Campbell Scientific - M. Bennett
China National Huayun Tech. Dev. - Qi Airong
Climatronics - D. Katz
DeTec, Inc - S. McLaughlin
EKO Instruments - A. Los
Environmental Measurements - M. Dutton
International Met Systems - F. Clowney
Jenoptik - H. Willie
Kipp & Zonen - B. Dieterink
Leosphere - L. Sauvage
Lockheed Martin MS2 - B. Ford; R- Christenen
Logotronic - G. Pevny
LSI Lastem - G. Certo
Meisei Electric - K. Shimizu
Meisei Electric - M Haseda
METEK GmbH- S. Andersson
Meteo France International - C. David
Météorage - M. Bonnet; Y. Bechacq
Micropstep MIS - J. Omelka
Modem - R. Pepin
OTT - Kurt Nemeth,; M. Stuempfle; W. Uysotsriaya
Pawan Exports - A. Thakkar
Rotronic AG - S. Schroff
SIAP+MICROS - D. Vinjau; L. Gomez
Selex-Gematronik - U. Nellen
Telvent - A. Liberto; F. Kuik; A. Galindo
Vaisala OJY - J. Hörhammer, P. Utela; M. Husa

WMO Guests
Dr Wenjian Zhang - Director Observing and Information Systems Department OBS
Dr John Nash - President of CIMO
Dr Ondras - Chief Observing Systems Division OSD
Dr Isabelle Rudi - Senior Scientific Officer IMO

Guests from other companies:
Ataco SRO - D. Strbik; P. Svidrnoch
F.W.Breithaupt - H-F. Breithaupt
Inter Met Africa - C. le Roux
Theodor Friedrichs - U. Bornhoeft

HMEI Secretariat:
Executive Secretary – Bruce Sumner
Administrator - Christine Charstone (minute taker)

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