Minutes - HMEI Annual General Meeting
  held at the 90th AMS Meeting, in Atlanta, GA, USA,
19 January 2010

During the 90th meeting of the AMS the HMEI Annual General Meeting was held at 8am on Tuesday, 19 January 2010 in Room B204 of the Georgia World Congress Center Atlanta, GA, USA. Dr Fred Branski gave a talk updating meeting participants on the current WIGOS status.
The Minutes of this meeting are below.

Audit for 2008
The Chairman presented the 2008 audit to the General Assembly on behalf of the association’s Swiss auditor. The auditor stated that no discrepancies had been found and that the associations accounting records and financial statements comply with Swiss law and with the association’s Articles of Association. He also advised that the association has an accumulated benefit at the end of 2008 of CHF 20,621.51. Mr Bryce Ford from Lockheed Martin proposed that the audit be accepted and that the auditor be thanked for his work. This was seconded by Mr Brian day from Campbell Canada and this was passes unanimously by the meeting.

Membership Issues
Mr Dieterink advised the meeting that the association now had 98 members from 22 countries. He announced that six new members had joined the association in 2009, namely:
ATACO – Czech Republic
THEODOR FRIEDRICHS - Germany
COROBOR SYSTÈMES - France
Zhuzhou Research & Design Institute of Rubber & Plastic - China
MTECH Systems Pty. Ltd - Australia
WeatherBug – USA

These six new members were welcomed to the association.

Mr Dieterink advised that two companies resigned during 2009:
MPS SYSTEM - Slovakia
COHERENT TECHNOLOGIES - USA

Financial Statement for 2009 and Budget for 2010
The Chairman presented the unaudited 2009 financial statement of the Association, and advised that there was a positive reserve of approximately CHF18,000 at the end of 2009. The slight decrease in the reserve from 2008 to 2009 was explained by increased travel expenses in 2009, the purchase of some computing hardware, and particularly by synchronising all membership subscriptions to start in January of each year.

The budget for 2010 was presented. This showed expected expenses of CHF 79,000 and expected income of CHF 83,000. The meeting expressed is satisfaction with the projected budget. The meeting also stated that any reserves should not be used for normal operating expenses of the association.

Elections
The Chairman announced that at this meeting it is necessary to elect a new Chairman and a new Vice Chairman of the General Assembly, and several new Councillors to replace those whose terms have expired.

Mr Dieterink advised the assembly that no nominations had been received for the position of Chairman of HMEI. Mr Dieterink advised that he was prepared to stay on in an interim capacity until a new Chairman could be found. The General Assembly thanked Mr Dieterink for offering to stay on, and as there were no objections to this proposal, it was endorsed unanimously by the General Assembly. This news was greeted with applause from the floor. Mr Randolph Ware suggested that an enticement to pay for the Chairman’s travel might elicit people to nominate for this position. The interim Chairman noted however that as most HMEI meetings were held in conjunction with international exhibitions, travel costs to HMEI meetings were normally very small.


The meeting was advised that the term of the Vice Chairman, Mr Jan Hörhammer, had expired. The meeting expressed its appreciation to Mr Hörhammer for all his valuable work for HMEI over many years, including his help in setting up the association Articles and Rules, development and hosting of the HMEI website, and many other activities.

The meeting was advised that only one nomination had been received for the position of Vice Chairman, namely Mr Andy McDonald from Vaisala. Mr McDonald introduced himself to the meeting. The meeting unanimously accepted Mr McDonald as the new Vice Chairman of HMEI.

The election of Councillors was the next item. For the General Assembly to vote in new Councillors a quorum is required, namely 50% of the total number of weighted votes of members. The total umber of weighted votes of members is 186, and the number of weighted votes of members present was 99. Thus a quorum was present.

The Chairman advised that the current Council consists of 10 members, and that the terms of five Councillors have expired. The Chairman noted that Councillors often do not have much time to devote to HMEI activities as they have their normal day jobs to maintain. The Chairman proposed that to assist HMEI grow it was necessary for Council members to take on additional tasks. The Chairman proposed four specific areas that need active work by the Council:
• Public Relations and Publications
• HMEI involvement in external agency meetings, including WMO
• Review of HMEI Rules of Procedure and Articles of Association
• Membership issues, including recruitment

The Chairman proposed that the new Council should be created with the above four working groups, and that each group would be required to prepare a work plan including objectives, and include dates of expected completion of tasks. It was stated that such working groups within the Council would make for more transparency of activities to the membership. It was also stated that these working groups would assist the Executive Secretary by giving him guidance in the performance of his tasks.

The Chairman suggested that each working group should consist of 3 or 4 people, and that it was therefore necessary to increase the Council size to about 12 to 16 members. The Chairman noted that although this appeared to be a large number for an association of our size, this was not necessarily so, as it gives many members the ability to work on promoting and enhancing the role of HMEI.

The Chairman proposed that the first step to formation of this new Council was to synchronise the terms of the continuing five Council members to bring them into line with the terms of the to-be newly elected Council members, namely 2014. As there were no objections to this proposal, it was passed unanimously by the meeting. The Chairman advised that one of the five continuing Councillors, Mr Lu Hui Guo, had retired and that he has been replaced on Council by Ms Li Qingjun from the same company.

The Chairman advised that three retiring Councilors, Mr Hasegawa, Mr Rissland and Mr Mazurek had renominated for another term on the Council. In addition five new nominations for council had been received, namely;
Laurent Sauvage – Leosphere
Brian Day – Campbell Canada
Randolph Ware – Radiometrics
Bill Conway – WDT
Scott McLaughlin – DeTect

Together with the Chairman and Vice Chairman of HMEI, this would result in a Council of 15 members, The meeting unanimously proposed and accepted that the new Council should consist of 15 members, and that the all the nominations received be accepted for the new Council. The meeting also requested that the new Council create the working groups discussed and to begin work immediately.

Activities during 2009 and anticipated events 2010
The meeting was advised that HMEI attended 17 meetings in 2009, compared to 13 meetings attended in 2008, as well as attending several exhibitions during 2009. Reports on these events appeared in the bimonthly Newsletters and are also on the HMEI website. The meeting was advised of the following main meetings and exhibitions in 2009:
• CBS-XIV, Technical Conference and Exhibition, Dubrovnik, Croatia, 23-25 March 2009
• GCOS/GRUAN Implementation-Coordination Meeting (ICM-1), Norman, OK, USA, 2-4 March 2009
• 5th Session of the JCOMM Ship Observations Team (SOT), Geneva, Switzerland, 18-22 May 2009
• CIMO ET on Surface-based Instrument Intercomparisons and IOC on Surface-based Intercomparisons, Sestola, Italy, 22 - 27 June 2009
• Regional Association 6 (RA-VI) (Europe) 15th Session, Brussels, Belgium, 16-24 September 2009
• CHy Project on Performance of Flow Measurement Instruments and Techniques, Geneva, 18-19 November

The meeting was also advised on the major anticipated activities planned for 2010;
• First Conference of Ministers Responsible for Meteorology in Africa, Nairobi, Kenya, April 2010
• Regional Association V (South-West Pacific) - 15th session (XV-RA V), Bali, Indonesia, 30 April-6 May 2010
• Intercomparison of Radiosondes, Yanjiang, China, 12-31 July 2010
• METEOREX 2010, Helsinki, 30 Aug – 2 Sept 2010
• ERAD 2010, Romania, 6-10 September 2010
• EMS, Zurich, 13-17 September 2010

The meeting requested further information on the exhibition planned to be held in conjunction with the African Ministers Conference in Nairobi. Mr Dieterink advised that no additional information other than the dates of the event were yet available, but that this was indeed a very important opportunity for members wanting to be involved in the African market. The meeting requested the Executive Secretary to advise members at the earliest opportunity of exhibition information and details on the exhibition.

HMEI Calendar
The Chairman presented a proposal for a HMEI desk calendar to be produced as a promotional tool. The meeting was shown a prototype of such a calendar, and was also advised of the anticipated costs of producing the calendar. Some discussion ensued, but as time was running out, further discussion was not possible.

Guest Speaker
Dr Fred Branski, President of the WMO Commission for Basic Systems, gave a presentation entitled ‘WIGOS Status’.
This presentation was well received with acclamation. This presentation is available here.

Other Business
There being no other business, the meeting was closed at 9.25am.

Meeting Attendees
HMEI Members:
Campbell Scientific Canada – Brian Day
Campbell Scientific US – Alan Hinckley
Climatronics – David Katz
DeTect – Scott McLaughlin
Droplet Measurement Technologies – Darrel Baumgardner
EEC – Denise River
EEC – Chris Goode
EEC – Allyson Turnbull
EEC – Mike Ueltzen
EKO USA – Tsukasa Kobashi
ES&S – Colin Cooks
ES&S – Bob Wright
GAMIC – Malcolm Malkomes
Geonor – James Brylawski
Geonor – Ivar Fredriksen
Gill Instruments – Mark Terrell
Intermet – Fred Clowney
Kipp & Zonen – Ben Dieterink
L.M. Sippican – Tom Curran
L.M. MS2 – Bryce Ford
Leosphere – Laurent Sauvage
Leosphere – Alexandre Sauvage
Takashi Saito - Meisei
Metstar – Fred Brenner
Oriental – Yuji Hayashi
Oriental – Naomi Tamura
Oriental – Lloyd Anderson
OTT – Kurt Nemeth
Rémy Pépin - Modem
Proton – Ed Figleman
R.M. Young – Tom Young
Selex – Ulrich Nellen
Sumitomo – Yoshihiro Imagawa
Sutron – Ted Soto
Sutron Ashish Raval
Sutron – Raul McQuivey
The Republic Group – Robert Rissland
Totex- Aki Nakazato
Vaisala – Andy McDonald
Weatherbug – Jim Anderson

Guests :
NOAA/NWS – Dr Fred Branski
Koshin Electronics – Hisatoshi Kimura
WICS - Shu Okadu

HMEI Secretariat:
Executive Secretary – Bruce Sumner