IASPRR Seventh General Assembly
Assembly Hall,
Friendship Hotel, Beijing, China
4:00 pm Monday, August 23, 2004
Board
Members Present: President Anna Koltunow, Past President Vipen Sawhney, Vice President Scott Russell, Treasurer Christian
Keijzer, Representative Wei-Cai Yang
Board
Members Absent: Secretary Ewa Szczuka,
Representative Galina Titova
Members Present: numerous regular
members were in attendance, in addition to the Board members listed above
1.
Call to Order
·
President Koltunow called the meeting to order at 4:10 p.m.
2.
Beijing Conference
- President Koltunow congratulated the organizers,
Yi-Qin Li, Wei-Cai Yang, and Shu-Nong Bei for the excellent job that they had done in
organizing the current meeting. The Assembly joined her in a round
of applause.
3.
Approval of the Minutes
- The minutes of the Fifth General Assembly at Lublin, Poland
were distributed to the members in attendance. There were no
additions or corrections to the minutes. Professor Harry T. Horner
moved, Vice President Scott Russell seconded
acceptance of the minutes. Motion carried.
4.
Membership Update and Online Dues Payment
- Vice President Russell noted the necessity of
developing a method of collecting dues on the Internet for such an
international organization. A stand-alone website to do this,
however, would cost thousands of dollars to develop and therefore an
examination of alternatives was conducted to process dues payment from
foreign credit cards and accounts at reasonable cost. After looking
at these requirements, Vice President Russell nominated PayPal as a reasonable option. PayPal operates as a money
brokering service using secure servers, a long track record and current
service for 27 countries (presumably increasing as new EU countries adopt
the Euro.) The request is initiated at the IASPRR website and then
transfers to the PayPal site to complete the
secure parts of the transaction. Payment requires joining PayPal, as they collect address and contact
information required to validate the transaction, credit card information
and number of years of membership desired. A transaction fee that is
comparable to normal bank charges for credit card transaction processing
is charged, but this cost will be absorbed by the IASPRR.
- Requests for dues renewal would then be conducted by
email, further saving on expenses. There was no discussion.
5.
Treasurer's Report
- Treasurer Keijzer distributed a summary statement of
balances, receipts and expenditures for 2001, 2002, and 2003. Most
revenues and expenses are when the meetings are held. Treasurer
Keijzer noted that the interest generated by our savings yielded
approximately €1500 per two years.
- Professor Harry T. Horner moved,
Professor Vipen Sawhney seconded acceptance of
the treasurer's report. Motion carried.
6.
Senior Scientist Medal
- Past President Sawhney
noted that guidelines for the Senior Scientist Medal of the IASPRR are
being developed.
7.
Young Scientist Awards
- There was one poster award given at the 18th
Congress for Sexual Plant Reproduction. The poster award went to
Kohji Murase. The award consists of
a certificate and a cash award.
- Two Linksens Awards for
best presentation were given: The Linskens
Awards were presented to Taisuke Nishiyama and to Feng Qin.
The award consists of a certificate and a cash award.
8.
Future Conference update
- Budapest 2006: Beata Barnabus briefly discussed plans for the 2006 meeting,
which will be held in Budapest.
A DVD was shown presenting images of the city. The dates of the
meeting will be advertised via the web site as soon as available.
- Meeting 2008: President Koltunow reported that
preliminary discussions are being conducted relative to this
meeting. Some sites being discussed include Australia,
New Zealand
and the United States.
Further nominations and comments were encouraged.
9.
All Other Business: Vice President Russell noted that to improve
our website, we need more content. To that end, he offered to post any
talks that people might want to post on the website. Also, conference
digital images of the meeting will posted on the
website as well.
10. Adjournment.
The meeting was adjourned at 4:35 p.m.