[Oabs] Announcements from last night's meeting, and beyond

[Kaiti Shelton]

Hi, OABSters,

Just to recap from last night, we have some announcements to go over.
I would encourage you to read this entire message, especially if you
were not in attendance at yesterday's meeting.

First, I regret to inform everyone that our Corresponding Secretary,
Ryan, has elected to step down from his position on the board.  This
was a decision he did not make lightly, but is what he feels is best
both for him as he sorts through some personal issues, and the
division.  Recall that Ryan was the mastermind behind our new
conference call service, which is much improved from the last line we
used for a long time.  I have told Ryan that he is free to pop in on
membership calls if he wishes to do so in the future, and he likewise
has expressed an interest in remaining friendly with members of OABS.
If you wish to remain in contact with Ryan, his email address can be
found in the archives.  (Note, I am not posting it purely to cut down
on potential spam.  Sorry for any inconvenience).

Aleeha, Emily, Lillie, and I are in the process of doing some
technical work, which will accomplish a few tasks.  Aleeha has set up
a new gmail account this morning, which will be a place to direct
potential members, and a central location for all OABS business
materials to go.  By business materials, I am speaking of emails from
social media outlets including Twitter and Facebook, and emails from
our Pay Pal account.  Now that the email has been created, Emily will
use it to create an OABS Pay Pal account, which will be given to
buyers for our raffle as another payment option in addition to cash
and checks.  Finally, the email will also be used for any management
of the OABS web site, which now has a small task force of people
willing to work on it.  Our goal is to have a web site up and running
by convention, so in addition to directing new members to our email
address we can also provide them with our url.  We have elected to try
using Drupal, to make the web site more like NABS-link.  The task
force will include the following people in the following roles; Aleeha
will research via contact with Tony Olivero ways to program/code the
web site, and will be our Mac accessibility beta tester.  I will be
responsible for making sure the web site is visually pleasing in
design, and will see what we may need to do financially to set up the
site.  I will also look for things to add to the site which could be
potentially tricky coding problems, such as wigits to help users like
us on facebook or Twitter, etc.  Emily will be our windows beta tester
for accessibility.  Lillie will help to find solutions to coding
problems when they arise, and may help with additional accessibility
testing.  I'd also like to make sure that we're not just Mac and PC
accessible, but also accessible on tablets or IPhones, so I may ask
Lillie to do that as well.  I can use my android tablet to make sure
we're accessible on the Droid platform as well.  We will keep you
posted on our progress with this venture as new information comes out.
Our OABS address is oabs.nfb at gmail.com.  Feel free to give it to
anyone you feel might be interested in requesting information from us.

Please look over the awards packet I re-sent last night.  We need to
make sure the information is is accurate as possible.  I do think we
stand a real chance of getting the Gavel Award for most improved
division, so let's shoot for that.

Membership rosters, 4 members received an email from me last night
because they have yet to submit information, and I have only gotten a
response from one of those people since.  If you were one of the
recipients of that email and are not working to get your information
turned in, please respond with the information I requested.

Convention agenda:  It's always difficult to plan all we have to do in
2 hours, since it is such a short amount of time to accomplish a lot.
We have decided to do the following for convention this year.  We will
place our order for pizza in advance, and will request that it be
delivered by 11:30.  When the pizza arrives, anyone who wants to help
set up for the meeting will leave general session, get the pizza, and
will go to the room to get organized.  WWe will allow 15 minutes for
people to trickle in, grab food, and sit down.  At 12:20, we will
request that Dr. Maurer come to the meeting.  I will place the call to
him myself Monday morning to set this up.  I will call the meeting to
order, will start off introductions so we know who is in the room, and
will then ask Dr. Maurer to say a few words.  We will go over why
students are important to the movement, and what the goals and
philosophy of OABS are for new members.  By 12:45 we'll need to start
elections.  We will elect our 7 member board, and then will use any
remaining time to mingle, meet and greet Dr. Maurer if he can stick
around for the entire time, and get to know new members.  Note, Emily
will be our bouncer and will collect dues at the door.  Admission will
not be granted unless $5 dues have been paid.  If Lillie could stand
by the door and take down contact information for new members as well,
that would be great.  At the end of the meeting, both Emily and Lillie
should have the same people on their lists, so there shouldn't be any
question about who paid, who is technically a member, etc.  Ballots
will also be handled slightly differently this year.  Those of you who
were in attendance last year can recall that instead of voice voting
or standing votes, we used shapes to cast ballots.  We passed out
index cards, and voters were instructed to fold the card like a hotdog
for candidate A, hamburger for candidate B, or diagonally into a
triangle for candidate C when we had a 3-way vote.  To cut down on
wasted time, we will have pre-cut squares, rectangles, and triangles
on plates in the center of the table.  Voters will not have to wait
for the cards to be passed out, but can grab the shape they need and
put it back when they are done.

Our raffle fundraiser will officially kick off on Sept 1, with the
drawing at the Sept 20th board meeting in Columbus.  Stay tuned for
more on this upcoming fundraiser via this list and Ohio-Talk.

Feel free to send me any questions you may have on these announcements.


-- 
Kaiti Shelton
University of Dayton 2016.
Music Therapy, Psychology, Philosophy
President, Ohio Association of Blind Students
Sigma Alpha Iota-Delta Sigma