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

Sat Aug 16 20:43:47 UTC 2014

Greetings Ohio Association of blind students, 
Firstly, Ryan thank you for your tireless service to the movement in your elected capacity on the student division board.  I truly hope that your involvement in the movement continues past this point and along after your studies have ended.
 Secondly, much appreciation and kudos to Katie and the rest of the board.  you all have done much over the past year, and continue to do so now.
 my thanks to aleeha for being a stable leader and driving force through these past two administration's. You have laid the foundation for what has been built upon. 
I'm excited for the things that you have done, will do, and continue to do. 
Warmly,
Darian

> On Aug 16, 2014, at 1:12 PM, Kaiti Shelton via Oabs <oabs at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> 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
> 
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