2003 AGM Minutes
MINUTES FROM 2003 AGM
ADELAIDE, JULY 17
Meeting opened 5.10 pm
1. Apologies
Claire Painter, David Butt, Mary Macken-Horarik, Seong-Woo Lee,
Annabelle Lukin
2. Membership Business
At the last AGM, it was agreed that membership prices increase ? students
$25, non-students, $40, life membership $250
Kristina Love stated that the membership processing liaison between Susan
Hoadley( in NSW) and Seong-Woo Lee (in Victoria) seems to be working
reasonably well.
Membership is still relatively low at 70.
3. President’s report
Brisbane hosting ASFLA 2004,
Sydney hosting ISFC32 in 2005,
Maybe Canberra hosting ASFLA 2006,
Maybe WA hosting ASFLA 2007
Kristina has had a number of requests from teachers in remote areas seeking
funding to enable them to attend conferences. The executive is developing a
plan to allow pairs of teachers to attend conferences.
4. Treasurer’s report
Susan Hoadley said that the 2001/2002 auditors report issued a reminder that
we issue payment vouchers and receipts.
She made the point that ASFLA02 straddled 2 financial years and that not all
ASFLA03 details had come in yet.
Payment Options:
• EFT is the cheapest way to collect money
• We still accept cheques and cash
• The cheapest option for processing credit card payments is for only the
treasurer to do so.
Susan will give John Polias a procedure for EFT to place on the web-site.
Fran Christie accepted the financial report and made the additional note that
the written report was “a nice clear statement”.
5. Newsletter
Current arrangement and background:
Under current arrangements, the ASFLA newsletter is combined with the
newsletter of the International Systemic Functional Linguistics Association.
One newsletter is produced on behalf of the two associations, under the
editorship of Christian Matthiessen and Annabelle Lukin. This arrangement
was made following the resignation of ASFLA’s last editor, Louise Ravelli.
The Executive attempted to find a replacement for Louise, but was
unsuccessful. After an offer from Christian to combine and jointly edit the two
newsletters, I resigned as treasurer and took up the editorship. The newsletter
is no longer provided in hardcopy, and so only appears as a web publication
on the ASFLA and Network websites. We use FrameMaker to format the
document, as FrameMaker files are easily converted into html and pdf
formats. The newsletter comes out twice per year, and while we have intended
to regularize the deadlines and publication dates, because the newsletter has to
fit in around Christian’s and my other commitments, we have so far not been
very successful in this regard.
Future prospects:
We had hoped by now to have recruited some local reporters, both within
Australia and internationally, who would take some responsibility for both
writing and soliciting copy for the newsletter. As yet, we have not arranged
this, but hope to do so in the near future. Christian has also approached the
Head of Department in Linguistics at Macquarie (David Hall) to secure a
small amount of funding for a ‘managing editor’ - i.e. Someone who would be
responsible for collating and proofing copy, leaving Christian and I to
developing and extending the network of people contributing to the newsletter.
David Hall’s response was to ask for a ‘business plan’, which we have yet to
prepare. It is not yet clear whether this suggestion means we would be funded
if the newsletter also generated income, i.e. through advertising. Clearly this
would be a change in current policy, and would need to be discussed by the
executive before any proposal was agreed to.
6. Webmaster report
John Polias reported that the site is used sparsely and made the suggestion that
conference proceedings be placed on the web. Kristina commented that this
would be a decision for the presenters.
John suggested video taping plenaries and making these available on the
website. He also made the point that he only maintains the site and that the
content was dependent on contributions by the members.
It was decided that further links to international resources be placed on the
site.
7. Bernstein conference
Fran Christie and Jim Martin reported that they are planning a conference for
December 2004 to be held at the University of Sydney. It’s theme will be
Bernstein and SF theory and it will focus on Bernsteins’ horizontal and
vertical distance.
It was proposed that the 2 sociologists, Joe Muller and Karl Maton be invited
and that support from ASFLA might be required for one air ticket.
Dates are most likely to be December 8-10, 2004
8. ASFLA 2004
Lenore Ferguson reported that the theme of the conference would be ‘SFL
ripples in the 21st century’ and would be concerned with opening up explicit
links between sfl and other disciplines.
Dates are:
3 day pre-conference school June 28-30
Conference June 30-July 2, 2004
NB last day of school will overlap with day 1 of conference
Lenore also reported that the conference will be held in a brand new
conference centre located in central Brisbane.
9. Other Business
Geoff Williams reported that the deadline for submission of abstracts to
ISFC30 to be held in Lucknow, India in December this year had been
extended to September 1, 2003.
Geoff has also researched bulk booked airfares - approx $2100
Katina Zammit said that she would hand out a flyer for ISFC32 later in the
conference.
Kristina Love extended a vote of thanks to John Polias and Brian Dare for
organising and hosting ASFLA 2003.
The AGM closed at 5.50pm.