Minutes of the Southern Division Reservoir Committee Meeting
Held on February 9, 2006

• Mike Colvin made opening remarks and ran the meeting.
• Everyone introduced themselves. See roll sheet for attendance.
• Summer 2005 Meeting Minutes were approved.

Financial Report

• Monthly statements of finances are available at request
• Financial assets as of 12/31/05 were presented and everyone received a copy; this included scholarship recipients, travel expenses covered and awards
• Person in charge of filing with IRS will get the details of finances so that this can be completed

Scholarship (Gene Gilliland)

• Announced that 9 applications were received; one will be chosen
• There is a new format for choosing the recipient and it has worked well

Partial New Business (Jack Van Deventer)

• Jack, with MicroFish.org, is hoping to improve this software for Microsoft for fish analyses
• Purpose of software is to calculate maximum-likelihood population estimates, length statistics and weight statistics from removal-depletion sampling data
• Ultimate goal is to improve this software to facilitate the exchange of fisheries information within and among fisheries agencies
• A free version is available; commercial also available
• Jack wants volunteers for him to call and ask questions and wants to know what biologist really need from this software email: jsv@MicroFish.org; cell 509.993.0722

Old Business- Fourth International Reservoir Symposium

Arrangements (Colvin)

• Meeting this summer 2006 will be at the Hilton Atlanta Hotal
• Have a block of rooms for June 6-9 2007 to sleep 300-350 attendees
• Rates are $115/single and $135/double
• 7 meeting rooms for available for conference, office space, and meetings and the promenade is likely to be appropriate for poster session
• Estimated cost is $80,000
• A minimum of $22,000 must be spent on food and beverage at hotel

Program (M. Allen, S. Sammons, M. Maciena)

Allen

• 22 invited authors have submitted outlines
• 2-3 authors have not submitted outline
• have room for several contributed talks
• will call for contributed papers in summer
• papers will be published in a special AFS journal or pub?
• Plenary will be “Reservoir Management Beyond the Shorelines” and case history papers will be presented

Sammons

• Shouldn’t have a hard time getting contributed papers, may get too many
• Very excited to have Earnie Niemi with ECONorthwest present

Colvin Comment & Question:
This tentative program should be used as a toll for fund raising considerations.
Is this enough people from the non-Southern Division AFS?

Sammons: Only concern is NE region, we have a good pull from others.

Colvin: Our challenge is how much interest will come in. How many papers in a book?
Can posters submit papers? Should only abstracts be published for posters? What’s our time frame?

Allen: March we give feed back to authors, June 2007 papers are due. We need to consider how many posters we will accept.  Abstracts are not a useful resource; they often are cited inappropriately.

Program committee is making progress and is in good shape.

     Publicity (Kim Bonvechio)

• Announcements have been submitted to AFS & websites
• Should we put an add in fisheries?

  $1300/fish issue in color
  $547 whole page bw
  $190  ½ page bw
  Free for a ¼ page bw for 3 months
  Maybe we should do some sort of combination of these bw versions
  $50 for AFS to send out on list serve

• Challenge, where/ how should we publicize from here on out?
• Letters have been put out to fish chiefs

In the letter:
1) thanked them for their employees’ participation
2) asked them for a donation
$5000 gets them 3 complementary registrations
$3000 gets them 1 complementary registration
If we didn’t have your fish chief’s (or one that you know of) contact info, we need it

• Also need to send a different letter to non Southern Div states, since they benefit from this
• What about NAMS and Aquatic Plant Management & Outdoor Writer’s Assoc?
• In Fishermen, Steve Quinn is the person to talk to
• Publicity & Fund Raising need to be working together

Web and Social Report (Mike Abney: Aquarium and Web)

• Website
• they will take care of website
• hotel will provide web
• a web page will link to the hotel
• no cost to have web page
• will be able to pay with credit cards and checks
• Ad fliers will also have a registration form to mail in

Gene G. Question: What about invoices for some agencies?
Answer : No a problem to do.

• website will also allow you to see who has already registered to go which may entice others to register
• Money can be routed from So Co to SDAFS through BB&T Bank, and BBT will loan a credit card machine

Question: 1. What do we need for a web page design?
2. Abstracts will be viewed on line?
No, only titles
More on web page later in the meeting.

• Socials

-Wednesday, on own, there is a bar at the hotel
-Thursday, poster social will have beverages from local breweries
-Friday, is The Social.
Buses will need to be rented
Dinner will be served at Friday social, probably a sit down dinner
Not sure at this point what our budget is for social.

• Estimating about $75 per person, about 350 guests, so social will be about $26K
• Estimating w/o alch bevs is 20K
• Another option is to only serve alch bevs for first 2 hours

Number one option is the Aquarium; it’s expensive and nice
We have an option of viewing the aquarium displays for 2 hours before the social at $10.50 per person: 17:00-19:00 hrs viewing, 19:00- 23:00 hrs social

3 setup options at aquarium :
1. Arctic Room
Belugas in view
standing room for 400, seated at tables for 300
2. Atlantic Room no views, (Number of people it holds- writer missed it)
3. Oceans Ballroom has lots of views (writer missed number it holds)
*Would like to have a final budget and make the decision by end of March.
Do we need anything else?

• T-shirts

-maybe a grad org would take this on

• Art

-Phill Bettoli’s sister makes great art and has said she would make us something
-Will this cost anything?
-Perhaps the art can be given to our biggest donor as a ‘thank you’ when we finish

• AV equipment

-$8K in budget for renting equipment and technician time
-Tech time also is incorporated into hotel costs
-T. Churchill and ??? agreed to work w/ AV
-Hotel will help to download the presentations or we can use our own equip.
-Hotel should supply screen and microphones
-Think we have 3 computers and projectors (need only 1, others are backup)

• Posters Session

-If we rent poster holders, rental people will set up and take down
-Ballroom at hotel might be a good place to setup
-Perhaps about 40 posters and not less than 20
-This falls into AV committee’s job

The Market Plan (Fred Heitman)

• Advertise

-Letters to fish chiefs
support for their employees
financial report
need money now
different levels of support
a. $1000
b. $3000 gets them 1 free registration
c. $5000 gets them 2 free registrations (my comment: although earlier in the meeting we said 3, so what’s the verdict?)
Letters were sent out chiefs once at the beginning of the organizing for this meeting. One responded (was not a request for funds though.)
-ads to target SDAFS members, exhibitors, and donors
-need a trifold flyer to insert at Lake Placid, Norfolk, and Memphis meetings
-remember state chapter, division, and unit meetings as outlets
-need S.Div member list to mail out announcement to
- someone will write and article to promote the reservoir meeting (with mentioning of past res. Meetings) in January 2007 Fisheries (Fred might need to talk to Gill about).
-display ads will be ½ pages Jan-May
-announcements should get the point across and we should talk to administrators to determine what they see as weaknesses 

• Exhibitors

-does the size of the meeting warrant exhibitors?
-different levels of donations should get booths
-they can also sponsor breaks
-their flyers can be by registration desk
-be thoughtful of where exhibitors are located!!!
-$5000 should get you a booth
-give recommended exhibitors with contact to Fred
-everyone should be contacting donors for dollars
- deadlines for sponsor money depend on states’ budget deadlines
-can we sell a chapter in the book?
No, probably not a good idea

Budget (Fred Heitman)
See Fred’s attachment for budget.
Draft operating budget is $125,000.
Aquarium deposit of 50% is due in 10 days
Concerned about food cost minimum with hotel
Registration cost is $275
Fred will send out what he needs from us
Unless someone volunteers to do a poster for advertising at meetings, we won’t do it.

Wade:
Garmon has funding for things supporting EPA’s strategy, the problem is that the program funds through 2006, last day to submit it is Jan 2007. Wade will give info to Fred.

Call for Papers

• Call for in June
• Deadline for abstracts in September
• Posters and presentations will be welcomed
• Presentations will be published, posters have a choice to publish
• Be careful how we communicate the call for papers: “call for posters/call for presentations/call for papers”

New Business

Fred J.

• National Fish Habitat Initiative
• 2nd National Data Base Summit put together in 2006
• got funds from international
• goal is to work closer together to share data across states
• will be in Memphis or Corpus
• with the grant, it’s paid for
• (AFS, Sampling Techniques Book working with it)

Mike Maceina

• Creel survey guru Steve Malvacuto of the uniform /non-uniform data analysis has a basic windows based program that can be written for creel surveys. A coop of 6-8 state agencies could work with visual basic. Jeff Slipke (private sector) and another grant for 40-50k could do the basic analysis. If each state donates 6-8k, consider what they need in the program, we could get the ball rolling. Propose for state agencies to use.

Jeff B.

• If reservoir comm. supports this, it may be more successful.

Maceina could start it for the southern div. states. Keep small to begin with, then fine tune for others. Maceina will write it up with goals etc. and send out to reservoir committee for review.

End of an era
Mike Colvin is retiring. Vic D. is the new chair. Thanks for your hard work Mike. And, welcome to Vic.

Next meeting is July 26-29, Tuesday – Thursday, at the hotel in Atlanta where the reservoir meeting is being planned for.