AAJA-DC Board Meeting Minutes
Sunday 11/12/06

Officers Attending: President Tan Ly, Vice-President (Print) Hyunju Chappell-Hine, Vice-President (Broadcast) Sherri Ly, Community Liaison Wanita Niehaus, National Representative Doris Truong, Secretary Susan Yoo

Guests: Former Treasurer Wai-Ping Chan, SeYoung Lee (Reporter, Joongang Ilbo), Ambreen Ali (2006 AAJA-DC Scholarship winner)

1. Trivia Bowl (Fall Fundraiser) - 11/3: Congratulations to Team National Geographic for winning AAJA-DC's first-ever Trivia Bowl fundraiser! This event was successful and fun. The event raised between $2100 and $2400. An exact figure will be available after the board receives the Treasurer's report. We all agreed Joie Chen did a great job as emcee. The Press Club turned out to be an expensive venue for the event, so we want to consider other options next year. In January, we need to pick a date for the 2007 trivia bowl, so we can get a head start on planning and fundraising.

2. Officer elections - These are AAJA-DC's newly-elected officers for 2007:

Membership Chair - Wanita Niehaus
Community Liaison - Lister Lim
Treasurer - Cecilia Kang

As our new treasurer, Cecilia will be signatory on AAJA-DC's bank account and will remove former Treasurer Wai-Ping's name from the account. President Tan Ly's name will remain on the account, and the statement address will be forwarded to Cecilia's address. AAJA-DC checks are on their way. We still haven't received our credit card. President Tan Ly will hold the card after it arrives. VP-Broadcast Sherri Ly moved that we get an AAJA-DC credit card and revise the signatories on the account. Community Liaison Wanita Niehaus seconded. All said aye.

3. "Middle East Crisis Through American Lenses" - 11/15: We need to get $10 Starbucks cards as a token of our thanks to our panelists. The event has a $40 snack budget. If we can get food donated, we'll cut our budget to $20 for soda.

4. Mid-career seminar - Sharpening Your Investigative Skills - How to Dig Deeper Faster" (January 2007): Tan met with our contact at the Press Club and with James Grimaldi (Washington Post reporter, President of Investigative Reporters & Editors - IRE) about this event. We want to have a panel and also possibly a daylong seminar. The Press Club is cost-prohibitive for this event. Other possible venues include GW University, NPR, and Bloomberg. We need to decide how advanced the seminar will be. The program should include coaching on using databases and developing sourcing. Sherri Ly will contact GMA (ABC) consumer-affairs reporter Elizabeth Leamy. NPC (Press Club) and Bloomberg have computer labs. It was suggested that IRE conduct a secondary data-mining program during the East Coast Mini-Conference, that AAJA-DC will host in 2007. We need to nail down these details by the end of November. This can segue to our next item (which wasn't on the agenda) --

5. East Coast Mini-Conference: As we considered planning for this event, several questions arose: What are ELP dates in 2007? When is the National Board meeting? We need to set dates for this event and settle on a location. We will need 4 meeting rooms for one full day and one room for an additional day, for our data-mining session. We need to nail down dates and locations by the end of December.

6. Literacy Council of Montgomery Council - We'll send out their information to our membership.

7. J-Camp: J-Camp is a program for high school students interested in pursuing a career in journalism. There is a link to the program on the AAJA web site. We were going to donate $50 in Joie Chen's name to the charity of her choice, as a token of our appreciation for her generosity and the wonderful job she did for us in emceeing our Trivia Bowl. It was suggested that instead, since our chapter didn't sponsor any J-Camp students (in 2006?), we sponsor a student in Joie's name. The cost for sponsoring a student, however, is $1000, so we need to see the Treasurer's Report first. We'll review our budget and then have an email vote on this item.

8. aaja-dc.org: Sherri moved that we set up an aaja-dc.org web site. It's the same web site, but the address will be easier to recognize, remember and publicize. (The current address is www.aaja.org/Chapters/Washington/.) Wanita seconded. All said "aye" except Susan, who abstained. The fee for this service is less than $10.

9. Ambreen Ali: has been doing wonderful work covering earthquake survivors in Pakistan and the relief effort over there. We'd like to help her publicize/promote her work. We decided that the East Coast Mini-Conference would provide the perfect venue to showcase photographs (her own) from her project. Ambreen will have the photos ready in time to exhibit at the mini-conference. We also discussed including a panel on freelancing and/or international freelancing at the mini-conference. Ambreen could serve as a panelist. Finally, we discussed the possibility of holding a small photo auction at the mini-conference, to raise money for the chapter.

10. Next meeting - Sun., Jan. 14, 2007, 1 p.m. Tan will host at the Washington Post. This will be a retreat, so the board can map out events and goals for the year. We'd like to map out the next year before January - via email - then we can discuss our ideas at the retreat.