APNG monthly committee meeting
9 June 2007
18:30 BKK time (+ 7:00 GMT)  

Chair: Sumith Gamage

Agenda:

• Registration
• Adding the theme up on the site, materials, etc.
• Task assignments updates
• Promoting APNG to less/non active countries
• Sponsorship (local/international)
• Sharing papers with APAN
• Fellowship selection (1st & 2nd rounds)
• Speakers
• Schedules
• Live E! & Sahana Workshops
• APNG schedule conflict with APAN Plenary
• Chinese APNG fellow support in logistic arrangements.
• Room allocation for Fellows

It has been agreed by all present in the meeting to have a link of the APNG Organizing Committee for the 9th Camp with their profile (name, email, country and personal homepage link if there's any) on the web.

Before starting off with the first agenda item, Kashif reminded to remove video competition announcement from 9^th APNG Camp homepage.

Participants

Sumith, Kashif, Joan, Shi, Rahman, Ravi, Amaraweera and Kung (APNG Secretariat)

Minutes 

1. Room allocation for Fellows

• With regards to room allocation, Kung had sent the list of room allocations; mixing new/old participants & people from different countries. And it is all agreed.

 2. APNG schedule conflict with APAN Plenary

• Not joining APAN Plenary and APNG Camp will go along with its planned schedule on 28 – 30 August 2007, due to time constraints and same as last year.

3. Sponsorship (local/international)

• No updates from Sana and Dihan yet.
• Shi will try to contact some companies to get local participants. Sumith reminds that Tommy-son will take the responsibility of finding a sponsorship and the organizing committee should also continue with follow-ups. Tommy-son also has high hopes on Chinese Support.

4. Speaker.

• Kashif updated the status on inviting speakers. Invitation letter was drafted and finalized and sent it to Dr. Nimal already. Shi to update regarding with the two Chinese speaker and Professor Xing and one more speaker.
• Kung to update on APAN speakers’ profiles so that invitations can be sent out accordingly.
• According to Shi, Prof. Xing is not very sure of his availability to join the Camp but instead, he recommended two professors from China. Shi emailed them already but yet to receive a reply.
• Joan to find out possible speakers from Philippines.
• Deadline for speaker confirmation is 23^rd June 2007.

5. Fellowship selection (1st & 2nd rounds)

• No second round selection as all fellows accepted the offers in the first round.
• Official letter of invitation will be send to fellows for the Visa & other official procedures.

6. Promoting APNG to less/non active countries

• Joan has been assigned to take responsibility of promoting APNG to less/non-active countries; categorizing into Developed countries and Developing countries. To invite people from Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam, Philippines, etc.
• Fellowship is not intended for developed countries.
• To reach the countries from which we did not have any participants in the past yet. Meanwhile, to promote participants of the previous camps to have more local activities in their countries to promote APNG.
• To send info pack to the Foreign Ministries, Higher Edu Ministries of those countries like Maldives, Laos etc. (Joan >> to include this in proposed action plan).

7.  Sharing papers with APAN

• Sagarika is working on this.
• Sumith requested to all in the camp committee to improve the papers to the standard and put them in APAN format and send them before the given deadline.

8. Schedules

• Aadit >> to come-up with plans and let others to comment on it. He requested that the people who are requesting speakers should get speakers’ preferred time also and to invite everyone on 28^th August which is the opening day of 9^th APNG Camp.
• Organization of schedules on the web needs to be changed into more easily readable and organized format.

9. Live E! & Sahana Workshops

• To have a DEMO on local host. APNG Sec can help with it.
• APAN link to Disaster management: http://www.apan.net/meetings/xian2007/proposals/dm.html
• Live E! Workshop details are yet to be finalized awaited from Tommy-son.

10. Chinese APNG fellow support in logistic arrangements

• Shi >> to check local fellows’ interest in taking part in organizing APNG/APAN stuff (personally) before sending them official invitation as APNG.
• Certificates will be awarded to local participants for taking part of the event in addition to normal certificate awarded to Fellows.

11. Registration

• APNG Online registration is open now.
• Kung >> to compile invitation letters to all APNG participants and to check with APAN sec to eliminate the applicants who have received invitation through APAN.
• A formal invitation letter from the body who is responsible for the camp will be sent to the participants to official clearance, visa and other formalities is needed.

12. Adding the theme up on the site, materials, etc.

• Theme for 9^th APNG Camp has been uploaded on the web.
• Rahman advised to improve background color contrast.

13. Next Meeting:  

            Saturday, 30^th June 2007

Japan and Korea (GMT+9:00): 20:30pm

Taiwan, China, Malaysia and the Philippines (GMT+8:00): 19:30pm

Thailand (GMT+7:00): 18:30pm

            Bangladesh (GMT+6:00): 17:30pm

            Sri Lanka (GMT+5:30): 17:00pm 

Nepal (GMT+5:45): 17:15pm

Pakistan (GMT+5:00): 16:30pm 

Venue: Yahoo Messenger

Updated: 18 June 2007