PAC Meeting Minutes

JALT 2005 (Shizuoka), October 9th, 2005

QUORUM: Because only three of the six current PAC member organizations were represented at the meeting, a quorum was not established. Therefore, no official business could be conducted.

ATTENDEES:

a. The long gap between PAC conferences was noted – the importance of holding meetings and conferences much more often was reiterated and supported.

b. CALL FOR PAPERS: July 15, 2006 … (4 presenters from each partner)

i. Phil distributed a draft call for papers and asked for feedback. [see Appendix A] *see link below

ii. ThaiTESOL, as host country, will decide the theme and title.

iii. All partner organizations should provide confirmation on theme and title by end of October [editor’s note October 29, 2005: we’ll have to push this date back – how about end of November?] – discuss and agree now, ratify at full meeting at ThaiTESOL in January 2006

c. ThaiTESOL is interested in making sure that PAC6 is showcased at their upcoming conference in January 2006.

d. DATES for PAC6: Friday to Sunday … which weekend? ThaiTESOL will decide at theirOctober 22nd meeting.

e. SPEAKERS: there will be 6 plenary speakers – in keeping with tradition, each PAC member should propose a speaker (7 member groups proposing speakers, the final 6 will be selected by ThaiTESOL after vetting process)

f. PLENARISTS: the PAC tradition will continue, having plenary speakers from past, present, and future host countries.

g. FEATURED SPEAKERS – each group should propose 2, 10 will be chosen

ii. review committee will consist of one rep from each partner – partners must submit name of review committee member by ThaiTESOL’s January conference

iii. ThaiTESOL will select an organizer for each topic - names needed by January

iv. pre-conference preparation discussions to be carried out on Yahoo Groups (one for each colloquium, rather than all on one group list as in previous years)

v. each member of PAC chooses one contributor to each colloquium

vi. topics needed as soon as possible (in the next week if possible, as JALT is having a directors’ meeting Oct 21-23) – [editor’s note: this date has been missed – reschedule for end of November OK?]

i. Asian Youth Forum – organized by Kip Cates – ThaiTESOL is keen to have it at PAC6 – see appendix B *see link below

a. perhaps PAC should have a backup plan (an alternative conference host) in case there is some kind of trouble in the prepared conference location

b. it might also be useful to have some kind of awareness-raising of what kind of efforts young people are making to support disaster victims

a. Stephen Ryan suggested that email be used to make decisions, and can be used to sign agreements.

b. However, Phil Chappell said email is a problem because not everyone participates in discussions.

c. Stephen Ryan responded that we need to work harder to make email a viable option for decision-making.

a. PALT will sign with ThaiTESOL in January – can the others also sign at that time? Please try to arrange for this.

b. Australia TESOL has expressed an interest in joining PAC, which brings up the question: how big should PAC become?

c. Honoring our partner agreements can become a financial burden, providing rooms at conferences for partner representatives

d. Suchada Nimmannit is on the board of TESOL and has been promoting PAC. There may be groups in the US (TESOL Affiliates) that are interested in joining. They are already approaching ThaiTESOL with partnerships, but this doesn’t affect PAC yet.

f. Can we limit PAC geographically? If we are open to any group anywhere, then we lose our identity as an Asian group. Perhaps this is a direction to consider.

g. Stephen Ryan said becoming a member is difficult – we should have a mentoring system to help out new groups.

h. Each member group has their own way of doing things to go through the process of signing agreements – Dennis Woolbright noted that we need to be more flexible and understanding of how business is conducted in partner organizations and countries.

a. Invitations need to go out to partner groups as soon as possible.

b. Invitations need to include information about the partner agreement that will be honored.

c. One option is to provide paid accommodation and conference fee waiver for one partner guest, but also to invite along other partner guests with just a conference fee waiver but no accommodation.

a. Even if there is no annual PAC conference, there should be at least an event at a member conference with a substantial PAC profile. For example, the recent FEELTA symposium did PR for PAC in their materials.

a. PAC7 should be discussed (and hopefully decided) in Thailand in 2006. Please make sure each partner has a representative at ThaiTESOL in January 2006

b. Each member should be open to hosting the future conferences, but should not feel pressured or obliged to host. But they should be given the right. Kip Cates added that partner groups should provide all the support they can lend to any partner organization that wants to host a PAC conference.

The meeting ended at 11:15 am.

The minutes were taken by Mary Christianson, JALT Director of Records, and have been checked by all meeting attendees. This DRAFT version was last updated October 29, 2005. This html page was recreated in 2008 from a PDF file of an MSWord original document after a website failure.