TECHNICAL ACTIVITIES COMMITTEE
Washington DC
13 May 2009
0800-1600 hrs
Minutes
Attending: Laura McGill, Tom Duerr, Basil Hassan, Mark Melanson, Kathleen Atkins, Neal Pfeiffer, Allen Arrington, David Riley, George Lesieutre, Jim Keenan, David Jensen, Tony Gross, I-Shih Chang, Dale Pitt, Jim Neidhoefer, Jeff Zweber, Tom Beutner, Weinong Chen, Jacob Cohen, Mike Francis, Betty Guillie
Guests: James Horkovich, Phil Hattis, Carol Cash, Dave Throckmorton, Ken Harwell, Bob Dickman, Jay Dennis, Bill Seymore, various AIAA staff
1.Opening Remarks - Laura McGill – Laura had to step out for a few minutes so Basil called the meeting to order. He congratulated Neal Pfeiffer, I-Shih Chang, Dale Pitt and George Lesieutre on becoming Fellows!
2.Approval of Minutes – All – A motion was made to approve the minutes from the January 2009 meeting held in Orlando, FL – motion was seconded – passed.
3. Technical Events - Bob Dickman – Attachment 1 – Bob presented the FY09 scorecard through March. TAC overall is doing better than budget. However, meetings and exhibits are behind budget. Technical Papers is ahead of budget. AIAA is currently facing several challenges. Beginning in FY2010, AIAA will begin paying VAT for conferences held outside the US. This will impact BMD (Sept 2009 in France), GNC (August 2010 in Toronto) and Hypersonics (October 2009 in Bremen). This could impact registrations or remove something from the conference. AIAA has also recently seen increasing room cost at quality venues. Room guarantees are tied to Meeting Room expenses and many attendees are seeking lower cost lodging. The result is – AIAA pays penalties or higher Meeting Room rentals. Other challenges – Scholar One cost allocation, consistent features for “all” events and assessing Exhibits and Sponsorships. Several FY10 Opportunities – NRO Workshop, Space Exploration Conference, “Policy”event with CSIS in November 2009.
What do we need from TAC: Consolidation/co-location for conferences, New events – Strategic Initiatives and others (with IAC; define objectives for partnering), and Help implement agreed-upon changes.
4.IT Update - Jay Dennis – Attachment 2 –Presentation contains a review of the major systems, project timelines, ScholarOne update, Extranet site review and other Initiatives from IT. AIAA has 4 hosted applications – Netforum (membership database), ScholarOne Peer Review (conference papers and journal manuscripts), Books International Warehouse, and E-Books. 1st conference to go live with ScholarOne will be JPC/IECEC 2010. Once ScholarOne goes live, we will still finish open registrations and paper submissions on legacy system if they have already been started. TAC Groups and Committees are currently in the process of migrating from our current website to SharePoint. Benefits of SharePoint – home pages with common navigation, wide range of functionality, and more volunteer control over content and presentation. Other initiatives have been creating sites for the Guggenheim Medal Site and Ask Polaris.
5.Key Issues for 2010 - Phil Hattis – Attachment 3 – Key Issues from last year can be found on website. Objectives and Guidelines for 2010 include: develop key issues of primary importance to our members and reflect key strategic plan policy initiatives; aim for fewer than 10 Key Issues on the final list; back up each Key Issue with a more detailed information paper. Timeline is in presentation. Phil introduced Carol Cash, VP-Elect for Public Policy.
6.Staff Report - Betty Guillie – Attachment 4 – Presentation includes attendance numbers for conferences held during the period of January – April 2009, highlights from the conferences, TAC Funding as of 5/11/2009, and Highlights of Institute Activities.
7.Meetings for Approval - Betty Guillie – The following conferences were presented for cosponsorship:
Space, Propulsion & Energy Sciences International Forum (SPESIF-2010), Laurel, MD, 23-26 February 2010*;
ASTRO’10 – 15th CASI Conference on Astronautics, Toronto, Canada, May 2010; The 3rd International Symposium on System and Control in Aeronautics and Astronautics (ISSCAA 2010), Harbin, People’s Republic of China, 8-10 June, 2010.
A motion was made to approve the conferences as cosponsored conferences – motion seconded – passed.
*It was recommended the SPESIF-2010 conference form be sent to Trevor Sorensen for his approval. Form has been sent to him and I have received his approval.
2009 Homeland Security Conference, Monterey, CA, 31 August – 4 September 2009 – There was discussion about this conference’s operating society and the relationship to the proposer. Laura, Basil and Tony took an action item to contact the proposer for more information. Approval was delayed until more information could be gathered.
ACTION ITEM: Laura, Basil and Tony to contact proposer of the Homeland Security Conference cosponsorship form to gather more information concerning the operating society and the financial liability.
The following TAC Event Approval Forms were presented to TAC for approval:
8th Annual International Energy Conversion Engineering Conference (IECEC) and the 46th AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference and Exhibit, San Diego, CA, 1-3 August 2011; AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conference, AIAA Atmospheric Flight Mechanics Conference, AIAA Modeling and Simulation Technologies Conference, Portland, OR, 8-11 August 2011
A motion was made to approve – seconded – passed.
Neal Pfeiffer presented an additional TAC Event Approval Form – AIAA Aerodynamic Decelerator Systems Conference and Seminar, Dublin, Ireland, 24-27 May 2011 – There was some discussion concerning the location of the conference. Neal mentioned the Aerodynamic Decelerator Systems TC has offered to pay AIAA up to $15000.00 if the conference operates at a loss.
A motion was made to approve – seconded – passed.
8.Conference Information Updates - David Riley– Attachments 5, 6 and 7
Conference Fee Presentation–will be distributed at a later date
ASM Updates
Locations for 2016, 2017, and 2018 – (Attachment 5) Work has already started to find locations for ASM 2016-2018. Possible locations are detailed in presentation – 2016 San Diego, CA; 2017 San Antonio, TX or Grapevine, TX; 2018 Orlando, FL (either Marriott World Center or Gaylord Palms). Would like to see a rotation across Southern US with east coast, west coast, middle of country. Hotel options will be held until the end of August 2009. Hotels will be selected by early August 2009 to lock in contracts before the end of August.
Layout of ASM, NHF, and Expo for 2011(Attachment 6) – Conference dates will be shifted from a Monday – Thursday to a Tuesday – Friday. Board of Director’s meeting will take place on Friday instead of Thursday. TAC Workshop will not be held in 2011. This has already been approved by the Board of Directors at the January 2009 meeting.
ASG Workshop Requests – (Attachment 7) Dave has recently received 3 requests for workshops being proposed at existing conferences. Attachment 7 provides detailed information concerning the 3 requests and an example of workshop expenses and revenue. There was much discussion concerning this topic along with determining that TAC should have a policy on the process to approve workshops. Some thoughts – Director can approve directly but will bring to TAC for their information. Create an approval form similar to the TAC Event Approval Form that can be approved by the Director and the Product Manager. Jim Keenan volunteered to be the lead in creating a process for workshops. It was determined that separate promotion would not be available for workshops. Information can be included in the Call for Papers but separate mailings would not be approved.
ACTION ITEM: Jim Keenan will begin work on a Workshop Proposal Document.
A motion was made to approve the workshops with the process to be worked out later for cost sharing – seconded – passed.
9. Group Directors’ Reports
Engineering & Technology Management - Basil Hassan – Attachment 8 – Basil gave an overview of the group leadership for 2009-2010 and the goals for the group. ie – TC should conduct activities to keep the TC vibrant and provide value to their members, help to develop Young Professionals as our future leaders and work with organizers of Inside Aerospace and New Horizons Forum to see if the TCs can help with organization of these events.
MDO TC requested a move from the Engineering & Technology Management Group (ETMG) to the Aerospace Design and Structures Group (AD&SG). ETMG Director, outgoing AD&SG Director, incoming AD&SG Director and MDO TC Chair are all in agreement of the move.
A motion was made to approve the request of the MDO TC to move from the ETM Group to the AD&S Group – seconded – passed.
Aerospace Design & Structures - David Jensen – Attachment 9 – David reviewed the changes that have taken place in his group since the TAC Reorganization. They include several TCs moving to other Groups and the renaming of the group from Structures, Design & Test to Aerospace Design and Structures. Kathleen Atkins is the incoming Director of the group. Both she and George Lesieutre have served with David throughout his term as Director. Presentation includes information concerning the conferences the TCs have supported. Would like to see Certification become an area within the group with a possible new TC on Composite Aircraft Certification in the future.
10.Subcommittee Reports
New Initiatives - Kathleen Atkins – Attachment 10a and 10b – Very low attendance at this meeting. Four out of the seven groups did not have anyone representing them – Information Systems, Engineering and Technology Management, Aircraft and Atmospheric Systems, and Space and Missiles. Kathleen mentioned we still representatives from the Aircraft and Atmospheric Systems, Aerospace Design and Structures and Propulsion and Energy Groups for the Education Workshop POCs. Directed Energy WG presented presentation at NIS concerning becoming a Program Committee. NIS recommends approval as PC. An updated NIS Charter was presented and approved by NIS. The charter will be sent to all of TAC for an e-mail approval.
ACTION ITEM – Betty will send the updated charter of NIS (attachment 10b) to TAC for an e-mail vote.
2010 TAC Workshop will be with Standards. We need a volunteer to coordinate workshop.
There was some discussion at NIS concerning “Honorary” TC membership – it was determined the current categories, both formal and informal within the TCs, should cover this.
Finance - Marvine Hamner (not attending) – Bill Seymore – Attachment 11 – Bill presented the YTD Results through 31 March 09.
IT/Database - Dale Pitt – nothing to report
Public Policy - Tom Duerr – Attachment 12 – Tom presented a presentation detailing the TAC Public Policy Process. There are 3 Position Paper categories – AIAA Information Paper, AIAA Member/Group Position Paper and AIAA Position Paper. This presentation focuses on the steps for the AIAA Position Paper. The documentation will be completed in May and submitted to TAC for their review. TAC will vote on final process at TAC meeting in August.
Honors & Awards - George Lesieutre – Attachments 13a and 13b – Attachment 13a provides a summary of the Technical Awards currently being reviewed by HAC. Comments from HAC meeting in May are in blue.
Chanute Flight (Test) Award (Flight Test TC) – approved by HAC (TC agreed to conditions).
Haley Space Flight Award (Space Systems TC) – TAC approved (HAC conditional – generate nominations) – HAC is amenable to biennial even-year award. TC must generate more than 3 nominations by Jan 2010 (or Aug 2009); need to clarify permission to use Haley name. Intelligent Systems Award – reconsidered by TAC and approved (HAC conditional – TC award first). HAC feels there is a perception of scope overlap with other awards. HAC recommends to operate as a TC award for a cycle or two and show that nominees would not be eligible for other existing awards. It was recommended that VP-TAC talk with the Chair of HAC.
George also presented a presentation (13b) that is a Summary of Technical Awards. It shows the responsible TCs, community size, nominees (for awards), and TC size (for process).
ACTION ITEM: Laura will talk with the current Chair of HAC concerning the Haley and Intelligent Systems Awards.
11.Regional Reports
Region IV - Mark Melanson – Attachment 14 – Region IV has seven professional sections found in New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma. Professional and Education Associates Members are down in numbers while Student Member numbers are up. Presentation gives an update of activities for the different sections.
Region VI - Kevin Kremeyer (not attending)
12.Program Coordinators’ Reports
Introduction of New Space Station PC Chair - Tony Gross/Jacob Cohen – Attachment 15 – Tony presented the new chair of the Space Station PC – Jacob Cohen. Jacob provided some information on areas he would like to see the PC develop – initial TC partners, have membership with representatives from AIAA, professional societies, Academic, Government, Commercial and International, develop charter and update website.
Directed Energy System (DES) Briefing - James Horkovich – Attachment 16 – Jim presented a presentation on what is Directed Energy Systems, the proposed charter and scope, proposed objectives, immediate action plan and products for 2009 and 2010, and initial membership.
Conversion of DES PC Working Group to DES PC - Tony Gross – A motion was made that the Directed Energy Systems WG be transitioned to a full Program Committee – seconded – passed.
Tony presented a cosponsor conference request form for the Annual Conference of the Prognostics and Health Management Society 2009, San Diego, CA, 27 September – 1 October 2009. Attachment 17 –After much discussion on whether there is sufficient TC/PC representation and what value it would provide to AIAA, a motion was made to approve the conference as a cosponsored conference – seconded – did not pass. Tony was tasked to get more information about the conference and what role AIAA might play and resubmit it to TAC Executive.
ACTION ITEM: Tony will get more information concerning the Annual Conference of the Prognostics and Health Management Society 2009 and its value to AIAA and present to TAC Executive.
13.Liaison Reports
IAC/ICAS - Ron Bengelink – Attachment 18 – Ron presented the IAC’s strategic goals and the current steps they are taking toward those goals. The 60th International Astronautical Congress will take place in Daejeon, Korea from 12-16 October 2009. Focus will be “Space for Sustainable Peace and Progress”. The next ICAS will be hosted by the AAAF (France) in Nice on 19-24 September 2010. Call for Papers is currently out!!
USNC/TAM - Weinong Chang – Attachment 19 – Acronym stands for United States National Committee on Theoretical & Applied Mechanics. The purpose is to represent the US in IUTAM (International Union of Theoretical & Applied Mechanics) and to promote theoretical and applied mechanics in the US. USNC/TAM has a total of 33 voting members. Their annual meeting was held in Washington DC from 24-25 April 2009. New research themes in Mechanics – Multiscales from nano to macro, multiphysics, new opportunities in medicine, biology, energy, nanotechnology and materials, and capability-enhancing tools: digital computers and imaging modalities.
14.Pet VP Topic: Conference Strategic Planning - Laura McGill – Laura presented the objective of the Conference Strategic Planning Initiative – To develop and execute a process for planning conferences that provides the best value for the AIAA considering: Value to AIAA Members, Fiscal Responsibility, Positioning AIAA as the World’s Forum for Aerospace Leadership. TAC Executive went through a conference value exercise which provided an idea of what they valued most at conferences. The Conference Strategic Plan is to evaluate conference metric against costs/resources, use result to establish conference roadmap and explore new conference models for revenue.
15. Old/New Business - Laura McGill – Laura announced that Mark Melanson has accepted the position as Chair of the New Initiatives Subcommittee. Congratulations Mark!
16.Farewells - Laura McGill – Laura presented David Jensen with a gift and plaque for his service as Director, Aerospace Design and Structures.
17.Broken Sword Award - Jim Neidhoefer–Jim presented the award to David Jensen for his remark at the end of his presentation – I’ll take your questions and pass them to Kathleen. Jim will give the award to David and he can pass it to Kathleen. Kathleen can keep the award or give it to George to pass to HAC.
18.Adjourn- A motion was made to adjourn – seconded – passed.