Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Second Planning Meeting

The second planning meeting took place on June 12th at Garden City College. The meeting was attended by 19 members from the coordination committees. The main discussion points included:

(1) The meeting started by a welcome to, and self-introductions by, the new members who joined the planning efforts. It was noted that the workshop community is continuously growing and that the scientific review was formed in preparation for the submissions in July. 
(2) The progress report included the activities achieved since the last planning meeting. The focus of the past month was on funding and publicity, that we need to establish the list of sponsors by July as well as engage in KM awareness through targeting groups/individuals to encourage. 
    (a) Sponsorships follow ups with Kenana, DAL, National Information Centre, EpiLab, Sudani. A list of possible sponsors will be re-circulated on email for possible contacts in these institutions and more volunteers to follow-up with them.
    (b) KM awareness activities include scheduled participations in the Nile and the British Council forums in June (by Elhadi) and July (by Gada) respectively. Also, we will utilise a number of upcoming student events at the CS/IT depts. at U. of Khartoum to engage with the existing workshop community and those who expressed interest.
(3) The scientific programme will form shape when we reach the submission deadline, however, we have contacts with regard to a set of discussion sessions on different themes. These will hopefully materialise into proposals. Follow-up with current contacts and working on additional sessions are important.
(4) A call for additional members to join the working groups. Especially low in membership is the social programme, public relations and communications groups. We formed a steering group from nominated coordinators of working groups from the last meeting, in addition to our active membership at this stage.