Meeting Minutes

Meeting minutes: May 6, 2006

Present: Renee Chou, Sue Stock, Peggy Lim, Pailin Wedel, Ellen Sung

1. Speaker for career development workshop

After the media access workshop, it was agreed that we should do an event for members to develop their own skills.

After a brief discussion, we agreed to plan a short (2-2.5 hours) workshop-style event about how to brand yourself within your organization, including how to manage your boss and your peers. We felt this would be a very practical skill for everyone from college students to mid-career members.

We brainstormed ideas for speakers:

1. Jane Hyun, author of Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling

2. Evelyn Hsu, program director for the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education and former AAJA national president

3. Grace Ueng, former business magazine writer who lives in Cary

4. Linxian Wu, dean of the BioNetwork Capstone Center at Wake Tech

Our preference is for someone who can be dynamic enough to lead a workshop and who can speak to Asian American issues and/or gender issues. We also prefer someone with a journalism background, though it's not vital. We will continue to seek ideas and see if out-of-town speakers may be coming to our area. Tentative date is July.

ACTION ITEMS:

a. Renee will contact Hector Javier from NAAAP-NC to see if they can recommend speakers. She will also email Atlanta and DC chapters of AAJA for ideas.

b. Ellen will email Jane Hyun and Evelyn Hsu.

c. Jeff will ask Grace if she can have lunch with the board on Saturday, June 10, at Ma Ma Wok.

2. Future event - Discussion/mixer with ethnic media

Peggy suggested an event in which we invite local ethnic media to join us for an informal discussion about our job and role as journalists. Some volunteer reporters that Peggy has met have had questions about how professional journalists deal with ethics and sourcing. But the discussion would go both ways and allow the professional journalists to learn about how the ethnic media works. The board agreed this would be a worthy event. Tentative date is October.

ACTION ITEMS:

None at this time.

3. New board members

The board unanimously agreed to add two new positions. Meiling Arounnarath will be social chair and Pailin Wedel will continue as student coordinator but will join the board.

4. Future event - UNITY social

Peggy raised the idea again of a UNITY social dance. After some discussion, we agreed that the UNITY dance is a good idea but probably not as a first UNITY mixer.

Peggy had approached Kinea White Epps and Cindy George of the Triangle Association of Black Journalists about a mixer. Cindy responded that she would prefer an ice cream social.

The board really liked this idea and suggested The Raleigh Times as a venue on a weekend afternoon. The venue, besides being in former newspaper offices, may be willing to donate space. Tentative date is August.

ACTION ITEMS:

Peggy and Meiling will contact the venue and speak to representatives from TABJ, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the Native American Journalists Association, and the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association.

5. Future event - Student outreach

Pailin will be in charge of contacting student newspapers and Asian student organizations. In August and September, we plan to send delegates to these groups to talk about AAJA.

Next meeting: Saturday, June 10, noon. Ma Ma Wok in Cary.