Annual General Meeting (Hybrid meeting)

Friday 12th August 2022 - 7:30pm
Topic: ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
Venue: Epping Creative Centre or join us online using ZOOM (If you haven't used ZOOM before, there are basic instructions here: How to use Zoom)
Abstract: The AGM will see the presentation of Annual Reports, election of office bearers and committee members, lucky door prize (one year's membership extension). After the AGM (anticipated to run for about one hour), there will be a light supper in the kitchen and a Telescope Clinic is being offered for any members (or prosepective members) who need help with setting up, aligning and using their telesocpes. There will be one telescope available for general observing if clear. 

Futher Details of the AGM: At the Annual General Meeting, reports from the President, Vice-Presidents and Treasurer are tabled. Award recipients are announced. The committee is dissolved and a new committee is elected. Committee nominations may be submitted on paper or by email but must be received by the Secretary by 4pm Friday 15th July 2022. The formal Notice of Annual General Meeting, paper Nomination Form and Instructions for completing an Email Nomination can be found below. Also note that 15 full members are needed for a quorum, so please join the meeting even if you don't wish to serve on the committee. Notice of the meeting is given in various issues of Universe and sent to members by email. 

Procedures for the AGM

1. 15 full members in person and/or online from the commencement of the meeting and throughout proceedings up to the election of the committee will constitute a quorum. Where households have more than one full member, if both/all full members share a ZOOM connection, they will both/all count towards the quorum. 
2. To minimise background noise, ZOOM participants are requested to keep their microphones on Mute. Any questions from ZOOM participants should be typed into the Chat window. Questions will be taken from the floor using the usual custom of a raised hand.
3. There may be no contested committee positions this year, but voting on adoption of reports will be required. As it is not considered that these votes would need to be undertaken with a secret ballot, voting will be by show of hands or consensus from the floor, as well as ZOOM participants.
4. To allow for households that have more than one member participating by a single ZOOM connection, the voting procedure on ZOOM will be as follows:
   1. The start of vote will be declared by the chair asking if there are any "No" or "Abstain" votes.
   2. Anyone who wishes to vote against the adoption of a report can notify the meeting by typing "No" or "Abstain" into the chat window, or unmuting their mic to declare their "No" or "Abstain" vote. 
   3. After a suitable elapsed time (depending on the number of participants), it will be assumed that the remainder of participants are in favour of adopting the report. The adoption of the report (or other result) will be declared by the chair. 
5. If there are contested positions, and a secret ballot is demanded by the participants, a secret ballot will be conducted at the ECC and the Polling feature on the ASNSW's Member Jungle website will be implemented. The latter is a secure online secret ballot system.
6. Members who are unable to join the meeting in person or via computer or phone, and who wish to vote, should contact the Treasurer to determine alternative arrangements. 

The chairperson for the meeting may vary the voting procedures on the night, depending on the number of in-person and remote participants, and the availability and convenience of systems required for voting. 

Relevant documents may be downloaded from the links below. "Word" versions of these documents are also available from the Public Documents library here: https://www.asnsw.com/index.cfm?module=DOCUMENTS