From the society: Board, but not boring: what the IBS Board accomplished in 2011

Abstract

membership corner ISSN 1948‐6596 from the society Board, but not boring: what the IBS Board accomplished in The Governing Board of Directors 1 (‘Board’) of the International Biogeography Society (‘IBS’) meets four times per year, mostly quarterly, except that two face‐to‐face meetings are squeezed into the biennial conference (usually on the days of the workshops and final fieldtrips). This illustrates an important consideration for our young society: the need to minimise costs. Most Board meetings are held by teleconference, with only one face‐to‐ face meeting in each two‐year period between the main biennial conferences – usually nine months into the cycle, to aid planning of the next main conference. In 2011, we tried something a bit different. We organised the early‐career bio‐ geographers’ meeting in Oxford (September 2011; see Nogue et al. 2012) and held the face‐to‐face Board meeting concurrently with it. This allowed the Board members to contribute to the confer‐ ence as keynote speakers and by attending the coffee, lunch and evening breaks, mixing with the conference delegates, viewing the posters, etc. Thus the two events could reinforce each other, with the costs of the Board meeting being greatly reduced by external (non‐IBS) funding obtained to cover the travel and accommodation costs of the keynote speakers. A disadvantage was that the Board members were not available to attend the talks at the early‐career conference – something both the Board members and the conference delegates would have liked. Financially, the soci‐ ety benefitted considerably by the combination of making a small surplus from the conference (the number of registered participants was higher than expected) and the reduced costs of the face‐to‐ face Board meeting. In 2011 there were four Board meetings: 7 th and 10 th January (both in Crete, at the confer‐ ence), 6 th May–3 rd June (three sub‐meetings to finish the agenda!) and 24 th –25 th September (approx. 12 hours of discussions). Here I briefly outline the main discussion themes and key deci‐ sions made. A strong underlying theme is to pro‐ vide a high level of transparency – an important motivation for writing this report. In general, the mood over the year has been one of excitement that the IBS, and biogeography generally, is so vibrant, mixed with realism that the society is young, its finances very limited and its Board en‐ tirely constituted by full‐time biogeographers vol‐ untarily donating their time, and therefore unable to take on too much. The IBS has one employee, Karen Faller, whose vibrancy, competence and people‐skills continually impress all who interact with her, to the extent that it is easy to forget she is only paid to work 10 hours per week for the so‐ ciety. Three main topics have dominated the Board’s deliberations: conferences, membership and finances – all inextricably linked. Planning the main biennial conference takes up much of the Board’s time, and the society’s finances are domi‐ nated by it. The 2011 Crete conference was a great success by most criteria, and the Board is most grateful in particular to Spyros Sfenthourakis (Local Host), Jens‐Christian Svenning (Vice Presi‐ dent for Conferences) and the rest of the organis‐ ing team. In the final analysis, the Crete confer‐ ence effectively broke‐even, with a net income to the society of $2,819 (all figures are in US$), i.e. approximately 2% of total meeting costs. While this reflected the best attainable value for money for delegates, it also meant minimal growth of the society’s funds. It is a much lower conference margin than that of most equivalent societies. It is worth noting that the IBS has an extremely and anomalously high financial dependence on mem‐ bership fees and registrations: 88% of income as of September 2011, with the rest coming from various grants and donations. While the IBS finances have grown a little over the last year, a major decision made in 2011 was that the IBS needs a reserve put aside to en‐ 1. To see who is on the board, visit http://www.biogeography.org/html/About%20IBS/officers.html © 2012 the authors; journal compilation © 2012 The International Biogeography Society — frontiers of biogeography 3.4, 2012