General Meeting 2009 in Seoul, 4 June 2009 / Minutes

General Meeting 2009 in Seoul, 4 June 2009 / Minutes 1

Minutes General Meeting 4th June 2009 in Seoul

Item; 01 Welcome and Arrangements Welcome to the General Meeting and General Announcements

Item; 01 Minutes; Hiroshi Kawamura, President of the DAISY Consortium, is opening the General Meeting. He welcomes the member representatives present. He states that Friends of the DAISY Consortium are admitted as observers to the open portion of General Meetings. He adds that for today’s General Meeting, no closed session is planned.

Item; 02 Attendance and Apologies Full Members – Associate Members – Staff in attendance - Observers

Item; 02 Minutes; Full Members present / Representatives Exercising Voting Rights DAISY Latino Group, Edgard Pinto Ferreira Filho, Board Member (under reserve of the General Meetings decision on the ratification on the admission of DAISY Latino as a Full Member, see Item 05 below) - Finnish DAISY Consortium / Markku Leino, Board Member - Japanese DAISY Consortium / Izumi Hattori - Korean Braille Library / Keun Hae Youk, Board Member - Media Association for Blind and Vision Impaired People (Germany) / Elke Dittmer, Board Member - National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped / Stephen Prine, Board Member - Norwegian DAISY Consortium / Arne Kyrkjebø, Board Member (Treasurer) - Nota (Denmark) / Michael Wright, Board Member - Royal National Institute of Blind People / Stephen King, Board Member - Spanish National Organisation of the Blind / Francisco Martínez Calvo, Board Member - Swedish DAISY Consortium / Kjell Hansson, Board Member - Swiss DAISY Consortium / Heinz Zysset, Board Member - Vision Australia / Trisha Egan, Board Member Apologies of Full Members The following Full Members have sent their apologies: Australia New Zealand Accessible Information Group - Canadian DAISY Consortium - Dedicon (Netherlands) - Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic Board Members present not Exercising Voting Rights Hiroshi Kawamura, Japanese DAISY Consortium, President General Meeting 2009 in Seoul, 4 June 2009 / Minutes 2

Associate Members present Benetech, Betsy G. Beaumon, Viji Dilip – National Library of Jamaica, Kevin Bushay - Taiwan Digital Talking Books Association, Pin Wu Shen, Jan Li Wang Observers present “Sun” K.S. Choi (HIMS) - Stacey Curtis (RNIB) - Ron Hathaway (Humanware) - Eric W.S. Jung (HIMS) - Ivan Lagace (Humanware) - Hiroaki Mizukami (Shinano Kenshi) - Tatsuo Nishizawa (Shinano Kenshi) - Jashin Oh (HIMS) - Peter Osborne (RNIB) - Inge Padkaer Nielsen (Nota) - Yang Taik Yoon (HIMS) Staff Present George Kerscher, Secretary General – Bernhard Heinser, Chief Financial and Development Officer

Item; 03 Confirmations Confirmation of voting delegates – Acceptance of the Agenda – Confirmation of Scribe

Item; 03 Minutes; The confirmation of voting delegates was done under Item 02. – The Agenda is accepted unanimously. – Bernhard Heinser is confirmed as Scribe.

Item; 04 Minutes of the Previous General Meeting held in Oslo, Norway, June 11th Paper: Minutes Formal approval required

Item; 04 Minutes; The Minutes of the previous General Meeting are approved unanimously without comments.

Item; 05 Ratification of the Admission of a Full Member [AK] Formal ratification required As per 1st of January the Board admitted as a new Full Member the DAISY Latino Group, made up of 12 members located in 7 Latin American countries (precise details can be found at www.daisy.org). The General Meeting is required to ratify retro-actively the admission of the DAISY Latino Group as a Full Member of the DAISY Consortium.

Item; 05 Minutes; The ratification of the admission of the DAISY Latino Group is decided unanimously. Edgard Pinto Ferreira Filho is entitled to exercise the voting rights as the DAISY Latino Group’s delegate. General Meeting 2009 in Seoul, 4 June 2009 / Minutes 3

Item; 06 Ratification of the Admission of Associate Members (April 2008 – March 2009) Formal ratification required Digital Talking Book Association, Taipei, Taiwan Synscenter Refsnaes / Robobraille, Kalundborg, Denmark Novosibirsk Special Library for the Blind and Visually Impaired, Novosibirsk, Russia National Autonomous Univerity of Mexico, Mexico-City, Mexico National Center for the Rehabilitation of Blind People, Tirana, Albania (replaces the Albania Association for the Blind)

Item; 06 Minutes; Hiroshi Kawamura asks the present representatives of the Taiwan Digital Talking Book Association (TDTB) to introduce their organization to the attendance. TDTB has about 55’000 users. They are particularly promoting DAISY (production, distribution, and playback) for educative accessible documents and books. There is an effort as well for the integration of the many organizations for/of persons with disabilities in Taiwan. - Stephen King asks whether the National Autonomous University of Mexico is part of the DAISY Latino Group; it is not. The ratification of the admission of new Associate Members is decided unanimously.

Item; 07 New Friends (April 2008 – March 2009) For information purposes ScanDis A/S, Herning, Denmark (Developer) Activated Content Corporation, Inc., Seattle, USA (Developer) Code Factory, Terrassa, Spain (Developer) VoiceCorp, AB, Uppsala, Sweden (Developer) Adobe, Inc., San José, USA (Developer) American Physical Society, New York, USA (Publishers, Educators, Advocates) Bojo AS, Oslo, Norway (Publishers, Educators, Advocates) Palestinian Ministry of Education, Ramallah, Palestinian Territory (Publishers, Educators, Advocates) AEL Data, Chennai, India (Publishers, Educators, Advocates)

Item; 07 Minutes; HIMS (Korea), a new Friend that joined the DAISY Consortium in April 2009 and is not yet included in the list above, is represented by four observers. Hiroshi Kawamura asks Yang Taik Joon, CEO of HIMS, to introduce his company. HIMS was founded in 1999. They started with the development of software for General Meeting 2009 in Seoul, 4 June 2009 / Minutes 4

simulation of military strategy. They were then asked by a visually impaired person to develop a Braille note taker. Since then, HIMS became an important developer of assistive technology. HIMS has developed a broad range of products for blind, visually impaired and otherwise print disabled persons. See www.himsintl.com. The General Meeting is taking note of the new Friends.

Item; 08 Number of Members as per March 31st of 2009 For information purposes Full Members: 17 Associate Members: 51 Friends / Developers: 26 Friends: Publishers, Educators, Advocates: 4 Friends: Individual Supporters: 5 Total: 103

Item; 08 Minutes; Hiroshi Kawamura is considering the growing DAISY membership as very impressive. He points to the DAISY world map published on the DAISY website (http://www.daisy.org/about_us/members.php#fullmembers). The General Meeting is taking note of the number of members as per March 31st 2009.

Item; 09 Annual Report 2008 Paper: Annual Report 2008 Formal approval required The Board of the DAISY Consortium recommends that the Annual Report submitted to the General Meeting be approved. The Report will be discussed in two steps before the General Meeting is asked to approve the Report as a whole.

Item; 09.01 Annual Report: Financials 2008 For the first time the Financial Report is part of the Annual Report. It consists of a Descriptive Summary, the Auditor’s Report, the Balance Sheet and the Operating Income and Expense.

Item; 09.01 Minutes; There are no questions or comments regarding the Financials as per December 31st 2008.

Item; 09.02 Annual Report: Proceedings General Meeting 2009 in Seoul, 4 June 2009 / Minutes 5

The report provides an overview of the highlights, the achievements, and the main activities of the DAISY Consortium during the year under review.

Item; 09.02 Minutes; Trisha Egan (Vision Australia) congratulates the staff of the DAISY Consortium for the great achievements over the last year. – There are no questions or further comments.

Item; 09.03 Approval of the Annual Report 2008

Item; 09.03 Minutes; The Annual Report 2008 including the Financials is unanimously approved.

Item; 10 Discharge of the Board for 2008 Formal decision required Legal requirement. By discharging the Board of Directors, the General Meeting takes the responsibility for the decisions and activities made by the Board in the corresponding business year.

Item; 10 Minutes; The discharge of the Board for 2008 is unanimously decided.

Item; 11 Motion to Amend the Articles Paper: Proposed change Formal approval (80% majority of the voting Members present) is required At the February 2009 Board meeting held in Kyoto, the Board of Directors made the decision to submit the following amendment to the Articles of Association of the DAISY Consortium. The current §6 (1) b of the Articles states: “Associate Membership cannot be shared.” It is proposed that the mentioned paragraph is amended as follows: “Associate Membership cannot be shared. Exceptions may be decided by the Board.” Rationale: Especially in developing countries, the implementation of DAISY greatly depends on nationally coordinated efforts. Furthermore, even with the reduced annual fees for Associate Members located in developing countries, the fees are still a barrier for many organizations. By the proposed amendment, the Board may decide on a case-by-case basis to approve exceptions to this portion of this Article regarding Associate Membership.

Item; 11 Minutes; General Meeting 2009 in Seoul, 4 June 2009 / Minutes 6

It was asked which criteria would guide the Board when deciding on shared associate membership. – Hiroshi Kawamura says that the corresponding guidelines are to be developed. – George Kerscher adds that the DAISY Consortiums want the organizations to work together. The amendment of the Articles is unanimously approved as proposed by the Board.

Item; 12 Re-Election of the Treasurer (Term of Office: January 2010 – December 2013) Re-Election of Arne Kyrkjebø is required At the General Meeting 2008 in Seoul Arne Kirkjebø was elected Treasurer for the period from June 2008 to the 2009 General Meeting. The Minutes reflected this election as follows: “As set out in the Articles, the positions of President and Treasurer have legal responsibility. To minimize any potential risk that might arise from having the election of these two positions in the same year, it was proposed that the duration of post for the incoming Treasurer be from this point until the General Meeting in 2009; at that point Arne Kyrkjebø will be re-elected for the next four year period. This will provide a two year overlap of these two positions and there will be no potential vacancy.”

Item; 12 Minutes; Kjell Hansson (Swedish DAISY Consortium) asks whether Arne Kyrkjebø would accept the position. Arne Kyrkjebø confirms that he would accept it. Arne Kyrkjebø is unanimously elected. His term of office will cover the years 2010 through 2013. The next election for appointing the Treasurer of the DAISY Consortium will take place at the General Meeting 2013.

Item; 13 Outlook 2010 – 2012 For information purposes Oral Reports on Technical Development – Financing – Communications and Marketing

Item; 13 Minutes; George Kerscher gives a short summary on the main development threads. Standards: The revision of the DAISY Standard was started in 2007 with a broad requirements gathering process. It is expected that the new version of the DAISY Standard will be approved in 2010. It will have two separate portions: the Authoring & Interchange part and the Distribution part. The definition of profiles will significantly enhance the flexibility. Furthermore, the new version will support video/film. – The Specification for the DAISY Online Delivery Protocol will probably reach the status of Draft Specification for Trial Use later this year. Tools: Two major projects are currently under development: under ‘Automated Production’ the further development of the Pipeline family of tools, and under the General Meeting 2009 in Seoul, 4 June 2009 / Minutes 7

‘Interactive Authoring’ the development of TOBI (DAISY 3 full-text-full-audio production tool). Version 1.0 of OBI, the DAISY 3 production tool which produces audio-only books with table of contents (TOC), was released in March 2009. The DAISY Consortium is continuing to publish its developments under the business- friendly LGPL license. Website and Communications: The website will be greatly improved over the coming months. One of the major goals is to make use of the Web 2.0 technologies for training and technical support activities. It is furthermore planned that, based on an individualized login mechanism, Members and Friends will be enabled to update and enrich their own data on the site. The communication activities will be both related to website development efforts and to more traditional means such as mailings and the production of promotional materials. Special attention is being paid to the recruitment of new members including mainstream companies. We continue to produce the monthly DAISY Planet newsletter.

Item; 14 Decision on the Membership Fees for 2010 Formal decision required At the General Meeting 2008 in Oslo the following was discussed and documented in the Minutes of that meeting: “For planning purposes for both the DAISY Consortium and its membership, and for the sustainability of the work of the DAISY Consortium, it would be useful to establish guidelines with respect to membership fees and future increases. […] The proposed guideline is for an increase in membership fees of 5% each year, with the decision being made at the General Meeting for the following year.” Based on a three year outlook with respect to technical developments and a strengthening of the DAISY Consortium in the fields of fund raising, communications, marketing, and organisational stability, the Board decided at its meeting in Kyoto (February 2009) to submit to the General Meeting in Seoul the following membership fees for 2010: Full Members: USD 28’945 (increase of 5%) Entrance Fee for Full Members: USD 30’000 (unchanged) Associate Members: USD 2’895 (increase of 5%) Friends: Developers: USD 2’895 (increase of 5%) Friends: Educators, Advocates, Publishers: USD 1’000 (unchanged) Friends: Individual Supporters: USD 150 (unchanged)

Item; 14 Minutes; The proposed membership fees are unanimously approved. General Meeting 2009 in Seoul, 4 June 2009 / Minutes 8

Item; 15 Budget 2009 Paper: Budget 2009 Formal approval for the budget 2009 required The Board of the DAISY Consortium approved the attached Budget for 2009 at its meeting in Kyoto (February 2009) and makes the recommendation to the General Meeting that it be approved.

Item; 15 Minutes; Arne Kyrkjebø is presenting the budget 2009. He says that the budgeted negative balance of approximately 400K is reflective of several aspects: the integration of former ‘DAISY for All’ staff into the DAISY core staff team, the global economic situation, and the additional investment into human resources in communication, marketing, fund raising, and management. The Board considers that a much longer planning horizon should be reached. To get there, a corresponding investment is necessary. – Bernhard Heinser presents the planning regarding the fund raising. – There are no questions or comments. The budget 2009 is unanimously approved.

Item; 16 Location of the Next General Meeting RNIB has invited the DAISY Consortium to hold its next General Meeting in London in April 2010 [approximately the 20th of April]

Item; 16 Minutes; Stephen King informs the General Meeting that instead of having the next General Meeting in London as it was initially planned it will take place in Edinburgh on April 22nd 2010.

Item; 17 Any Other Business For information purposes

Item; 17 Minutes; No further business. Hiroshi Kawamura thanks the attendees for their participation and closes the meeting.