19th FRA General Meeting - 17 January 2009

Minutes of the 19th FRA Governing Body Meeting

Saturday 17th January 2009

Committee Present – Andy Kane, Geoff Smith, Karoline Pannell, Trevor Wright, Kane Aston, Tim Bence and Leo van Miert

Items of Discussion

1. Robots Live’s application to place their events on our forum

After review of the Executive’s concerns relating to the Expo events it was agreed that Robots Live’s events should be allowed to be placed on the FRA Live Events thread of the forum.

2. Election for Executive and Governing Body

Our governing body term comes to end on the 31st March 2009.
It was agreed that the election would take place for the National Executive positions in advance of a second round of elections for roboteers representatives.
The five National Executive positions of President, Chairman, Secretary, Treasurer and Safety Officer will all be advertised immediately for nominations. Nominations will be open until the end of January with the vote to be completed by the middle of February.
The role of the Regional Representative will be replaced by a position of Roboteer Representative following agreement by the committee; this is in response to the fact that the existing regions are unbalanced in terms of roboteers distribution and restricts potential interest in joining the committee in areas of particularly high roboteer density. Suggestion of five posts available with an absolute maximum of ten as per the constitution. This election will follow on from the National Executive election to enable unsuccessful candidates to stand as Roboteer Representatives.
Of the existing committee some members have put themselves forward for election to the following positions:
President - Geoff Smith
Chairman - Kane Aston
Secretary - Karoline Pannell
Roboteer Representative – Trevor Wright, Leo van Miert, Tim Bence
The previous returning officer John Frizzell will be contacted to confirm whether he is willing to fulfil the position for this election. Detailed rules of the election will be completed by Tim Bence based on the discussions of the committee meeting.

3. Report of Inspection of Rebel Robots Arena

The Rebel Robots Arena was inspected on 27thth December by Karoline Pannell, Trevor Wright, Mike Lambert and Steve Johnson.
The review concluded that it would be preliminarily given a category 2F arena grading pending final assembly and completion of suggested modifications. The arena will be reviewed again in it’s fully assembled state before the end of January in order to give a final classification.

4. Review of 2008 and issue of tenders for 2009 UK Championships

It was agreed that the Championship Events in 2008 had been successful and enjoyable events despite the issues encountered by Roaming Robots relating to the severe weather and restrictions put in place by the RAF that limited the event to a single day. It was also recognised that Jonno had put significant effort into making sure the event happened despite the issues faced.
Representatives of Robochallenge, Robots Live and Roaming Robots were all present at the committee meeting and with only Robochallenge wishing to tender for the UK Featherweight Championship 2009 it was agreed that their tender should be accepted for an event planned for Newcastle in March
Only one tender was received for the Heavyweight Championships also, from Roaming Robots (Robots Live declined to tender) for a series of qualification events leading up to a Championship final at the end of year (currently at Wigan). Further details will be worked out to flesh the idea out further. It was agreed to accept this tender also.
There are a couple of Events being planned in Europe that could potentially act as the European Championships, proposals for these will be given as and when the details are available.

5. AOB

A few issues of AOB had been raised:
Request for details of the Fanfic representative to be placed on the relevant forum page. To hold an apparent position of authority on the forum it would be enough for visitors to assume that they are acting on our behalf and as such it was agreed they should be a member of the FRA in order to have their details included on the forum.
Enquiry relating to the gas consumable rule changes, for clarity these came about as a result of the open vote by the membership at the AGM to allow featherweights at 13.6kg (inc gas) and the subsequent need to maintain consistency across the rule set.
Request to allow low power, passive hammers to be used in Class 4 arenas. It was agreed to allow their use as an experiment for an indiscriminate length of time with a view to writing their use into the arena guidelines at a later date if no issues result.
Discussion relating to future changes in arena specifications, it was agreed that any event organiser wishing to make changes that would not fit within the current guidelines should submit their proposal for the committee to consider for it’s safety standards.
FRA Awards – Geoff Smith expressed interest in providing a “President’s Cup” that could be awarded by the FRA to one of it’s members. The specific criteria are to be agreed but could be along the lines of “Best Newcomer”, “Most Improved”, “Persistence in the face of adversity” or “Outstanding Achievement”.
The committee would like to place on record their appreciation of the efforts of Andy Kane during his time as President of the FRA.