EUSES Membership Information and Policies

This is a copy of the EUSES Consortium Membership policies.


Goals, constraints, and benefits of new members

  1. Why does EUSES want new members? (i.e., what benefits would existing members gain by inviting new members?) Our goals/constraints in inviting some number of new members to join EUSES are:
    • To grow EUSES' recognition, size, weight.
    • To continue maintaining EUSES as an organization.
    • Maintain these constraints:
      • Without sacrificing quality.
      • Without changing group make-up such that one subgroup/interest overwhelms the multi-subdiscipline nature of EUSES.
    • Sharing ideas with each other and with new members.
    • Matchmaking opportunities: industry with academia.
    • Matchmaking opportunities: researchers with researchers.
    • See also advantages to academics (below).
    • Want membership to be on an individual basis (not on a company/university basis).

  2. What benefits would new EUSES members gain? New voting members' goals/benefits are sorted below from the perspective of academics, industry (both industrial researchers and developers), and advantages applicable to both academics and industry:
    • Advantages for academics:
      • Association with the EUSES name is a useful aid to credibility of proposed end-user software engineering research, because of EUSES's established track record as a group (number of papers, best paper awards, attracting attention of industry, wide media attention, ...).
      • Individual/small group grant writing: Letter from EUSES Consortium to include in proposal, that describes nature of the collaboration with EUSES for the purpose of the proposal, leveraging each others' results, or however relevant. (Note: This is possible because all members are collaborating with at least 1 other member.)
      • Facilitates opportunities to write grants as part of EUSES and/or with other EUSES members. (Note: This advantage was added to the list because potential members not currently in EUSES brought it up as a reason to join.)
      • Big grants: To be eligible for opportunities that are available to big groups of researchers working on a single theme.
      • Have our students form community with each other and make connections that strengthen their work and enable better "building on the shoulders of others".
      • Strong institutional relationship with NSF, and access to NSF people.
      • Opportunities to connect with commercialization possibilities (Note: EUSES is already sometimes contacted by industry people interested in EUSES work, and there are now several industry people planning to join EUSES).
      • Small, close-knit group advantages.
      • Other EUSES unique advantages (detailed below).

    • Advantages for industry (industrial researchers and developers):
      • Small, close-knit group discussions of approaches that might solve their real problems & to get academic researchers to know what the real problems are. CONCRETE opportunities to pair up with EUSES researchers to work together on a real problem they (the industrial folks) currently have.
      • Opportunities to bring latest research gains into your company's new or existing commercial products.
      • Helping to establish research directions to address real-world problems by some of the best researchers in this field.
      • Small, close-knit group advantages.
      • Other EUSES unique advantages (detailed below).

    • Other advantages to both academics and industry: What EUSES has of value not easily obtained otherwise:
      • Close-knit idea exchange: Brainstorm with other EUSES members, have access to our internal materials, help decide directions, staying up-to-date with the newest ideas and advances in end-user software engineering.
      • Early access to research results long before published.
      • Easy access to other members (people doing very good work!) who may not be as available or accessible in wider forums.
      • EUSES name is valuable for "branding", e.g., being associated with multiple best-paper awards.
      • Match-making between industry & academia: much easier for a consortium than for an individual.
      • Enhanced media attention to get the word out: Media attention to our work happens regularly (see EUSES web page for details).
      • Easy access to corpuses of data, spreadsheet results, prototypes, through providing all the necessary connections to easily know about & grab these things, access to each others' grad students if problems encountered, etc.
      • Help EUSES survive. This matters if you see EUSES's survival as helpful to your own efforts.

Types of membership

Types of association with EUSES:


Requirements for membership in EUSES

  1. Requirements for "just friends" associations: Anyone who wants can do this.
  2. Requirements for joining as a student member: Must be a student of a Voting Member.
  3. Requirements for joining as an Invited (one-year) member:
    • If currently collaborating with a EUSES member: by invitation only by Exec. Comm., on a per-year basis.
    • If not currently collaborating with a EUSES member: same as current collaborator, but can only be an invited member at most twice as a non-collaborator.
    • Invited members must attend the annual meeting in person (including paying the meeting fee).
    • Length of membership: Invited membership lasts 1 year. It is possible to be an Invited member more than once, but each time the duration is for only one year.
    • Note: An invited member does not need to be a collaborator, and does not need to pay dues.
  4. Requirements for joining as a Voting Member:
    • The 12 original faculty members of the EUSES Consortium are automatically granted Voting membership. These are the 12 researchers on the 2003 ITR grant. (These particular Voting Members are also funded to attend the annual meetings by EUSES until the ITR grant runs out.)
    • Anyone else must apply to be a voting member.
    • Prospective voting members must commit to regular in-person participation in annual meeting or related EUSES activities.
    • Need to pay the dues. (But see Finances for various ways they can be paid.)
    • There must be a genuine collaboration between the proposed member and at least one existing voting member. Where "genuine collaboration" evidence is simply the existing member saying it's true. Can be research (e.g., working on a grant or paper) or research service (eg, co-organizing a workshop together).
    • New voting members must be approved by the mechanisms specified in this document. Criteria will include known quality of work, effects on balance of research subdisciplines in the group, new/potential linkages to existing EUSES members. Other criteria are possible too.
    • Length of membership: Voting membership does not expire.
    • Ongoing responsibilities of Voting Members are (1) paying dues and (2) maintaining regular in-person participation in annual meeting or related EUSES face-to-face activities.

Mechanisms and procedures for granting new memberships:

  1. "Just friends" membership requests are handled solely by the Project Director and staff.
  2. Student membership (as defined on this page) is automatic.
  3. Invited memberships are handled solely by the Executive Committee without discussions with general membership. (Rationale: they are only for 1 year, and there is no reason to have a complicated mechanism for something that temporary.)
  4. The process and rules for granting/denying Voting membership are:
    • A prospective member applies by letting the Project Director know of his/her interest, and by specifying how he/she fulfills the requirements.
    • The Project Director contacts any collaborators named in the prospective member's application for verification.
    • The Project Director passes the materials on to the Executive Committee, which approves or denies the application as follows: (Rationale: avoid burdening entire membership with all applications, as some may be completely unsuitable. Also, reduces embarrassment to applicant if denied.)
      • Exec. committee discusses, obtains more information if needed, then first vote occurs in Executive Committee.
      • If first note is denial (by a majority of all Executive Committee members), application is denied. (Rationale: do not want to embarrass the applicant by broadcasting failed application.)
      • If first vote is approval, then full membership notified of pending acceptance along with member's application, and discussion is invited for 2-4 weeks. (Rationale: if members have to live with the new member, they should be consulted for any serious concerns they have about the new member.)
      • After discussion, second vote occurs in Executive Committee for final approval/denial by a majority of all Executive Committee members.

Membership expirations, mechanisms and procedures for revoking memberships:


Finances of membership:

  1. Financial goals/constraints:
    • Keep central organization going, and to keep level of administrative support consistent with the organization's size. (Background: At the current membership level of the time of this writing, the Proj. Director needs at least $10,000/year to maintain current level of support. This is just enough to pay an undergrad part time assistant for administrative tasks and web page maintenance, travel for the assistant to the annual meeting, a little travel for the director to get the word out on EUSES, and a little funding for publicity and similar EUSES-group expenses. When this pot is directly funded via a grant, as is currently the situation, plus roughly 50% for indirects.)
    • All voting members need to keep contributing to this for the organization to keep going. (The original members are already contributing to this for the life of the NSF ITR'03 grant, via that grant's administrative budget.)
    • Dues amount: $1000/person/year. This amount can be changed by a majority vote of the Executive Committee. (Note: Dues amount is the same for industrial members as for academic members.)
    • Dues note: Do not panic! There are many ways to get these dues paid.
    • Expectation: if there is a profit in EUSES finances from previous years, the profit will be used to underwrite members' attendance at meetings.

  2. How dues can get paid:
    • For free: The 12 original EUSES members are already prepaid for the life of the ITR grant (via the administrative costs funded in the ITR grant).
    • Via grant budget line items: Some could fund via grants, perhaps by budgeting the dues amount under "subcontract". (Rationale/expectation: this will be paid for by having success with grant-writing/fund-raising through collaboration with EUSES.)
    • Via "meeting registrations": For those who have no mechanism in their organization to pay membership fees, they can cover the dues by adding the dues amount to the meeting registration. (Rationale: this will work better in some types of organizations, where there are existing procedures for meeting attendance, but no easy-to-follow procedures for other sorts of expenses.)
    • By covering part of the group's ongoing administrative costs: For example, can be covered "in-kind" from some other large group grant that takes care of at least the equivalent administrative costs (as was true of the EUSES ITR grant), without paying "dues" explicitly.

  3. Annual meeting registration fee:
    • The fee for the 2005 annual meeting fee will be $200 per person. The fee for subsequent annual meetings will be set by the Project Director as finances dictate. (Note: The 12 original EUSES members are already prepaid for the 2005 and 2006 meetings via the ITR grant.)
      • Note: The way it will be published, for members who need to cover the membership fee this way, is $1200, with a $1000 discount for Voting and Invited Members.
      • Who can attend annual meetings: Voting, Invited, and Student members can attend.
    • Student members are exempt from any registration fee.
    • The original 12 EUSES members' meeting fees are pre-paid through the 2006 meeting via the ITR grant. Their travel expenses are also underwritten by that grant through the 2006 meeting.
    • Rationale for meeting fees: After the ITR grant runs out, EUSES will no longer have funding for people's travel to the meetings, food, space, etc. To fund the meetings therefore, we need to charge a registration fee. Will be enough to fund not only the meeting expenses, but also contribute a little to the EUSES administrative funding as EUSES grows.

  4. Expenditures:
    • Use of fees received directly from dues payments will be used only for the following purposes:
      • To pay Project director's assistant(s) to help with project direction expenses.
      • Funding of expenses to run annual meetings.
      • Materials for promotion of EUSES. (conference ribbons, handouts, ...)
      • Occasional project director travel to promote EUSES.
      • Other types of expenditures may be made only if authorized by the Executive Committee.
    • Transparency: Annual accountings of use of dues will be reported to the members.

Mechanisms for changing these policies

Changes to these policies must be approved by a 2/3 vote of all existing Voting Members.