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Meeting roundup: March 2017

In an effort to better connect our members, we wanted to send out a brief, unofficial report on today’s meeting. This does not supplant nor replace the minutes, which will be distributed closer to our May meeting.

We had guest presentations from Dirk Spiers, of Spiers New Technologies, who gave a lively briefing of his firm’s work in Oklahoma and his take on our current state of affairs. Here’s a link to Dirk’s interview with www.okgit.wpengine.com last year.

Next up was Peggy Millikin of Millikin Intellectual Property Law who discussed her firm’s full service intellectual property legal work, including work for Oklahoma firms interested in international trade and copyright protections.

Loida Salmond of Le Monde International School, a public charter school in Norman offering K-6 education in French and K-1 education Spanish, set to open in August 2017. The group agreed to discuss offering a letter of support for the mission of promoting foreign language instruction at a later date.

In the final guest presentation, the University of Tulsa’s Jane Kucko introduced herself to the group in her role as TU’s Vice-Provost for Global Education. She’ll oversee the university’s center for global education, which oversees study abroad, TU Global Scholars and global development program initiatives.

Following that the group members in attendance overwhelming voted to affirm four new members of the group:

Rico Buchli gave an update on the consular corps, including an update on the situation in Peru from OKGIT member and honorary consul Enrique Villar-Gambetta, who requested an email be sent to the group concerning relief efforts at mitigating devastating floods there.

The group agreed to fund $2,000 for this year’s International Day at the Capitol, taking place April 19.

Those in attendance, along with feedback from some members who were unable to attend the meeting, supported the proposal to reschedule the time of the May 16 OKGIT meeting to 2 p.m. and investigate the possibility of a reception to follow at a nearby venue. More details will come in the following weeks.

Chair John Curzon also discussed the possibility of closer collaboration with partners in the Netherlands through work with OKGIT-member organizations like Creative Oklahoma ahead of Dutch Design Week in October 2017 and the World Creative Forum in November 2017.

The next OKGIT meeting will be May 16 at 2 p.m. at the Oklahoma Department of Commerce.