The delegate assembly met on 29 December 2008 at the Hilton San Francisco Hotel. First Vice President Catherine Porter presided. The assembly was called to order at 1:18 p.m. The chair made some preliminary announcements about the conduct of the meeting, called for a demonstration of the electronic voting system to be used during the meeting, and announced the quorum for the meeting, which was 79 delegates, because 157 delegates had signed in for the meeting at the beginning. [Note: Of the 268 delegates, 176 (65.7%) attended all or part of the meeting (see the list that follows for the names of the delegates in attendance).]