MINUTES OF THE NATIONAL CAPITAL FREENET BOARD MEETING 17 October 1995 held in the Honeywell Room, RMOC Headquarters The following Board members were in attendance: David Blackwood, aa332 Scott Catterill, aa355 Jessica Cohen, aa724 Brett Delmage, aa693 Rosaleen Dickson, ac174 Chris Hawley, ah654 Rebecca Last, as006 David Loan, aa112 Andrew Patrick, 1st Vice President, aa118 Dave Sutherland, President, aa001 Richard Taylor, Secretary, aa333 Stephen Toy, aa102 Absent: Julie Chahal, 2nd Vice President, ab161 Yvonne Dionne, ao594 Richard Mount, aa009 NCF Staff Present: Lisa Donnelly, Executive Director; Ian D. Allen, System Administrator; Gordon Pearson, Director of Development; Sheila Currie-Alder, Administrative Coordinator. NCF committee/task force/project members and regular members present: Alana Boltwood ad097, Jeff Bossert - Treasurer xx025, Matthew Darwin xx673, Bruce Donaldson ai995, Jim Elder xx456, Garth Graham aa127, Miranda Gray xx717, Mike Jankulak am821, Dave Jones aa457, Steve Kroeker ao669, Andrea Kujala aq880, Chris Lewis, David Libert ah170, Yvan Loranger bq434, Mike Mason an956, Andre Ouellette bf766, John Stewart xx104. Dave Sutherland called the meeting to order at 7:00 p.m. 1. INTRODUCTIONS 2. APPROVAL OF MINUTES OF 19 SEPTEMBER, 1995 Two corrections were noted: at the time of the Homolka case Dave Sutherland and Richard Mount consulted with the Crown Attorney but did not meet with him; also the motion to adopt the AUP was not carried unanimously (4a). With these corrections, moved by D. Loan, seconded by R. Taylor and carried that the minutes be approved. 3. REVIEW OF AGENDA - It was decided to deal with the PID's first. 4. OLD BUSINESS 4a. Personalized ID's - Gordon Pearson reviewed the advantages of the personalized ID's and noted that it might not be wise to wait. Estimated revenue is $7,000 per month. It was noted in the discussion that the member's real name will still be attached to their login id and that the traditional two letters and three digits will still be used by the member to login. Vetting for acceptable login names has not been a problem in the experience of Toronto Freenet. The $100 required to get a PID is a one-time only fee and PID's will also be made available as part of NCF's recognition of volunteer work. MOTION TO ADOPT PERSONALIZED ID'S Moved by Rebecca Last, seconded by Brett Delmage that Personalized ID's (PIDs) be made available as part of NCF'S Donor Recognition Program in connection with contributions of volunteer work as well as financial donations. Carried. 4b. EXPORTING NEWSGROUPS TASK FORCE REPORT - Jessica Cohen noted that the Report is available online. A lengthy discussion followed: NONAG's role (NCF-Ottawa News Administrators Group) is to back up site agreements; NCF should make bilateral agreements - forget NONAG; the number of sites in Ottawa is so large that NCF cannot control them all; idea of NONAG is to get representation into control of sites - sharing responsibility. There could be legal problems turning employer/employee relationship over to some other body (possible conflict between NONAG and employer for site administrators at private corporations or government departments). News administrators currently handle this stuff. We are talking about setting up a new body to do what we are already doing. Item 2D ("what about the rumours of NONAG administering ott.* groups?") is irrelevant here because it is not part of NCF. We need more discussion on the impact to NCF, not just implementation details. IP's should have the right to change mind on exporting. Yes, they will be able to do that. We still have no input from IP's. We have IP's who have trickled away. Have they set up a web page? As an IP I want to have only one newsgroup. As this goes on it seems more and more complicated and I am losing interest. Easiest way is to kill NCF group and just have the Ott* groups. We could simplify the whole thing by just exporting groups with no restrictions. The mandate of the taskforce was never very clear. The NCF Board has voted in favour of the principle of exporting newsgroups. Let's make sure we don't use Rogers-style "included unless specifically opt-out" approach. Jessica Cohen requested a straw vote on whether the Board was in favour of the concept of NONAG. Generally opposed to the NONAG concept and in favour of complaints being handled internally by the NCF Complaints Committee. Discussion will continue online both in ncf board-unmoderated, and Ottawa online. Jessica will post the complete discussion. 4c. POLICY UPDATES Richard Taylor noted that some policies posted online are outdated. Item 669 in board moderated newsgroup contains a list prepared by Lisa Donnelly. Alana Boltwood has proposed a surveys policy. BOARD MEMBERS VOLUNTEERING TO WORK ON POLICY UPDATING Richard Taylor will change the online policy statement on IRC (need a statement of why we don't have international IRC) and will continue working on the freedom of expression policy. Dave Loan had previously worked on a hiring policy with Lisa Donnelly. He will finalize it for Board approval. Brett Delmage will work on the conflict of interest policy (Lisa has posted some information on these) and policy re sharing of NCF-developed applications. Chris Hawley will work on a policy on binary newsgroups (Miranda Gray wrote a draft material selection policy that can be used for this) and a policy of user privacy and collection of statistics. 5. STRATEGY BRIEF - LAST FISCAL QUARTER OF 1995 The brief, prepared by Lisa Donnelly, Executive Director, and Jeff Bossert, Treasurer, is available online. There were two questions raised: Item 2.0 - Could NCF afford a full-time Project Coordinator rather than the half-time position proposed? Lisa responded that there was a need to be financially conservative - the 15k is annual projection. Is phone company access coming soon? No, it is not imminent. It was noted that right now it is hard to get into NCF in the evening. The Board agreed in general with the strategies outlined in this brief. 6. REPORTS 6a. OPERATIONS UPDATE - Lisa Donnelly's report is available online. It was noted that the office move will be taking place in just over a week. 6b. SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR QUARTERLY REPORT - Ian Allen distributed seven pages of graphs which he had prepared. Overall, with 10,000 more users we have a lower system load than we had last March. For whatever reason, the system was very busy last March. 6c. FUNDRAISING UPDATE - Gordon Pearson's report is available online. Rebecca Last is organizing the December Reception and asked the Board members for their help and support. 6d. FINANCIAL REPORT - Jeff Bossert's reports for August and September are available online. 7. 1996 ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING PLANS Andrew Patrick has posted discussion notes online. What is Board members' responsibility for covering online discussion? What annual reports need to be prepared? Do any bylaws need to be changed? There is a need for a general motion to approve board actions of the previous year. How should debate of this motion be handled? Should actions and policies be separated for discussion? Should board members post their CV's? Should NCF be actively recruiting candidates for the Board with certain identified skills and qualities which would complement those of the present Board members? Issue of accountability of Board members needs to be addressed. MOTION ON DATE OF AGM Moved by Dave Loan, seconded by Rebecca Last: that the Annual General Meeting take place from February 26 to March 11, 1995. Carried. Garth Graham has offered to act as returning officer and Matthew Darwin will help with the menu maintenance. It was noted that the Bylaws state that items which NCF members wish to bring to the AGM must be submitted to the Board at least two weeks before the February meeting. Lisa Donnelly will work on terms of reference for the nominating committee. Further discussion of the AGM will take place at the November meeting. 8. DATE OF NEXT MEETING - TUESDAY 21 NOVEMBER 1995 At 9:47 the open part of the meeting ended and the Board moved in camera to discuss staff compensation and contracts. However since Julie Chahal had originally asked for this item and she was not available at this meeting, it was decided to postpone this item until the November meeting. 9. Adjourned at 10:00 pm.