Minutes of the National Capital FreeNet Board Meeting August 19, 1997 - 7:00pm Held at the Olde Forge Community Resource Centre 2730 Carling Avenue, Corner of Richmond Road PRESENT: Jeff Bossert, Treasurer, au025 JB Jessica Cohen, aa724 JC Jim Elder, aa456 JE Michael Mason, Secretary, an956 MM Jean Wilmot, aa145 JW Andre Vellino, Vice President, an386 AV Chris Hawley, ah654 CH ABSENT: Natalie Munro, aa966 NM Dave Sutherland, President/Chairman, aa001 DS NCF Staff Present: Christopher Cope, Executive Director, bz787 Yannick Gravel, System Administrator, xx136 Sheila Alder, Administrative Coordinator, xx001 NCF Members Present: E. O'Driscoll, Minute Taker, af995 Colin Cantlie, ae866 1. INTRODUCTION ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Andre Vellino took the chair and Michael Mason acted as Secretary of the meeting. Directors being present and notice of the meeting having been duly given, the meeting was declared to be properly constituted for the conduct of business. 2. MINUTES OF THE PREVIOUS MEETING ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Chairman tabled the draft minutes, amended, of the last meeting of the Board held in July 1997 which, upon motion made by Jean Wilmot, seconded by Jeff Bossert and carried, were approved. 3. REVIEW OF THE AGENDA ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ It was proposed that an item regarding a proposal from Kessler Financial Services and another regarding spam filtering stats be added to the agenda. 4. OLD BUSINESS ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Board Vacancies The bylaws provide for the Board to fill vacant board positions by appointment until the next AGM. Colin Cantlie was introduced to the board as a possible director candidate. Colin has a strong interest in community networking and serving NCF members and the community. At the end of the meeting, in an in-camera session, the Board voted to extend an invitation to Colin to act as a director for the balance of the fiscal year, until the next AGM. 5. REPORTS ~~~~~~~~~~ a) Treasurer's Report Jeff Bossert, Treasurer, presented a summary of the month's report. Revenue from donations in July totalled $9,655 with approximately $5,500 associated with renewals. $700 was received from a line sponsorship. 89 accounts were unarchived in the past month, with $890 in donations accompanying the unarchival requests. Jeff noted that the cash balance was essentially in accordance with the predicted amount in the 1997 budget, once the payables we have are taken into consideration. The ONET fee invoice had not yet been received. b) Executive Director's Report Christopher Cope, NCF's Executive Director, presented his monthly report and mentioned some of the highlights: - The renewal process is nearly completing its first complete annual cycle. All early NCF members have been sent renewal notices, and the remaining part of this year's cycle involves only people who became members a year ago. The renewal rate among these recent members is very high; of 651 notices sent in July, 605 renewed. - Many new members were signed up during the summer through varying groups: summer camps, summer classes, and members of the Royal Foot Guard, who had the opportunity to use e-mail to remain in contact with friends and family while away from home. - The Council on Aging opened a new Organizational Account in July. - The Trillium Foundation requested additional information regarding the grant request that was sent to them earlier this year. We continute to be optimistic that our request will be looked on favourably and that the request for more information is a sign of serious consideration. - 26 archived members were the owners of approximately 150 orphaned menus. Andre Ouellette has been contacting these members and response has been favourable, resulting in many renewing their interest in maintaining their IP area. - The top 5 priorities were listed (and described in the Executive Director report): 1) membership drive, 2) FreeNet NextGeneration project, 3) Search Engine, 4) strategic plan, 5) additional telephone lines. Chris gave a brief run-down of what happened at the Telecommunity Canada meeting. A written report will be forthcoming. Finally, Chris reported statistics measuring the effectiveness of the "anti-spam" measures that were recently put into place. A total of 45,721 connections were blocked, representing approximately 7,620 per day. It was underscored that the numbers represented connections - not pieces of mail. 6. INFORMATION ITEMS ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ a) Extended Access Project Jeff Bossert reported that Cisco Systems had indicated that they could donate an AS5100 Terminal Server (48 ports with 28.8kbps modems and analog interfaces) or sell NCF and AS5200 Terminal Server for $10K (48 ports with 56kbps modems and ISDN interfaces). Jeff indicated that he would check with Mitel regarding the feasibility of using the donated AS5100 terminal server. Jeff also indicated that he was making inquiries with Newbridge for a terminal server donation, in the event that the analog port Cisco terminal server could not be used. b) Kessler Financial Services A folder was given to each board member outlining a new program to be offered in the future by Kessler Financial services. They planned to have "MBNA Canada" become a charted financial institution, which would then offer the "Affinity MasterCard Program". Kessler proposes NCF offer members the opportunity to obtain a MasterCard with NCF's logo on it, with a portion of revenues from MBNA going to NCF as what is essentially a way to raise funds. The folder was briefly examined by those who were present, and the general consensus was that it would be re-examined at a later time, since there was a great number of questions that were inspired after a brief look. 7. DATE OF THE NEXT MEETING ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The next meeting will be held on Tuesday, September 16, 1997 at 7:00pm at the RMOC Headquarters, 111 Lisgar Street. 8. ADJOURNMENT ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ There being no further business the meeting adjourned at 9:25pm.