Executive Director's Report September, 1997 =========================== October 16, 1997 By Christopher L. Cope (execdir@freenet.carleton.ca) Contents: 1. Funding and Public Relations Update 2. NCF Administration 3. Member Services and Future Initiatives 1. Funding Update ================= a) Cash Received in September ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ $3,515.00 New Registrants: 186 individual donations (including 10 for $187.00, separate from registration) plus 3 PFAs 3,920.40 Renewals (201 donations plus 3 PFA renewals) 200.00 Organizational Accounts 40.00 Boutique 45.31 U.S. Exchange (gain) -------------------------------------- $7,720.71 Total Deposit b) Membership Activity: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Renewal notices and reminders continued to be sent out throughout the month of September. 543, 1st stage notices were sent out this month with 320 members renewing (various due dates, including current). 531 3rd stage and 5930 4th stage notices were sent this month. The total of 2nd, 3rd and 4th stage notices (7,004) represents the maximum potential number of accounts to archive. During the month, 467 new accounts were validated and 100 were unarchived. Our current active membership stands at 22,996 members; (64,708 validated since inception). Assuming that most of the members receiving 2nd, 3rd and 4th stage notices will not renew, membership can be estimated at approximately 18,000 (22,996 [current] - 5,500 [estimated to be archived] + 465 [typical new] = 17,961). This month, 6,145 accounts were archived. We sent out 543 1st renewal notices and 320 members renewed. The number 'renewed' is the total of all renewals in the month and includes members who are responding to renewal requests from previous months. Comparing 1st stage renewal requests to members renewing there is an 'apparent' current period net loss of 223 members, which is offset by 467 new validations. Revenue related to membership has fallen behind budget this month. The budget assumes $6,000 from new registrants and $3,000 from renewing members, for a total of $9,000. In September, we received $3,515 from new members and $3,920 was attributable to renewals, for a total of $7,435. Renewal Data for 11 months: November 1996 to September 1997 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ % of % of. Cum.% Rec'd Sent Donors/ Sent Rec'd Donors Donors Donors Tot Sent Tot/Don Budget Avg Don Nov. 6,155 213 141 66.2% 2.3% 2.3% $ 3,063 $5,000 $21.72 Dec. 8,560 1,065 666 62.5% 7.8% 5.5% $15,373 $7,000 $23.08 Jan. 8,219 1,277 1,136 89.0% 13.8% 8.5% $24,278 $31,000 $21.37 Feb. 7,846 2,331 1,495 64.1% 19.1% 11.2% $33,163 $31,000 $22.18 Mar. 8,889 2,190 1,659 75.8% 18.7% 12.8% $31,229 $31,000 $18.82 Apr. 7,817 2,217 1,437 64.8% 18.4% 13.8% $31,738 $31,000 $22.09 May. 3,079 1,831 1,266 69.1% 41.1% 15.4% $25,888 $31,000 $20.45 Jun. 793 654 418 63.9% 52.7% 16.0% $ 8,457 $16,250 $20.23 Jul. 651 605 299 49.4% 45.9% 16.4% $ 5,502 $ 3,000 $18.40 Aug. 633 448 261 58.3% 41.2% 16.7% $ 4,896 $ 3,000 $18.76 Sep. 543 320 186 58.1% 34.3% 16.9% $ 3,423 $ 3,000* $18.40 ~~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ 52,642 12,831 8,778 68.4% * The total Registration budget for September is $9,000. The amount anticipated for "new" registrants is $6,000 while the budget for renewals is $3,000. c) Organizational Accounts ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Canadian Oral History Association and Hunt Club Community Centre opened organizational accounts. d) August Connection Sponsors ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ There were no new Connection sponsors in September e) Government Grants ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ (a) Trillium Foundation: We continue to be optimistic that our request for grant funding for our online job-search training project will be looked on favorably. (b) We have made application for a grant from the Regional Municipality of Ottawa Carleton under their 1998 Economic Development program, for a grant of $69,000. The NCF proposes to assist small and emerging businesses in developing an Internet presence (World Wide Web pages) and in using the Internet as a tool to enhance their sales opportunities. Through an extensive research and marketing program, NCF will actively seek out businesses who lack resources to obtain such Internet exposure. The NCF will deliver Internet training and web page development skills, as well as host services for e-mail, electronic news and Internet web pages crucial for competing in today's marketplace. f) Public Relations Update ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The October issue of the NCF Newsletter "FreeNews" was sent out to the mailing list and is now online (go freenews) and is also available on the Web at: http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/public-relations/ A new link has been added to the Funding homepage. This link connects to a High Tech Directory, containing the names of over 500 area high tech firms. The link, is provided as a resource for the Funding Team to identify local high tech. firms. URL: (http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/funding/) A Funding/PR meeting is scheduled for Tuesday October 14, 1997. Minutes of this meeting will be online when available: (go funding - ncf.sub.funding) or (go prt - ncf.sub.public-relations). Our Net Abuse Response Team was featured in the October issue of Monitor Magazine - Gordon Pearson's FREEbytes column. This column can be accessed online at "go freebytes". A list of candidates for the upcoming Municipal Elections has been placed on line. All municipalities in the Ottawa-Carleton region were contacted by telephone and the information they provided included in the menus being constructed for this election. Thanks go to Michael Mason and Andre Ouellette. Ads were run in both Monitor and Ottawa Computes. This month's ads targeted organizations and small businesses, offering opportunities for e-mail, websites discussion etc. which are available with NCF membership. g) The Women's Internet Conference, Oct 18-21,1997 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Women's Internet Conference will be held in Ottawa from October 18 to 21. Our Sheila Alder has been asked to speak at the conference, on "Women and FreeNet". She will have an opportunity to promote NCF to several focus groups: women, disabled women, and women from other cultures and to share our system of truly free access and our approach to public access with all conference delegates. The conference will be preceded by a day of training at the University of Ottawa (October 18th), so that all participants are up to speed, and so the conference can focus on how to use the Internet in our daily work. Sheila will be helping train conference attendees, as well as registering any who wish to open an NCF account. During the conference, there will be a communications room for Web design training, a possible session on holding meetings online, and to provide an opportunity for delegates to keep up with their e-mail. Sunday's programme will consist mainly of input, papers and workshops from women who are already using the Internet. Sheila is scheduled to speak on Sunday, along with presenters from Saskatchewan Freenet and Vancouver Community Net. Sunday evening the Rainbow Women's Centre will offer an evening of multicultural food and entertainment. Monday's strategy sessions will make recommendations and find ways for women to continue to work together using the Internet. Monday evening will offer a "Web Weaving" session, where women show their Web sites on a screen and discuss how they went about designing their work, and their aims. Tuesday's final plenary will close the conference, and Sheila will bring her report to our NCF Board meeting that evening. There is a link to the conference website on the go conference menu, as well as on Sheila's own page. h) Funding Administrivia ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The online list of donor files was updated to reflect all September donations. Thank You letters were sent to all donors. 2. NCF Administration ====================== a) Top Five Priorities ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ (1) Strategic Plan A second draft of a Strategic Plan has been prepared and circulated to Board Members. (2) Extended Access Implementation of a scheme for evening use of a Key Partner's telephone lines is underway. Completion is expected in October. (3) 1998 Budget The finance committee will present a draft 1998 budget at the upcoming Board meeting. (4) FreeNet NextGeneration Project Planning continues, on a configuration plan for the future of the NCF system. (5) Marketing In addition to the RMOC grant application, a program is underway to market NCF to small business. b) Network Upgrades ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ (1) A donation of 14.4 Kbps modems has made possible, the elimination of all existing 9600 baud modems. Shelves and power bars have been ordered, with the installation scheduled for October. This change facilitates an opportunity to make use of a feature of our Centrex lines to call forward 520-1130 to 520-1135 on busy, which will be implemented at the time similar changes are made to enable the Extended Access project. (2) During the month of September, the system was quite stable. We experienced news outages twice on the 7th and 8th due to a bad block on the hard disk storing news. It was necessary to format the disk to mark (and thus avoid) the bad block which resulted in a loss of stored articles. We also had an outage of the FreeMail server, due to a misconfiguration of the archival script. The script has been fixed and no mail was lost. c) FreeNet NextGeneration Project ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Planning continues.... Database: Oracle has donated copies of their newest software to help us create the core database. Oracle have agreed also to provide support for their product in the form of training for the Sysadmin, full documentation, online support and most importantly, hands-on help to get the project going. The internal center-piece of FreeNet Next-Generation will be a "Big Database" and the oracle donation will greatly facilitate our requirement for administrative functions and "point and click" accessibility for office volunteers. All control files, configuration etc. will be built from this master database. User Interface: NCF will continue to be accessible in text mode, but menus will be web based to make it more appealing for members to access FreeNet through PPP connections. Mail: A stand-alone machine will be used as a maildrop server. (POP) Other servers can be used as Mail Exchanger for our domain (MX) and do the explosion of @freenet addresses. Support Servers: These servers will have support roles in assisting sysadmins/office - staff/volunteers etc. in doing their work. Several "gizmo" or specialized servers will be included in this category, for example: a page server. Authentication, Session Server, File Server, Services: Further definition will be available for these elements. Directors and members are encouraged to visit http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/sysadmin/ng/index.html frequently as details will be added there as the plan progresses. 3. Member Services and Future Initiatives ========================================== a) Strategy ~~~~~~~~ A 2nd draft of a Strategic plan for 1998, has been circulated to the Board of Directors. The plan has been amended to reflect discussion and suggestions arising from the August 19, 1997 Board meeting. The plan will be the foundation for the 1998 planning process and provide a framework for the development of Operations Plans and a guideline for the 1998 budget b) Extended Access ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Cisco terminal server has been installed at Mitel and initial configuration of the unit is complete. So far, only 2 telephone lines have been connected to the unit. Mitel will connect the External segment sometime early in the week of October 12th. These 2 lines unfortunately were the last 2 pairs presently available between Mitel's PBX and the computer room housing our server. The additional lines from the PBX to the rest of the ports are to be installed sometime during the week of October 19th. (They need to pull wires between the two rooms.) During this period, we will complete the configuration of the front-end menu and perform the initial configuration of the Radius authentication. To complete the first phase. we will need to Complete the configuration of the authentication subsystem, Implement a way to enforce time limits, Configure a port on gw.ncf as a terminal server port in order to be able turn on and off the forwarding to Mitel. We will have to order the Forwarding and the overflow setup from Bell Canada. Mitel will obtain a sub-net for us from iStar (their Internet provider) and plan connect us to a second Ethernet port on their Internet router instead of being connected on one port of their Switch on their External/Internet segment. Mitel have agreed to supply a Pentium based PC to use as a Gateway/Proxy/Firewall server which will enable enforcing access policy usage monitoring, proxy/cache, remote access etc. [Idea/Proposed - Next Stage]: Link between Mitel and FreeNet. Having a dedicated link between the two sites to improve access to/from the Extended access site. This will mean faster news, telnet, web., etc. The link will also enable having the proxy server at Mitel work with our local one. There is concern that Carleton's T1 is quite saturated presently and although they are currently investigating causes and solutions, our connection speed could be affected. Additionally, Mitel's T1 is far from idle and we will need to monitor the initial setup carefully. Without adding a dedicated link, the terminal sever will be 16 hops away from our existing gateway, located at Carleton (based on a recent traceroute). Again, analysis of the initial setup will be needed. c) 1998 Budget ~~~~~~~~~~~ The Finance committee will present a draft 1998 budget at the September 21, 1997 Board meeting. An analysis of member numbers and renewal patterns has been completed (thanks to Jim Elder) to enable forecasting revenue. Similarly, present expenses and commitments were reviewed to facilitate cost projections for next year. d) Marketing ~~~~~~~~~ Two of our co-op students have completed the first phase of a marketing program to build our Organizational account base. This first phase, was essentially a development and planning step and the actual outreach step will start mid October. The students have developed two target lists, scripts, letters and record keeping systems. They will progress to the active phase and begin telephoning the target organizations to confirm address and contact details as well as learn about present Internet availability. e) Auction ~~~~~~~ November is FreeNet auction month (just in time for Christmas). Both Microsoft and Corel have donated software and accessories. Several individuals have made personal donations and at least one computer retailer will donate some hardware items. The 9600 baud modem racks which are to be replaced shortly and a vintage 386 workstation c/w Trinitron monitor are also going to be on the block. Additionally some uniquely FreeNet items will be auctioned: a limited number of "aa" accounts will be auctioned and a few special time extensions blocks will go to the highest bidder. f) NCF Website Design Contest ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A contest open to all NCF members to design NCF's homepage (site) will be formally announced shortly. Pat Drummond will chair the team working on the contest and will announce details as they are available. We expect considerable interest and competition among members for the unique distinction of participating in the design of such a high profile page and to being named "Honorary NCF Webmaster." g) Archiving/Unarchiving continues ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ As can be seen in the table above, we have archived approximately 42,416 accounts since the process began. As in previous months, the archiving step itself, serves as a prompt for some members to renew their account. September was a record month for unarchiving. We received 100 requests for unarchival, bringing the total of accounts unarchived YTD to 282. h) Progress with Auto-install Diskettes for PPP Connectivity ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Microsoft Internet Explorer versions are now complete and testing continues. We expect to be able to reproduce working copies shortly. The Mac version is complete as well, ready for reproduction. The Netscape version for Windows95 is also complete but un-tested. Testing will begin right away. Finally, development of the Windows 3.x version for Netscape seems to becoming together with completion expected in the next week or so. We have a volunteer who can produce a limited quantity of CD-ROM copies and the plan is to have all three systems as well as help files and documentation available on a single disk, which will be made available on "loan" to members. We are seeking a donor for blank diskettes to create some diskette versions as well. Office volunteers will perform duplication while answering phones etc. The programs will also be available for download in the PDA. -- *** Christopher L. Cope, Executive Director *** National Capital Freenet / Libertel de la Capitale nationale voice (613) 820-8885 -or- fax (613) 820-3982