Minutes of a Meeting of the Board of Directors of the National Capital FreeNet held on December 15, 1998 at 7:00 p.m. at RMOC - Richmond Room 111 Lisgar St. PRESENT: Jeff Bossert 2nd Vice-President & Treasurer au025 JB Jessica Cohen Secretary aa724 JC Jim Elder aa456 JE Miranda Gray ak717 MG Chris Hawley ah654 CH Michael Mason 1st Vice-President an956 MM Natalie Munro aa966 NM Andrew Nellis bs904 AN Jean Wilmot aa145 JW REGRETS: Dave Sutherland President aa001 DS STAFF PRESENT: Chris Cope Executive Director bz787 Sheila Alder Administrative Coordinator bw306 Andre Dalle System Administrator al178 Minute-Taker: Andrea Kujala aq880 MEMBERS PRESENT: Andre Ouellette bf766 Mike Billows bm582 Pat Drummond ad996 Ian Allen aa610 Richard Bethell cj434 James Schofield dj271 Rohit Saxena ba193 GUESTS: Gary Shearman 1. INTRODUCTIONS The meeting was called to order at 7:05 p.m. with Michael Mason as Chair, and Jessica Cohen as Secretary. 2. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF THE PREVIOUS MEETING OF THE BOARD MOVED BY Natalie Munro and SECONDED by Jim Elder, that minutes of the November 1998 meeting be approved. Motion CARRIED. IN FAVOUR: JE MM NM JW ABSTAINED: JB CH ABSENT: JC MG AN 3. REVIEW OF THE AGENDA Item 5e) How we build our agendas was dropped. Item 5a) - draft budget was moved to the end of the agenda and was considered as part of an in camera session. Item 5b) - Advertising Taskforce Report was moved to after the Executive Director's report. 4. VOLUNTEER OF THE YEAR AND VOLUNTEER OF THE MONTH PRESENTATIONS Hot Metal Pro 3.0 packages and certificates of appreciation were presented to the volunteers of the month for 1998: January - Elizabeth O'Driscoll February - Andre Ouellette March - Pat Drummond April - Graeme Beckett May - Mike Billows June - Paul Tomblin July - James Schofield August - Colin McFadyen September - NIM - NCF irc moderator October - Doug Thompson November - Ian Allen December - Richard Bethell And the Volunteer of the Year 1998: Ian Allen. 5. OLD BUSINESS 5.c) Keeping ourselves current and informed: proposed method (Jim Elder) At each board meeting there would be a 1/2 hour presentation on a topic of interest and relevance. Board members will rotate with arranging presentations. Possible topics: Geocities, EBay, other freenets, local ISP's and their policies, local websites, Yahoo Points raised in discussion: Should be last item on the agenda so that all pressing business is covered at board meeting; some topics might be best covered by a team of people; presentations will be voluntary; presentations could be made by Board members, volunteers, or professionals. Jim Elder offered to give the presentation at the January meeting. MOVED BY Jim Elder and SECONDED BY Michael Mason that a presentation on a topic of interest become a part of each Board meeting. MOTION CARRIED IN FAVOUR: JB JC JE CH MM NM JW ABSTAINED: AN ABSENT: MG 5.d) Raising NCF's profile and membership: proposed method (Jim Elder) Jim outlined the idea of a flyer to raise the profile of NCF. On one side would be information about the internet and NCF and on the other there would be an application for membership. These flyers could be distributed at computer stores, handed out door to door and displayed on telephone poles etc. Points raised in discussion: perhaps we should be approaching former members to see if they would be interested in returning; Chris Cope will be the team leader for development of the flyer but he would appreciate help in developing content and layout. Jim Elder, Jean Wilmot and Michael Mason offered to work on the team. MOVED BY Jim Elder, SECONDED BY Natalie Munro that NCF produce a flyer to publicize our services. MOTION CARRIED. IN FAVOUR: JB JC JE CH MM NM AN JW ABSENT: MG 6. REPORTS 6.a) Treasurer's Report (Jeff Bossert) Jeff Bossert distributed copies of his report with the proposed budget attached. November had been a good month. Renewals were up, due to the tail end of the fund raising campaign. The Fundraising Faire raised $600, and the auction raised $2900. Thanks go to Donna Shaw and Fiona Hammond for organizing the Fundraising Faire, and to Mike Mason for organizing the auction. Expenses have increased and are more in line with the budget because we now have a system administrator. 6.b) Executive Director's Report (Chris Cope) Membership Usage ================ With the restrictions lifted, people seem to be using lines more. There was some discussion of implementing time limit notification for PPP users. The express modems are being used more now that they are longer limited to 10 minutes sessions. Contribution Strategy ===================== General response seems to be favourable. Renewals with donations for December so far are up, and look to exceed the previous year's renewal donations. The breakdown of email responses to the message of the month have been 35% favourable, 51% neutral (neutral messages comprising of both people emailing asking for information about the contribution policy, and people emailing for unrelated information in reply to the message about the contribution policy) and 14% critical. Most people are opting to make a monetary donation rather than voluntary one (or as well as). Mike Mason, volunteer coordinator is receiving about 3-4 emails a day. The new registration form on the web is now very easy for staff to process - thanks to James Holmes, an associate of Chris Hawley. We are taking a relaxed attitude with regard to voluntary contributions for renewals. Generally , all volunteer contributions (including signing on a new member) are being accepted, and we are generally taking people at their word in terms of their contributions. There is still an information item in one of the menus ("go facts, item #1) emphasizing that FreeNet is free to everyone, which is confusing to many people misunderstand that FreeNet is free to use, and not free to run. This needs to have the wording changed. Chris Cope will look after this. Auction ======= The auction raised 2976.50 dollars for NCF. There are some unsold auction items which will be sold in garage sales, and future auctions. Year 2000 Issues ================ There may be Y2K problems with one of our machines, freenet 2. The operating system cannot be upgraded. However, since it is running freeport stuff, which is decreasing, there should not be a problem if we take it out of service. The remaining machines and the annex servers are all either Y2K-compliant or can be patched. Jessica asked about the year 2000 issues with Freeport and the registration database. Neither will be a problem. Anything that comes up will be possible for the technical volunteers to fix. The registration database already uses full dates. ncf.ca ====== Our webpages are currently visible at www.ncf.ca or www.ncf.carleton.ca. Next step is to modify mail for ncf.ca, without breaking freenet.carleton.ca addressing. Some board members like keeping Carleton in the name, while others prefer the shorter name. Andrew raised concerns that with both addresses being valid , spam may increase. OLD BUSINESS: 5.b) Advertising Taskforce Report (Andrew Nellis) Andrew Nellis reported that he is having difficulty contacting the people he needs to get in touch with about advertising because the advertisers are very cautious, not wanting to be taken for spammers. Nevertheless, he feels this needs to be pursued because advertising could replace the need to get money from the membership. Several board members expressed concern with associating with perceived net outlaws and felt that perhaps we should not even consider getting into opt-in email advertising. This item will be deferred until a future meeting. Andrew will continue working on this in the meantime. 7. NEW BUSINESS 7.a) AGM (Jessica Cohen) Jessica listed out the AGM duties that needed to be filled, and a proposed AGM timeline. Mike Mason will act as AGM chair and as returning officer. Jessica Cohen will prepare the board motions , and act as general and board FAQ maintainers. Jean Wilmot will handle proxies. Don McCallum will setup candidates information menus. Candidate nominations will open February 2nd, and close on February 16th. The voting period for candidates and motions will open on February 23rd, and close on March 9th. There was some discussion on the deadline for special business, most Board members felt the proposed deadline of February 2nd would not leave members much time to properly consider any special business arising. The deadline was decided as January 12th for submission of special business to the secretary. Special business would then be discussed at the January board meeting, and would be part of an information package prepared for January 26th, allowing members 4 weeks to consider it before voting begins. People suggesting special business will be encouraged to attend the January board meeting. It was suggested to the AGM chair that in addition to a potential live all-candidates meeting, an IRC or webchat all candidates meeting be scheduled. 8. IN CAMERA SESSION The budget was discussed. the following amendments to be made were identified: - increase the probability of donation from 85% to 95%. - increase revenue from new registrations; ramp up over time to reflect a membership drive - remove the funding drive listed in August MOVED by Jean Wilmot, SECONDED by Mike Mason to approved the 1999 budget in principle, subject to incorporating the identified amendments. MOTION CARRIED IN FAVOUR: JB JC JE CH MM NM AN JW ABSTAINED: MG. 9. Date of next meeting: January 19th, 7:00 pm Olde Forge Community Resource Centre 2370 Carling Ave. 10. Adjournment With no further business to discuss, the meeting adjourned at 10:15 pm.