Board Meeting - May 19/98 At St. Laurent Branch, OPL Present: Miranda Gray ak717 MG Jeff Bossert au025 JB Jessica Cohen aa724 JC David Sutherland aa001 DS Chris Hawley ah654 CH Andrew Nellis bs904 AN Michael Mason (late) an956 MM Absent: Natalie Munro (regrets) Jean Wilmot (regrets) Jim Elder (regrets) Andre Vellino (regrets) NCF Staff Present: Sheila Alder bw306 Yannick Gravel dt136 Chris Cope bz787 Others: E.O'Driscoll, minute taker 1. INTRODUCTIONS Dave Sutherland took the Chair with and acted as Secretary. 2. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF THE PREVIOUS MEETING OF THE BOARD a)The following correction was noted: Jim Elder did the graphs that were distributed at the April meeting (rather than Ian Allen as noted in the mintes). b)Minutes Miranda Gray(moved to accept minutes) and Chris Hawley(seconded), motion carried. 3. REVIEW OF THE AGENDA FOR THIS MEETING No new business. 4. OLD BUSINESS Nothing 5. REPORTS a) Treasurer's Report (Jeff Bossert) Jeff presented the highlights: Freenet is still behind but somewhat better off than reported last month. Expenses have been tracked and show little variance from forecast. The financial situation merits another financial forecast, which Jeff will present at the next meeting. NCF is about $9,000 better off than was thought. Miranda asked how open the NCF should be with the financial position to the members. Some discussion followed about the current fund raising efforts and how they may mitigate the lack of revenue over the summer. DS suggestedit is important to accurately portray and interpret the financial position. No one is too anxious to go public with negative info in view of some past experiences with tight financial situations. NCF has had such problems before, went public and got support. Some discussion followed on how to reach the public, over the summer, with a reminder of supporting FreeNet. ( Posting messages in various newsgroups will be part of the communication strategy. ) Chris Cope offered a copy of a sample letter/note that could be used as a template for the posted messages. Chris Hawley asked what contributed to the better financial picture this month as opposed to April. Jeff Bossert responded that renewals are up slightly. The forecast and the budget included an expenditure for additional equipment that could be deferred. A positive meeting with the CIO of Carleton about the rate that NCF pays for its Internet connection. It seems that NCF may be able to negotiate a lower rate in view of the relative cost of connectivity although it was noted that the NCF also receives office and computer room space from Carleton. DS noted that the MRTG statistics indicate that FreeNet's demand on the Carleton Internet connection has dropped recently. It might be possible to drop some lines at Carleton if more lines become available at Mitel. Andrew Nellis noted possible future bandwidth problems. The recent American netabuse bill contained a rider that means that in about 3 months there may be an increase of spam since the bill allows unsolicited email as long as it contains the word "advertisement". So it will become legal to spam in this way and as a result, organisations may have a hard time filtering the spam. b) Executive Director?s Monthly Report (Chris Cope) i.) Funding and Public Relations Update: There are 109 (labelled) Auto-install CDs that should be off to the libraries next week. The auto-install diskettes are ready now. ii) Membership Drive: Chris noted that 147 new members had joined so far. Regarding one of the tables in this month's report: there is a blip in the numbers, which is difficult to explain, related to the number of accounts that were archived. However, it is not affecting cash flow to a great extent. DS suggested NCF make some random calls to the people who did not renew. Sheila noted that when she receives a note saying that a member wants to close an account she lets the member know about the graphical interface etc. Often the person is not aware of the new features. A number of the people reported that they weren't renewing because they were moving out of the city. Some discussion about giving each board member about 15 people to call about cancellation of their accounts. DS and Chris Hawley volunteered to call some people. Member-get-a-member campaign is underway and at this point there are about 50 new members as a result. One thing is that only about 5% of the membership are reading the news/announcements. Hence a message to all members will be sent out in the near future. Some discussion of the technical issues of sending a note to all users i.e. a) what bulk mailer will be used.(Chris H and Yannick Gravel); b) length of the newsletter (Chris H and Miranda). Chris discussed a handout he gave out concerning the services available via FreeWeb. There was a clarification about the number of lines available for each connection on the sheet. The main modem pool is rarely very busy. Sheila noted thatthe faster lines are busier. Proposed changes to configuration settings: 1. Add ability to download binaries; 2. Add ability to use FTP client (via proxy for efficiency and legal reasons); (Same changes apply to the express lines). FreeWeb(no change). Miranda asked whether the express lines are needed. Some discussion about the express pool and if it could be reduced, not eliminated, seeing that this pool is not that busy. Two more items from Chris Cope: 1. Changes to the .ca domain registration process. As of Jan 1999, domain registrations will have to go through an ISP(agent) and will therefore cost more. NCF should register the domain 'ncf.ca' before the new requirement comes into effect. All agreed that this should be done. 6. NEW BUSINESS a) Election of Officers. 7. DATE OF NEXT MEETING June 16, 1998 - RMOC Heaquarters, 111 Lisgar Street 8. IN CAMERA SESSION 9. ADJOURNMENT Dave Sutherland, Ingenia Group Software Kinetics (613) 831-0888 x4072