Minutes of a Meeting of the Board of Directors of the NATIONAL CAPITAL FREENET held on September 15, 1998 at 7:00 p.m. at the RMOC Present: Dave Sutherland President (aa001) (DS) Michael Mason First Vice-president (an956) (MM) Jeff Bossert Second Vice-president & Treasurer (au025) (JB) Andre Ouellette Secretary (bf766) (AO) Jessica Cohen (aa724) (JC) Jim Elder (aa456) (JE) Chris Hawley (ah654) (CH) Andrew Nellis (bs904) (AN) Miranda Gray (ak717) (MG) Jean Wilmot (aa145) (JW) Regrets: Natalie Munro (aa966) (NM) NCF Staff Present: Chris Cope, NCF Executive Director (xx787) (CC) Sheila Alder, NCF Administrative Coordinator (xx001) (SA) NCF Members Present: Richard Bethell (cj434) Minute-Taker: Elizabeth O`Driscoll (af995) 1.INTRODUCTIONS Dave Sutherland took the chair with Andre Ouellette as Secretary. 2.MINUTES OF THE PREVIOUS MEETING Amendments Item 5.a A line was added at the end of this section: "Jeff Bossert offered to provide financial forecast for 1999 at the next meeting." 3.REVIEW OF THE AGENDA Item 6.b changed to read "Strategy"- Chris Cope 4.OLD BUSINESS a) Board Newsgroup Monitor Jeff Bossert to take over from Jim Elder from the October board meeting until the November board meeting. b) Cease and Desist letter (Spam) Per Andrew Nellis, the party of interest, TCPS, is being pursued by several other operators, hence there is no need for NCF to go after them. 5. REPORTS a) Treasurer's Report (Jeff Bossert) The last month was better. Revenue for the month was $16,430 and expenses of $13,570. Excess of revenue over expenses: $2860.00 A much more positive financial position at this point. JB discussed a meeting with Corel to create an offer for NCF members whereby orders for Corel products(at competitive prices) would be ordered via the FreeNet office as part of NCF "Cool Deals" program. Details(re tax remittance etc) to be finalised. At the same time Corel will consider donating some excess equipment. JB also mentioned a meeting he had (at Mitel) concerning the extended access. Things appear to be positive. Financial Forecast: JB provided the Board with an interim financial forecast. Projected Sept, Oct, Nov including funds expected from the Harvest Ride and the other fundraising activities. Assumptions used in the monthly cash prediction: - Costs associated with office staff kept static. - Assume that no lines are dropped and - A sys admin is hired in October. - Most of the assumptions about donation level and frequency are the same as last year. To summarise, the forecast implies that NCF is alright in the short term, but that the cash flow needs to be improved. (JB's preliminary forecast will be appended to these minutes as soon as it is made available to the secretary, in electronic format.) MG asked about the projection level and if it was a realistic expectation since we haven't been having good luck in this area lately. JB was optimistic about improvements in this area. MG about the registration and renewal data. JB wasn't sure how JE derived the numbers. Suggestions were made concerning: -the cost category Volunteer Coordination Parking should be renamed -the timing of the fundraising events (September) may not be the best month. A question was asked re and how the auction fit in. JB replied that the forecast did not reference another Auction as it did not extend to Oct 1999, which would be the likely date of next year's auction. Discussion about the server/equipment lifespan and predicted replacement costs. Discussion about the recruitment of new sysadmin and various options . It was asked if IPs should be treated the same as NCF members. This will be looked into. Jeff will present the Board with a draft budget next meeting, taking into consideration the assumptions and other available numbers. B) Executive Director's Monthly Report (C.Cope) Fundraising: -527 individual donations (not renewals or new registrations) averaging $32.28 each. -Good response to the login messages overall. -The second letter has just gone out (re the status of the funding drive) -guests do not have to see the login funding drive message anymore -usage: The usage has been slipping since the stats have been recorded. A general decline in the number of IPs overall (some are new and others are falling off). Industry Canada Grant: Some work remains to be done. Industry Canada may prefer to concentrate on the smaller cities first. As discussed previously this is an opportunity for NCF. A study of freenets is being done by Mr. Andy Reddick for Industry Canada. NCF has submitted its information to this study already. Public Relations: CC was interviewed on the radio (CBC) this morning - transcript available at "go ncf-media" Harvest Ride: (presented by A. Ouellette) Monitor magazine is responsible for the excellent artwork and setup of the printed information (brochures & posters). Monitor magazine also gave NCF considerable advertising space too. Funding is in excellent shape. Brochures and posters were handed out to members. CKCU:(Chris Cope) -radio interview (Aug. 31) went well. Transcript available at :"go ncf-media" Five Priorities: 1. Funding Drive; 2.Develop Funding Strategy 3.Recruit new sysadmin 4.Simplify Donation, Registration and Renewal 5.Technical i.-install new modems ii.-reconfigure (drop restrictions) phone lines -Sys Admin Recruitment: two candidates for sysadmin are being interviewed currently. Another idea was to approach Carleton to handle the function, perhaps via a contract. Discussions with Carleton to follow. Some discussion on the options. -ncf.ca has been established. Some feedback from the board was requested as it means the elimination of the Carleton name and there are other considerations re: double email addresses and implications for spam etc. -POP Mail server problems: Fixed now but once the sysadmin function is put in place some changes may be implemented to avoid a repeat of similar problems. Some discussion re IMAP vs POP. -Member-get-a-Member has been wrapped up successfully. -ScotiaBank: Members may be able to go to any branch and make a donation to NCF. Chris to sort out the details and report back to the Board. -CC requested the Board's comments on the salary for the sysadmin. Some discussion on the responsibilities of the job and the going salary levels and options for relating salary to performance etc. A question was asked concerning the possibility of obtaining SUN's Solstice Internet Mail Server. CC to follow-up with SUN 6.New Business: a) 3wmart (Andrew Nellis) A marketting agent is interested in doing some advertising to FreeNet members. This would be a voluntary program that members would have to specifically choose to accept the advertisements. AN requested Agreement in Principle from the Board to make such arrangements. This may be an option for those who cannot donate in cash or time as the company, in this case 3wmart, will pay NCF for each advertisement. Some discussion on how the opting-in and -out would work. It was requested that the impact on renewal workload not be affected by this. It was suggested that the Board approves in principle the formation of a Task Force to evaluate some of the issues (content, quantity and other administrative items) and set up guidelines for what will be considered acceptable. Some discussion on advertising on FreeNet. Members were strongly divided with pros and cons being equally represented. It was noted that there are a lot of members who dislike the current volume of spam and NCF does lose members as a result of spam. It was also mentioned there can be problems getting messages out to members such that they are read and understood. Proposed by Miranda Gray Seconded by MM. That a task force be struck to look at the possibilities for advertising income and to investigate advertising in terms of NCF in general and in particular the 3wmart proposal brought forward by Andrew In favour: AN, MM,CH, DS, MG Against: JE,,JB, AO, JW, JC Andrew Nellis will be the Task Force. b) Strategy(Chris Cope) Discussion on renewing member participation in the NCF community. ============================================================================= IN CAMERA (Miranda Gray was opposed to this portion of the meeting being held IN CAMERA.) ============================================================================= 7. Date of Next Meeting October 20, 1998 - Olde Forge Community Resource Centre, 2730 Carling Avenue, Ottawa, (7pm) 8. Adjournment: There being no further business, the meeting adjourned at 10 p.m.