Minutes of a Meeting of the Board of Directors of the National Capital FreeNet held on August 17, 1999 at 7:00 p.m. at the RMOC - Honeywell Room 111 Lisgar St. PRESENT: Jessica Cohen Secretary aa724 JC Miranda Gray ak717 MG Pippa Lawson au771 PL Michael Mason 1st Vice - President an956 MM Natalie Munro 2nd Vice - President aa966 NM Andrew Nellis bs904 AN Jean Wilmot aa145 JWi Jim Wright ah311 JWr REGRETS: Jeff Bossert Treasurer au025 JB Sandy Campbell dt820 SC Dave Sutherland President aa001 DS STAFF PRESENT: Christopher Cope Executive Director bz787 Sheila C. Alder Administrative Coordinator bw306 Andre Dalle System Administrator al178 Minute Taker: Joan Robertson cw055 1. INTRODUCTIONS The meeting was called to order at 7:10 p.m., with Michael Mason acting as Chair, and Jessica Cohen as Secretary. 2. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES MOVED by Pippa Lawson, SECONDED by Jean Wilmot that the minutes of the previous meeting be approved as amended. MOTION CARRIED. IN FAVOUR: JC MG PL JWi ABSTAINED: MM NM AN ABSENT: JWr 3. REVIEW OF THE AGENDA 4b) A progress report on Senior's advertising (Miranda Gray) was added. 5a) Treasurer's Report was spoken to by Jean Wilmot. A brief discussion on Y2K was held under New Business. 4. OLD BUSINESS 4a) Review of Committees (Miranda Gray) Each committee and team were briefly removed, referencing the information item tabled at the previous meeting. Committees ========= Finance Committee: Miranda requested that we defer discussion of this committee until the treasurer (Jeff Bossert) was present. Francophone Committee: currently a non-active committee, Jessica to check back to May 1997 minutes to establish whether the committee was officially disbanded, or if it was declared dormant. Complaints Committee: Committee going well, the menu needs updating, to be done when Natalie has time. Jessica bought up two committees which were not listed in the document: Executive Committee and the HR Committee. Jessica to check back to 1997 May minutes for the official status of the Executive Committee (currently treated as dormant: mail to exec goes to the ED, and any duties the Exec Committee may have had are handled by the Board or the ED), the HR committee is recently struck, running fine. Operational Teams: ============== Public Relations Team: Currently inactive, position open for someone with appropriate skills, who would be working with Chris Cope. Menu to be updated by staff/IMT to reflect current inactive status of this team. Prt mail currently forwarded to office. AGM Team: reports to Board, Miranda Gray AGM Chair this year. Boutique Administration: mostly inactive, should be categorized as "individual assignment" rather than team. Help Desk: Going well, Graeme doing an excellent job as Chair. Jessica asked that the help desk volunteers be reminded that they have the authority to email system personnel (e.g. Postmaster for mail problems, news for news problems, sysadmin for other problems) that come up in ncf.admin. Information Management : Going well. Webmaster mail gets sent to Richard Bethell. VolNet accounts being setup by Don McCallum. Web Site Team: - includes CapitalFind Miranda asked that the Capital Find volunteers be added to the inventory under this item, Jessica to add to inventory in the minutes information area based on information provided by Richard. She suggested that Capital Find members also be listed in the appropriate menu area, and observed that some of the listed members of the website team (herself, Matthew Darwin, Bruce Stephen Harding) are no longer active website volunteers. Minute-Takers: Minutes are only taken at Board meetings. menu out of date and no longer necessary, staff/ IMT to scrap the minute-takers menu and go command. Net Abuse: Andrew is still actively fighting spam, has changed tactics, now contacts newbie spammers to try to stop them from spamming again. Miranda asked if net abuse was still a team or an individual assignment. Net abuse still works as a team, it is one of the volunteer areas in which people will jump right in , newsgroups on spam issues are still quite active. Office Administration: Doing well, shorthanded when co-op placements end, until new co-ops start. Miranda asked if the current office equipment meets the office needs. Sheila replied no, but equipment is much better than it used to be., there are 3 graphical web-capable machines in the office. Training Team: New recruits have volunteered to this team, Chris to provide an update next month. Public Access: Team inactive, menu to be moved by staff/IMT to archive area. Speaker's Coordination Team: There is demand for speakers , particularly at Nepean Library when their renovations are finished. Worth trying to recruit for. Statistics Administration: Currently dormant. Alana has not been involved with this for several years. Statistics and statistical analysis are still offered by Jim Elder and Ian Allen. Time Limits: Team working well. Chris was asked if this team was still necessary with modem sharing, the answer was yes, as time limits are still in effect for busy time periods. Translation: Does not meet as a team, individual translators report to Chris and Sheila. Miranda suggested that we group them as individual assignments. Will be left listed in the Team area, but referred to as Translators, rather than the Translation Team. Volunteer Coordination: Team doing reasonably well, could use some recruitment . Documentation Team: Most of the work currently being done by Pat and Richard. Hardware/Software Team: Currently just a newsgroup and a somewhat out of date menu. Somewhat replaced by the Technical Review Team (newsgroup used by tech team) Menu still has useful information, but should be updated. System Design Team: inactive, Chris suggested keeping the menu area around. Technical Review Team: new, working out well. Individual Assignment to be looked at next month. 4b) Seniors Advertising (Miranda Gray) Miranda reported that she was slightly behind on this, should be able to get an ad in for either September or October. Dwight Williams is volunteering with ad design. Ad should mention training ; different from Monitor ad. Abbotsford has NCF training listed in it's fall lineup. Natalie must have some more volunteer help for training. 5. REPORTS 5a) Treasurer's Report (Jean Wilmot) Jean distributed copies of and presented the Treasurer's Report. We are still lagging behind budget in revenue from donations, both associated with new registrations and with renewals. Our expenses are better than budget. Jean noted that it was the government contracts that have kept us on budget, our cash position is respectable. Without the contracts, cash would be $16,000 below budget. Sheila noted that the online Visa donation system is back online again, and VISAs have started trickling in again. A discussion of donation and renewal patterns will be placed on next months agenda. 5b) Executive Director's Report (Chris Cope) Chris Cope presented the Executive Director's report. Miranda asked if it would be possible to get a breakdown of what categories donations fall into , for the discussion on donation patterns next month. The donation software currently keeps track of donations in the categories 1-47, 48-99, and 100 and up, Chris will include this information in the Executive Director's Report for next month. Miranda asked for a year-to-date summary on Modem Usage data. HRDC - CapitalFind: Miranda observed that the Seniors area was still empty, and asked that the HRDC student be given that area as a high priority to complete, what with our emphasis on senior training. Michael Mason volunteered to complete this section. The pool party went well, weather cooperated, people had fun. 6. NEW BUSINESS Pippa mentioned the news item about Cleveland FreeNet (running on freeport) closing down at the end of this year do to a Y2K problem, and asked whether NCF would have the same software issues. The NCF freeport has been heavily customized, and should not pose any serious problem in this regard. Testing of freeport under Solaris 7 (which is Y2K compliant) is going quite well, and is almost ready for users. 7. ANNOUNCEMENTS Miranda announced that we need to review what services we offer, and which ones we should continue supporting. Several Board members agreed, this discussion will be placed on the agenda for the October meeting. 8. DATE OF NEXT MEETING September 21, 1999, 7:00 p.m. Olde Forge Community Resource Centre 2730 Carling Ave. 9. ADJOURNMENT there being no further business to discuss, the meeting was adjourned at 8:30 p.m., MOVED by Natalie Munro, SECONDED by Jean Wilmot, MOTION CARRIED, all unanimous.