Minutes of a Meeting of the Board of Directors of the National Capital FreeNet held on Tuesday, May 18th, 1999, at 7:00 p.m. at the Olde Forge Community Resource Centre 2730 Carling Ave. PRESENT: Jeff Bossert 2nd Vice - President & Treasurer au025 JB Sandy Campbell dt820 SC Jessica Cohen Secretary aa724 JC Miranda Gray ak717 MG Pippa Lawson au771 PL Andrew Nellis bs904 AN Dave Sutherland President aa001 DS Michael Mason 1st Vice - President an956 MM was present for the in camera portion of the meeting. REGRETS: Natalie Munro aa966 NM Jean Wilmot aa145 JWi Jim Wright ah311 JWr STAFF PRESENT: Christopher Cope Executive Director bz787 Sheila Alder Administrative Coordinator bw306 Andre Dalle System Administrator al178 Minute Taker: Joan Robertson cw055 1. INTRODUCTIONS The meeting was called to order at 7:15 p.m. with Dave Sutherland as Chair and Jessica Cohen as Secretary. 2. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES MOVED by Pippa Lawson, SECONDED by Sandy Campbell that the minutes of the previous meeting be approved. MOTION CARRIED. IN FAVOUR: SC JC MG PL DS ABSTAINED: JB ABSENT: AN 3. REVIEW OF THE AGENDA Item 6b) Removing dead newsgroups was deferred to the next meeting. Item 6d) Proposed Committees was added. Item 6c) Thin Client demonstration was spoken to after the break, before items 6a) and 6d). It had been previously discussed that Board members should specify what specific parts of the ED report they wanted to discuss to shorten the time spent on the report. The following areas were specified: registration, membership activity, modems, and priorities. It was requested that a standing item : Announcements be added to the end of future agendas , to allow for announcements about such things as the upcoming picnic and other events of interest. 4. OLD BUSINESS There was no old business this month. 5. REPORTS 5a) Treasurer's Report (Jeff Bossert) Jeff distributed copies of the Treasurer's Report . Revenue from renewals is way down. They are expected to drop in the summer, but this is earlier than budgeted. Grant revenues ($49,380) refers to two items: i) VolNet As Industry Canada wanted to start the ball rolling on the VolNet program, they wanted to be able to spend some of the money at the end of this fiscal year (theirs). They have paid us $25000 to set up 250 internet accounts. These accounts have been created, and will be assigned to recipients as they sign up. There was a brief review on how the VolNet program will be working. Miranda asked whether having the accounts already setup will affect the renewal patterns for the recipients, specifically will they be asked to renew before a year has gone by. Sheila answered no, as the accounts become activated, she will be resetting the renewal dates as needed. This facility is already part of the renewal software, and will not require any additional programming. ii) Urban CAP We were paid for the Urban CAP contract this month ($24000), the costs involved with this were $18000 , netting the NCF about $6000. Overall , we are on budget for our cash position (ignoring the amount from the VolNet) , however this is because of the grants revenue, rather than the renewals. 5b) Executive Director's Report (Chris Cope) Registrations: Miranda expressed concern about registrations, thought we need to plan membership development, and be planning for the fall. We have some initiatives being worked on already, the flyers and the installation software. While things have been moving slower than originally planned on these, we now have 1000 copies of the flyer ready to go. We will start distributing flyers, emphasizing computer stores and libraries. Miranda has volunteered to help distribute information the libraries, Andrew has volunteered to help distribute information , and the installation software when it is ready, to the computer stores. Miranda also suggested that we should be trying to get information into magazines that may reach people who are not computer-connected already, such as Today's Parent, and Today's Senior. Particularly with our current senior initiatives, these would be good target audiences for us to place an NCF ad. It was also observed that the current initiatives of training sessions at various local seniors centres would make a good article for these magazines. Chris will be contacting these magazines, and considering other community newspapers and magazines which would be a good place to provide NCF information. It was decided that we will have an item on the July agenda to talk about membership; how initiatives currently underway are working, and brainstorming new initiatives. Membership Activity: Miranda asked whether the VolNet accounts that have been created are included in the number of members. The answer is no. As they are assigned to specific organizations, they will be counted in the membership totals. Modems: There was some discussion about continuing problems with the modems. There continues to be problems with the modems. Andre has been working on resolving these issues . Miranda asked whether we should drop the lines that aren't working properly, as why are we paying for phone lines that can't be used. Part of the problem is that although 20 modems might fail to connect on a given day, it isn't the same 20. It was observed that in order to encourage people to join, they need to be able to connect to NCF reasonably easily, without having lots of busy signals or failed connections. Jessica asked whether Jim Elder's modem sharing software accounted for having non-functioning modems in deciding how busy the system is. Andre answered no, not currently, but a minor adjustment can be made by him to have the software decide that it is busy with fewer modems in use, which will allow for the current number of non-functioning modems. The software has also been dying, Andre has been having to restart it several times a day. Jeff asked if the modem sharing software could be contributing to the modem problems, Andre said no, it was highly unlikely. Chris said that we will probably need to buy some modems to replace problem ones, as well our gateway machine has been having problems, Andre has had to rebuild it. Miranda stated that public perception is a short term problem, but a long term problem was also the increasing complexity of our system. She asked that a clear picture of the NCF hardware , including its function and status be made. Chris is working on this already, and one of the proposed committees (item 6d) is going to look at overall system configuration and reliability issues. Priorities: Membership is a priority. Miranda asked about whether we allow members intimidated by filling out an online form to register in another fashion. Chris replied that currently we emphasize paper forms at our Outreach sessions. People can fill out the paper forms, send them to the office, and then office volunteers will enter the information into the online forms. The office volunteers can also do this for people who phone the office for registration help. Miranda asked where items such as the Harvest Ride and the picnic fall on the priority list. They are upcoming events, but they are mostly involving volunteer efforts, without much intervention required by Chris. The Harvest Ride is being planned for September 12th, the team (NCF and Citizens for Safe Cycling volunteers) will be holding a meeting this Thursday evening. Andre Ouellette and Michael Mason are planning the picnic. It will likely be held in July at Britannia Park. Last year about 135 people came to the picnic over the 6 hours. A message from MOM (Message of the Month) is planned to tell people about the picnic and the harvest ride. 6. NEW BUSINESS 6c) Thin Client Demonstration (Jeff Bossert) Jeff Bossert demonstrated how the thin client works using his laptop computer as the client, connected to a computer in his office as the server, and explained how the thin client software works, with a demonstration of some of the things that are possible with the software. Some highlights: - software running on the server is publicly accessible, good for allowing people to train for jobs, also gives people an opportunity to test a program before deciding to buy it. - software runs remotely on the server, the client transmits keystrokes to the server - clients available for many platforms, from MS-DOS to Win98, as well as Mac and Linux platforms. Software on the server will run no matter what the client is. - some minimal functionality required; e.g. computers would need to have a mouse - the server is configurable to user 'profiles' to allow for different levels of access (e.g. administrator versus user) - it can be setup to allow people to store their work on the server as well as on their own computers Jeff outlined some of the issues that will be looked at in the development phase of the project : the software is complicated , it will take money and time to run it, part of the feasibility study in the development phase will be to look at how ambitiously we want to undertake this project. Other things to look into will be obtaining licences for software that we wish to run on the server, and studying the technical impact on overall systems. Jeff was asked how long we have for the development phase before presenting our detailed proposal to the HRDC, he replied that the development phase can be up to six months, although we may not need that much time. It was also observed that this might be a great membership draw when it goes live , as it offers useful learning and training opportunities to people. 6a) Election of Officers The following nominations were made. President: Dave Sutherland Nominated by Sandy Campbell, Seconded by Pippa Lawson. Vice-Presidents: Natalie Munro Nominated by Miranda Gray, Seconded by Jessica Cohen Michael Mason Nominated by Sandy Campbell, Seconded by Jessica Cohen. Jeff Bossert Nominated by Pippa Lawson, Seconded by Dave Sutherland. Jeff declined the nomination. Treasurer: Jeff Bossert Nominated by Jessica Cohen, Seconded by Pippa Lawson. Secretary: Jessica Cohen Nominated by Miranda Gray, Seconded by Pippa Lawson. The following officers were elected by acclamation: President : Dave Sutherland 1st Vice - President: Michael Mason 2nd Vice - President: Natalie Munro Treasurer: Jeff Bossert Secretary: Jessica Cohen Note: the Vice Presidents were elected as two officers for the two positions, with the specification of 1st and 2nd Vice President being determined by the officers in question. 6d) Proposed Committees (Dave Sutherland) i) HR committee Among the recommendations of the people working was that a standing human resources committee be formed. The committee would be responsible for setting performance objectives for and annually reviewing the performance of the ED. There was some discussion as to whom the committee should consist of. MOVED by Jessica Cohen, SECONDED by Jeff Bossert that a Human Resources committee be formed. The membership of the committee will be Jean Wilmot, Natalie Munro, Dave Sutherland, Jeff Bossert, and Michael Mason. MOTION CARRIED. IN FAVOUR: JB SC JC PL AN DS ABSTAINED: MG Jean Wilmot will be the Chair of this committee. ii) Chris will be forming a technical advisory group to provide advice, guidance, and support around NCF technical system issues. This will be an operation group working under the ED, rather than a committee of the Board. Some suggestions were made to Chris as to people to invite to be on this team. 7. DATE OF NEXT MEETING June 15, 1999 7:00 p.m. RMOC - Honeywell Room 111 Lisgar St. 8. ADJOURNMENT The meeting adjourned to the in camera-session to discuss the Executive Director's evaluation at 10:00 p.m. MOVED by Miranda Gray, SECONDED by Pippa Lawson that we adjourn, MOTION CARRIED, all in favour.