Minutes of a Meeting of the Board of Directors of the National Capital FreeNet held on September 21, 1999, 7:00 p.m. at the Olde Forge Community Resource Centre 2730 Carling Ave. PRESENT: Jeff Bossert Treasurer au025 JB Sandy Campbell dt820 SC Jessica Cohen Secretary aa724 JC Miranda Gray ak717 MG Pippa Lawson au771 PL Jean Wilmot aa145 JWi REGRETS: Michael Mason 1st Vice - President an956 MM Natalie Munro 2nd Vice - President aa966 NM Andrew Nellis bs904 AN Dave Sutherland President aa001 DS Jim Wright ah311 JWr STAFF PRESENT: Sheila C. Alder Administrative Coordinator bw306 Andre Dalle System Administrator al178 GUESTS: Mark Mielke al278 Yvan Loranger bq434 Lyn Shouldice ah940 Minute Taker: Joan Robertson cw055 1. INTRODUCTIONS The meeting was called to order at 7:15 p.m., with Jean Wilmot acting as Chair, and Jessica Cohen as Secretary. 2. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES MOVED BY Pippa Lawson, SECONDED by Jeff Bossert that the minutes of the previous meeting be approved as amended. MOTION CARRIED, unanimously. 3. REVIEW OF THE AGENDA Miranda requested that a standard progress report item be added before old business for future agendas. The item was added to this months agenda as 4a). The item 4a) Review of Committees: Finance Committee, Training Team, and Individual Assignments got deferred to the next meeting. The item 6a) Donation and renewal patterns got deferred to the next meeting. Item 4c) Seniors Training was added. Items 6a) Thin Client Business Plan, 6b) Proposed NCF Survey, 6c) Volunteer Concerns and 6d) Review of Services were added. 4. OLD BUSINESS 4a) Progress Report on Previous Action Items The CapitalFind Seniors area is still blank. Miranda said she would do this herself, and email an information page to CapitalFind. The Seniors ad is a go, it will start appearing in the October issue. The first month ad will be twice the size originally discussed (no change in price for us though). 4b) Review of Committees (Jessica Cohen) Jessica reported that the status of the francophone and executive committees were listed in the May, 1997 minutes as being dormant , instead of defunct. The executive committee exists on a meet as necessary basis, though no meetings have been held since before this date. The Finance Committee, Training Team, and Individual Assignments will be discussed next month when Chris is back. 4c) Seniors Training (Miranda Gray) Miranda brought this item up on behalf of Natalie. Natalie needs another volunteer to help with seniors training on Tuesday mornings at Abbortsford. She does not have time to continue with both this and Board meetings, and will have to resign from the Board if another volunteer cannot be found to alternate at least bi-weekly with her. ACTION: Sheila to actively recruit for another volunteer for this task. 5. REPORTS 5a) Treasurer's Report (Jeff Bossert) Jeff distributed copies of the Treasurer's report. Revenue from renewals significantly below budgeted levels. Approximately $1500 net was raised by the Harvest Ride. On looking at the balance sheet, we are in better position than budget as a result of the VolNet and Urban Cap contracts. Miranda asked whether we have a policy on providing computer equipment to public access centres; Abbortsford needs a new mouse. Sheila thought that there was a spare that could be found in the office . General opinion was that for small items such as mice or mousepads it isn't a big problem if the site maintaining the public access centre can or will not provide them. Upcoming activities for the financial committee: planning the 2000 budget. Jim Elder has sent around a renewal forecast, Jeff suggested using this as a starting point to prepare the budget, there was some discussion on whether to forecast other projects. Miranda asked about the budget process, which Jeff outlined briefly. ACTION: Budget discussion on agenda for October meeting. 5b) Executive Director's Report Chris was unable to attend the meeting tonight, having just undergone eye surgery. Sheila has been helping to keep things running while he is recovering. ACTION: The Board thanks Chris for his hard work, and requests that he allows himself to recover properly :-). A collection was taken to send flowers and a card. There is a VolNet conference this weekend, Yvan and Lyn will be attending this. Projects: Extended Access II - RMOC: Jeff reported that Mitel will be getting cards for the RMOC PBX. VolNet: Lyn Shouldice arrived, and Lyn and Yvan briefly updated the status of VolNet. Handouts for VolNet training have been developed. So far about 200 organizations have been subscribed. An official curriculum has not yet been received by Industry Canada, we may be jumping in with both feet and designing the curriculum for training as we go. Mostly so far have been establishing needs and matching up recycled computers to organizations without one. Lyn and Yvan will be attending the VolNet conference this weekend. Flyers: Brochures have been printed for distribution to libraries, Miranda is overseeing this. Y2K: Freeport on Solaris is in test mode on freenet8. ACTION: Andre to provide a more detailed update next month. Terminal Server: It was bought up that this piece of equipment has already been budgeted for, and is needed. ACTION: Andre to investigate purchase of terminal server. 6. NEW BUSINESS 6a) Thin Client business plan (Jeff Bossert) Jeff distributed a presentation of the Thin Client Service business plan. The presentation was gone over, and a text-copy will be made available for the minutes. Some discussion points made: - due to timing of federal fiscal year, we should move to submit this to HRDC by October. - this is a potential member draw, so far ISP's are not doing any of this yet. - pilot has tremendous potential for NCF ; promoting thin client as well as NCF. - prime targets for proposed applications offered will be office automation software and web authoring software. Contact has been made to request donations from various firms of these types of software. - NCF systems will not need to be changed, thin client server can be attached to existing network. - the business plan and budget structure are specified by the HRDC - the detailed business plan has already been forwarded to the technical review team, several members of the technical review team have already offered helpful suggestions on improving the plan which will be implemented. Sandy expressed a desire to get a general reaction from the Technical Review Team before proceeding. Jeff observed that technical input had been received by several members, and Jessica observed that the same business plan that the Board had received had also been sent to all members of the Technical Review Team. Sandy expressed a desire for an official TRT response, rather than individual opinions, as have been received. Team response. Jessica observed that this would be like trying to herd cats, and Miranda clarified that the technical review team consisted of several members who did not like meetings, and that none of the members involved would be particularly shy at expressing a negative opinion when asked. Indeed the original draft many months ago was greatly revised due to concerns raised by technical team members. Pippa asked Andre for his opinion, Andre replied that he was comfortable with this project as planned. ACTION: The business plan has been tabled for this meeting, will be bought forward to the October meeting for a vote on submitting it to HRDC. Jeff was thanked for his excellent presentation. 6b) Proposed NCF Survey (Jean Wilmot) Jean distributed copies of a proposed survey for NCF members. The survey would consist of 3 questions on what services people want, specifically webmail, faster modems, and remote applications server (thin client). General opinion was that this particular survey would be somewhat redundant, as people will just say yes webmail and faster modems, and most people will not know what a remote applications server is without an explanation. It was observed that it took several meetings for some Board members to clearly understand what this was. Also if we are planning on developing a thin client server anyways, this question also becomes somewhat redundant. Miranda stated that we need to do a survey, but this isn't it. The survey she would like to see done is on what services we offer now that members use, and what equipment members are using to connect to NCF, and whether members would be comfortable with (for example) a 35$ requested donation. ACTION: Pippa and Miranda to design a survey for these questions. 6c) Volunteer concerns (Sandy Campbell) Sandy bought up the growing decline in key volunteer morale. Jean agreed that this was a problem, and asked what can we as Board members do to address this issue. One observation was that the tone of even the "negative" posters has been lower with more Board participation in the newsgroups. Jean's current attempts to add positive contributions to the board speakers corner have noticeably helped deflate some of the negative emotions in that group. One of the key points raised was the need to be more active in publicly supporting our volunteers. Another point raised was the need for active recruitment, and to have backups, particularly for technical volunteers. ACTION: On something of a digression , the issue of newsgroups came up: 1) ncf.announce: after a small discussion it was agreed that Sheila is authorized to remove announcements of emergencies/system crashes from ncf.admin after 48 hours, and that she should be doing so. 2) It was bought up that we have too many dead newsgroups. Natalie has already been authorized to deal with this in a previous Board meeting, she will draw up a list of newsgroups to be removed, and their associated menus by technical volunteers or staff. 6d) Review of Services (Miranda Gray) Miranda Gray observed that this was agenda item for next month, and asked about who was going to prepare a report. In what was the shortest discussion of the evening, Jessica agreed to prepare this. 7. ANNOUNCEMENTS No announcements were made at this meeting. 8. DATE OF NEXT MEETING: Oct. 19, 1999 RMOC - Honeywell Room 111 Lisgar St. 9. ADJOURNMENT MOVED by Jeff Bossert, SECONDED by Pippa Lawson that the meeting be adjourned at 10:05 p.m., as there was no remaining items to discuss. MOTION CARRIED, unanimously.