Minutes of a Meeting of the Board of Directors of the National Capital FreeNet held on January 18, 2000 , at 7:15 p.m. at the RMOC - Colonel By Room 111 Lisgar St. PRESENT: Sandy Campbell dt820 SC Jessica Cohen Secretary aa724 JC Miranda Gray ak717 MG Michael Mason President an956 MM Natalie Munro Vice - President aa966 NM Jean Wilmot aa145 JWi Jim Wright ah311 JWr REGRETS: Jeff Bossert Treasurer au025 JB Pippa Lawson au771 PL Andrew Nellis bs904 AN Dave Sutherland Chairman Emeritus aa001 DS 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 Michael Mason as Chair, and Jessica Cohen as Secretary. 2. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES MOVED by Jean Wilmot, SECONDED by Sandy Campbell that the minutes of the previous meeting be approved, as amended. MOTION CARRIED, all in favour except Jim, who abstained. 3. REVIEW OF THE AGENDA Items 5b) and 6a) were spoken to by Jean Wilmot. 7a) Board Retreat (Miranda Gray) was added. 7b) Customer Service (Jim Wright) was added. 4. PROGRESS REPORTS 4a) NCF Survey Jean distributed copies of the survey, which is currently running in test mode in web format. The MOM announcement will be ready in a few days, and the survey is ready to be announced in newsgroups. 5. OLD BUSINESS 5a) Review of the CRC Committee (Natalie Munro) CRC activity level in general is manageable, starting to get more "grey" areas with people wanting the CRC to act on possible legal issues, (e.g. libel, members wanting other members to stay away from them, often involving circumstances and confrontations that did not take place on NCF). The CRC stance for this is currently that we should not be in the business of trying to interpret law, and for these type of things members should be consulting police or lawyers, with whom NCF will cooperate. Natalie asked the Board to clarify it's approval of this method of dealing with these types of member complaints, it was agreed by the Board by general consensus that the CRC is handling these matters appropriately. 5b) Smart Communities Update (Jean Wilmot) An update was distributed to the Board via email. NCF has issued a letter of support of the OCRI proposal. Thin client proposal has been sent in, has new partners, RMOC and OPL. OCRI proposal Ottawa is on shortlist (5 cities are on the shortlist) Michael asked whether there was going to be any problem with the regional restructuring, Chris replied that this project would, if OCRI proposal accepted , be within the RMOC lifetime before restructuring. Proposal includes thin client round2, webmail and extended access II projects, as detailed at previous meetings. 6a) Treasurer's Report (Jean Wilmot) Jean presented the Treasurer's report. Donations from new registrants are lower than budget, $1794 versus a budget of $4000. Donations from renewals are higher than budget, $11206, versus a budget of $7900. Revenue from donations overall exceeded budget this month. Fundraising activities (mostly refers to auction) were lower than budget this month. $240000 came in from VolNet this month. Over all revenue is ok, and expenses are in line with budget. Overall cash position is $89,424, good position to be starting new year. Jean also provided an update on the search for a new accountant. There are two potential candidates, referred to by Jessica Cohen and Sandy Campbell, both candidates are well qualified for the position, Jean is in the process of checking references and making a selection between the two candidates. Rudy will be staying onto see NCF through the audit in February. 6b) Executive Director's Report (Christopher Cope) Chris distributed copies of and outlined points from the ED report. Registrations/renewals: # of new registrations is lower than last year. Donation average for all new registrations is for 1999 is $11, among donating new registrations average is $23.50 . # of renewals for 1999 below budget number, but swung above budget in December. Average donation over all renewals was $22.70, for donating renewals was $26.90 . Update: January to date is roaring with $9000 so far, for an average donating of $42.96, looks like new suggested $48 in renewal letter is working. There are currently just over 10000 members. Auction: Auction software can run all year, but will be taken down and run periodically if no new items. Chris will be trying to put together an amassing team to solicit items for the auction. Modems: We are very close to being able to put in the Cisco box at Mitel, they have installed a T1. HRDC: We've been formally approved by the HRDC for Thin Client. Birthday: NCF 7th Birthday party is Wednesday, February 2nd at 6:30 p.m., being coordinated by Fiona Hammond. Public Relations Team: Fiona has agreed to take over as coordinator of the public relations team. MOM: Message from MOM will be going at this week to announce the AGM, birthday party, and the survey. Miranda asked if this can be the year we decide what we do for IP's. (e.g. what services we offer, whether new ones should be offered, such as mailing lists) Michael observed that we have mailing list service in beta testing. Chris said he would prepare a report on current services being offered for IP's and ones being worked on and their progress, and services that are recommended that we should off ACTION: Chris to prepare a report on the above for the April board meeting. Miranda asked about the status of the AGM web software. Chris replied that Mark Mielke is currently working on this. The server interface is now running in alpha test mode. Miranda asked whether the software would be done in time for the AGM, Andre said he thought so, that it was about 80-90% done. Chris said that if it didn't we would use the old software. Miranda asked if we knew if the old software would work, Chris replied that we could still run it under SunOS if we needed to. Natalie asked if we can make a firm commitment to have the software done or use the old interface, Andre said he was confident that the AGM web interface could be done in time. Jim asked about looking into purchasing 56k modems. Chris replied that it would triple our line costs, we would need to switch to digital lines. Chris also stated that there was a broader policy issue, we didn't want to compete with ISP's by having 56k modems. Jean stated that continued improvements and having 56k should be our goal, and that we definitely needed to upgrade our modems even to 28.8k. Chris talked about how we are working on a plan to upgrade the 169 Carleton lines all at once. Jean asked about a timeline, why wait till we can do all the modems if we can do some of them now? There was also some discussion on the need to buy a new terminal server along with upgrading the modems. 6c) AGM Report (Miranda Gray) Miranda has been working on the AGM website offline, will upload it when complete. She had held off on making the AGM announcement, as it had been previously agreed to hold the announcement until we knew whether the AGM would be in web-based format this year or text based. Michael suggested that since one of the deadlines , for motions from the floor had already passed, that all the AGM dates move forward a month (4 weeks, specifically). MOVED by Michael Mason, SECONDED by Jessica Cohen to change the AGM dates as described. MOTION CARRIED, all in favour. The AGM dates are now: Deadline for submitting motions to the Secretary: February 13 Nominations open: March 7 Nominations close: March 21 Official Campaigning: March 21 - March 28 (but campaigning allowed till Vote open: March 28 April 11) Vote close: April 11 at 5:00 p.m. Miranda announced that the deadline for submitting annual reports will be February 29th. 7. NEW BUSINESS 7a) Board Retreat (Miranda Gray) Miranda observed that we have talked for several meetings about how we need to spend time focusing on vision. She suggested that NCF hold a closed retreat (Board members , Executive Director) on Sunday May 7th, from 11:00 am to 7:00 p.m.. Session would include 2 meals. Guests , e.g. other staff, key volunteers, former Board members, could be invited to part of the day, details on facilitation could be worked out later, what Miranda was requesting tonight was a positive commitment to set aside the time on that date to hold a Board retreat to deal with vision issues. This meeting will not be used to facilitate new Board members , that will be done either in a different orientation meeting, or Miranda's suggestion for this year is through a mentoring system. It was agreed unanimously that we will hold a Board retreat on May 7th from 11am to 7:00 pm, location and specific details to be worked out later. 7b) Customer Service (Jim Wright) Jim expressed concern in how we (NCF and its volunteers) are presenting ourselves in areas such as the helpdesk. He mentioned specific examples and felt that we need to work on the level of customer service we are providing. Michael asked if Jim had any specific suggestions on this point, Jim suggested creating a code of conduct for volunteers for when they post for NCF or personally. Michael observed that this would be difficult to do, we would end up antagonizing several key volunteers if we try to tell them what they can or cannot post online. Jean suggested that we should be supporting our volunteers more , such as offering (voluntary) support meetings, provide advice on dealing with hostile posts, providing a forum for volunteers to talk with other volunteers. Jim agreed that this was a good idea, wants customer service looked at at the Board retreat. Miranda observed that one thing that would improve customer service is if Graeme (or whomever is current HelpDesk Chair) was able to delete posts from the ncf.admin group. ACTION: Graeme to be granted deletion privileges for ncf.admin. Graeme will be asked to copy either the office or Chris whenever he deletes a post with a copy of the post in question. 8. ANNOUNCEMENTS Birthday Party will be held on February 2nd, 2000 at the RMOC, at 6:30 p.m.. 9. DATE OF NEXT MEETING February 15 2000, 7:15 p.m. RMOC - Honeywell Room 111 Lisgar St. NOTE: This was later changed to: February 22 2000, 7:00 p.m. RMOC - Billings Room 111 Lisgar St. 10. ADJOURNMENT The meeting was adjourned at 8:35 p.m..