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Preliminaries
The meeting was called to order in the Green Room at the Greenbelt
Police
Station at 7:08 p.m.
In the absence of a permanent
Secretary, Doug Love volunteered to act as Recording Secretary for this
meeting.
Attendees:
Directors - Peggy Bates, Gilbert Lee (presiding), Doug Love
Members - Anne Andersen, Jim Bates, Ed James, Jeff Travis, Joyce Wineland
Guests - Leonie Penney
· Preliminary
Agenda
Monthly Reports
Secretary:
In the absence of a
permanent Secretary, Gil Lee inquired whether Board members had reviewed
the minutes from the Board meetings of 8 June, 13 July, and 10 August, as
well as the minutes of the Annual Membership Meeting and the Annual Board
Meeting of 6 June. No one had. Provisional approval was granted by
consensus.
Vice President:
In Mary Camp’s absence, Doug Love
reported briefly on the class entitled, “Building a Website: Part 1”,
which he taught on 13 September. Doug felt that the class was well
attended, although he did not have a sign-up sheet to record attendees.
Doug will teach Part 2 of his 3-part class on 18 October. Leonie Penney
commented that the majority of the attendees were women.
Treasurer:
Peggy Bates reported
that GIAC had $115 income last month, -$8.62 for the year. $580 was paid
for out-of-house accounting earlier in the year. Gil spent $30 for the
tent used for the GIAC information booth at the Labor Day Festival; he
will keep it as his own and use it every year.
A slight profit is
expected at the end of the year.
There were no takers
for the drawing for 2 months free service.
The fireproof box has
not yet been bought. It will cost $400 - $500.
System Administrator:
GIAC has 88 members,
with 1 new connection in the previous month.
Discussion of outstanding issues with
Chesapeake Online, our current ISP, were tabled in favor of the ISP Committee’s
discussion of the search for a new provider.
Anne Andersen agreed to take over the
post of System Administrator. Gil will stop monitoring the SYSMAN e-mail.
Peggy asked Anne to stand for election as a Board member, to which she
also agreed. A vote was taken among the eight members present; the result
was unanimous in favor of Anne’s appointment. Lastly, Anne agreed to join
the ISP Committee.
ISP Committee (no written report
submitted):
Doug reported on two ISP Committee meetings
that had taken place since the last Board meeting.
A list of candidate
ISP’s to replace Chesapeake Online has been started. No formal initiative
to contact candidates has been taken, although individual ISP Committee
members have looked into various options on their own. Dorian Winterfeld
has begun contacting ISP’s.
Ed reported that
Zeke's Store in Arizona would give us the level of service we want, and
wants to support us for $12/month. They have a local dialup deal.
Leonie Penney
recommended her ISP, a small but reliable company called
Toward.Net in
Virginia. She pays $19/month for 4 hours/day.
By unanimous vote, the
Board directed the ISP Committee to begin contacting candidate ISP’s. Gil
will review the RFP at the next ISP Committee meeting. The Board will
insist on a written contract with the new ISP, in hopes of avoiding the
type of problems that have plagued our relationship with Chesapeake
Online.
Gil wanted to make
sure that GIAC really does want to replace its ISP before we embark on
this course of action.
Anne mentioned an ISP
trade show in Tyson’s Corner, VA on Oct. 20 that she plans to attend.
Doug suggested that a link could be added to the GIAC web site to invite
other GIAC members. The consensus was that this would not be appropriate,
as the trade show is not targeted toward end users.
Doug stated that
Chesapeake Online declines to support CGI commands, which are crucial to
the Coop’s ability to make GIAC membership application and other types of
form submission available online to the community. Others present noted
that Chesapeake’s E-Mail services are not up to industry standards. There
was a strong consensus that reliability of service and ready availability
of support are the coop’s key requirements for an ISP, and that
Chesapeake’s performance has been unsatisfactory in both respects.
The next ISP committee
meeting will take place at Generous Joe's at 7:30PM on 18 September. Doug
noted that Generous Joe's will be remodeling, and is considering becoming
a Cyber Café.
Doug stated that until
GIAC is able to replace our Web Manager, numerous ISP issues are not
being addressed. Neil McLeod, formerly the GIAC Web Manager, resigned his
post.
Jim Bates volunteered
to keep the website Calendar up to date.
There will be a
private Web Manager refresher course at Peggy’s house on 2 October. A
smaller class will be held on 20 September for those starting their
volunteer jobs.
The membership
directory on the GIAC website has been mined by a dance club. Members
will be contacted to see if they want to have their contact information
removed from the directory.
Peggy has been adding
new members’ names to the web site.
Legal Committee (no written
report submitted):
Gil reported on the September
Legal Committee meeting, which was done as a teleconference. Doug
Caprette suggests that we give back the $50 membership fee; he has
started a lot of 103C’s, and believes this is sound policy.
Leonie stated that
this was nonsense. Doug noted that GHI charges an $800 fee, and does not
return it when a member leaves the Co-op. Jim agreed that other Co-ops do
this. Gil noted that most other coops are trying to make a profit; GIAC
is not.
Gil stated that Doug
Caprette will make a formal presentation to the Board at the October
meeting.
Audit Committee (no written
report submitted):
Peggy reported that
Carol Gordon has returned from Kansas, but there have been no meetings.
Audit Committee reports have been sent to Neil for posting.
The web pages will be
revised by Oct. 2.
Old Business
Board and Committee Vacancies:
Gil has not yet written articles for
the News Review and Gazette.
Bill Dupree has declined to become
Secretary.
Joyce Wineland will work on the Audit
Committee, but will not become its secretary.
Jeff Travis declined to become
Secretary at this time due to schedule constraints, but volunteered to
prepare the minutes. He will work from others’ notes if he is unable to
attend the meeting. He will forward Working Draft minutes to Peggy for
posting prior to the next Board meeting.
Cyber Café:
Action on the Cyber
Café was put off until after Labor Day.
Labor Day Festival:
The consensus was that
GIAC’s participation in Labor Day was very successful. Mary Camp was
commended by all for her organizational efforts.
The $20 Labor Day
Parade winnings will be applied towards the $25 table cost.
Activity Planning:
A “Website Harvest
Party” is scheduled for 14 October. Doug expressed a preference to reschedule
the event to another date, as he has a conflict that weekend.
New Business
Community Website Appearance:
Neil had previously
asked for comments on the appearance of the website. There were none at
this time.
Windows 3.1 Connection Issues:
Any member with a need
for browser software compatible with Windows 3.1 software should be
referred to Doug Love, who has Netscape Version 3.0 with a dialer on
disk.
Conclusion
The next regular meeting will be held
at 7:00pm on Thursday, 12 October in the conference room at the Greenbelt
Police Station.
The meeting was adjourned at about
9:00PM.
- Notes
9/14/00 by Doug Love
- Reformatted & edited 10/9/00 by Jeff Travis
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