Minutes of the National Capital Freenet Board Meeting December 16, 1997 - 7:00 p.m. Held at the RMOC Headquarters 111 Lisgar Street, Ottawa, Ontario PRESENT: Jim Elder, aa456 (arrived near end of meeting) JE Michael Mason, Secretary, an956 (arrived near end...) MM Colin Cantlie, ae866 CC Chris Hawley, ah654 CH Natalie Munro, aa966 NM Andre Vellino, Vice-President, an386 AV Jean Wilmot, aa145 JW Jeff Bossert, Treasurer, au025 JB Jessica Cohen, aa724 JC ABSENT: Dave Sutherland, President/Chairman, aa001 DS NCF Staff Present: Christopher Cope, Executive Director, bz787 Sheila Alder, Administrative Coordinator, xx001 Yannick Gravel, System Administrator, xx136 NCF Members Present: E. O'Driscoll, Minute Taker, af995 John Stewart, aa104 Ian! Allen, aa610 Miranda Gray, ak717 Richard Bethell, cj434 Donna Shaw, aq652 Ed Barrick, ab627 Sarah McLaughlin Andre Ouellette, bf766 Robert Blane, dk565 Guest: Louise Huybrecht 1. INTRODUCTION Andre Vellino took the chair and Michael Mason acted as secretary of the meeting. Directors being present and notice of the meeting having been duly given, the meeting was declared to be properly constituted for the conduct of business. 2. MINUTES OF THE PREVIOUS MEETING The Chairman tabled the draft minutes, amended, of the last meeting of the Board held in November, 1997 which, upon motion made by Natalie Munro, seconded by Jessica Cohen, and carried, were approved. 3. REVIEW OF THE AGENDA Two items were added to the agenda under new business: a) policy regarding electronic document format, and, b) key partner affinity program. The presentation of certificates and declaration of the 1997 Volunteer of the Year was moved to before the reports. 4. OLD BUSINESS: There were no agenda items under the old business section of the agenda. 5. VOLUNTEER OF THE MONTH/VOLUNTEER OF THE YEAR Jeff Bossert introduced the Volunteers of the Monthand then presented their certificates: Michael Mason - January Denise Skrypkar - February Louisa Lambregts - March Ian! Allen - April Charline Cormier - May Donna Shaw - June Richard Bethell - July Ed Barrick - August Andrew Nellis - September Robert Blane - October John Stewart - November Jennifer Witham - December The 1997 Volunteer of the Year is Richard Bethell! Congratulations and thanks to all NCF volunteers. 6.REPORTS a) Treasurer's Report Jeff Bossert presented the highlights of the report: Mail strike has affected the receipt of renewals. The expected deficit continues, but was a little higher due to the strike. However, Jeff is looking forward to stronger revenue for end of December due to the expected in increase in mail that wasn't delivered during the strike. b) Executive Director's Monthly Report Chris Cope summarised the report: there have been 298 renewals in December and so far, 66% have donated. The average donation is higher - at $27.09 than $20.01 which was the average prior to our operational change. There were 112 new registrations in December with 38% donating an average donation of $19.88. Web Connectivity: Carleton's T1 is still saturated especially late afternoon and early evening. Extra memory was added to all machines since the beginning of the month and the 48 MB added to the web server has made a big difference. Cyberus is interested in donating some bandwith. It will take some equipment to set this up. The favoured approach is wireless which might need a one-time expense, but the bandwith will be free (the equivalent of a T1). Some items have to be sorted out with Carleton, Cyberus and Minto. Web registration process is now working in both English and French. Extended access at Mitel - the router has arrived. What is left is to do the configuration, make arrangements with Bell etc. It will not be possible to automatically forward the calls from our main lines, so we will publish a separate number for this service. This was not perceived to be a significant obstacle. The 1997 NCF Auction was a success, raising $3,275. Every item got a bid and the office is now collecting payment and distributing the items in its posession. Thanks were given to Michael Mason the Auction Chairman. Ottawa Citizen is supplying their subscription customers with a CD-ROM with an Internet browser (Microsoft Internet Explorer) to which NCF members will be able to add a set-up diskette, recently announced and available in the PDA to configure the browser to access NCF. Colin Cantlie asked about online registration menu and the spellings of name / name.fr. Specifically, he was questioning the 'fr' at the end of file names. Sheila noted that this was standared FreeNet menu usage. Colin Cantlie asked about the FreeMail trademark situation and how to avoid associated legal problems. Andre Vellino said that NCF will not devote any resources to contesting this. FreeMail is registrated in the USA but no one has yet applied for the trademark in Canada. There was some discussion related to the various searches that have been done by staff and board members in the past, and related to other trademark-related items. Some discussion on the Ottawa Citizen's report (Source Statistics Canada) on the percentage of people connected to the web. Chris Cope did some investigation, with Jim Elder's help, into the numbers and it appears that approx. 13 or 14% of the people who connect to the internet in the Ottawa-Carleton area are going through NCF. b) Davin Gateway Some discussion on the Davin Gateway that has recently been posting spam and whether this gateway should be closed. At the moment Matthew Darwin is moderating every post, but the question remains that the spam from this gateway, prior to the moderation by Matthew, was putting an undo burden on the system/volunteers. Sheila brought up the point that members posting to NCF newsgroups are not subject to as much spam as when they post to Usenet. Some discussion on the policy regarding NCF newsgroups and how the 'Gateway' is working. Matthew Darwin has agreed to moderate every post. The volume of traffic is estimated at less than 15 messages a day. Further posting of spam to ncf.* newsgroups via the gateway will not be tolerated and will be treated as if they were posted by the account used to accomodate the gateway. The Complaints Resolution Committee will deal with any further postings of spam accordingly. Jean Wilmot and Michael Mason wanted to go on record as being opposed to any form of Gateway whatsoever. Further, the Board does not condone any form of taking articles from any ncf.* newsgroup and republishing them in any form on the Intenet. c) Policy on Electronic Document Format NCF should be consistent with online information standards (e.g. HTML). Jeff Bossert proposes that as of Jan 1, 1998 the preferred electronic document format be as follows: When possible, "all new information added to the NCF system for viewing by the general membership shall comply with the HTML 3.0 document format standard" Colin Cantlie suggested that there probably exists several members with knowledge of HTML and they could be canvassed for their feedback. Some discussion on the vehicle for soliciting membership advice and how it might translate to more volunteer help. Jean Wilmot suggested that the policy should be worded so that it provides for version and technology upgrades. Further discussion will happen at a later meeting. d) Policy on Key Partner Affinity Program Subsequent to Jeff Bossert's conversation with SoftQuad where the representative offered to give members a discount rather than a free copy of the newest version of HoTMetal, Jeff suggested that other key partners could be approached with the idea of offering discounts to NCF members in the same manner. A server with demo software could be set-up that NCF members could try out and would allow the vendors to promote their product. ('Membership has its advantages') It was asked how such an affinity program would be communicated to members. Some discussion on the various approaches (web page bullet), the concern about the NCF going too commercial and the obvious benefits for NCF, the key partners and the membership. Chris Cope suggested that items 6c and 6d above ought to be operational proposals rather than be policies. Further discussion on the issue of resources to get the Key Partner Affinity site up and working. Chris Cope offered to get together with Jeff Bossert and take this issue to the next level. 7. DATE OF NEXT MEETING: The next meeting will be held on January 20, 1998 at 7:00pm at RMOC Headquarters, 111 Lisgar St., in the Richmond Room (Heritage Building). 8. ADJOURNMENT There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 9:20pm.
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