Board of Directors Minutes
November 13, 2006

A regular meeting of your Board of Directors was held at the Resource Center on Monday, November 13, 2006.

There was a high turnout for the meeting with eleven members attending. Present were: Howard Berger, Charles Bovaird, Richard Corzo, John Gallichotte, Sean Henderson, Lisa Leifels, Rob Limbaugh, Jim Scheef, Jeff Setaro and Jamie Yates. Patrick Libert was also at the meeting. President Jeff Setaro presided and Secretary Lisa Leifels kept the record. Minutes of the last meeting held on October 9, 2006 were approved.

Treasurer Charles Bovaird reported current cash assets of $10,888.68, consisting of total bank and postal accounts in the amount of $10,855.26 plus postage on hand of $33.42. Subtracting a liability of prepaid dues in the amount of $5,092.00, this left a net equity of $5,796.68. He also reported that the current membership is at 305, of which 67 are electronic.

Jamie said he will present a high-level overview of Google and the nine products they offer possibly for the January 2007 meeting. Jamie also contacted Nerds To Go and Sounds Incredible about making a future presentation, and he is waiting to hear back from them. Sounds Incredible said that they have made presentations like this in the past on HDTV and Tivo and the other newer technologies on the market.

Jamie reported that Christine Novell has offered to do a seminar on ‘del.icio.us’ a social networking website. Jamie said he would ask if there was any interest on this topic at the next General Meeting.

Sean Henderson said he may be persuaded to present the topic of hacking your cell phone later next year. Jeff Setaro mentioned that he was willing to do another presentation on viruses. Another idea from Jamie was to get someone from Intel to speak at a future meeting.

Patrick Libert has volunteered to become the new editor of dacs.doc. Patrick is originally from France and is bilingual. He has been using a Macintosh since 1992 and he is also fairly comfortable with PCs.

Richard Corzo made a motion for Patrick Libert to serve out the rest of Bill Keane’s term as a Board director, and the motion was approved.

The following directors are running for election in December; Charles Bovaird, John Gallichotte, Patrick Libert, Richard Corzo. Jamie Yates has decided not to run for another term, but has offered to continue doing the popular ‘What’s News’ segment of the general meeting.

A discussion ensued on moving the new DACS Website to one of the newer servers in the Resource Center, donated by Rob Limbaugh, in order to get it production ready. The new Website is being developed in Joomla, which needs to be run on a Linux box that has MySQL installed. Jim suggested that we may want to ask Mags.Net about managing the server for the new site. Richard Corzo said he would ask John Lansdale if the Opensource Web Program SIG would help to develop the new site.

Sean Henderson said that he would continue bringing refreshments to the General Meeting and setting up a “tip jar” to offset some of the expense. He will bring some samples of the DACS stickers created on CaféPress.com and has created a freeware CD that can be raffled off at the January General Meeting. He is also going to contact the Danbury News-Times and the Brookfield Journal about placing ads for the General Meetings.

Rob Limbaugh said that he spoke to a company that has a research facility in Westport and which is willing to do a free focus group of past, current and non-members of DACs. Rob thought this would help to uncover the strengths and weaknesses of the DACS organization.
Charlie presented a summary of the attendance at the general meetings. He also reviewed the past expenses and the costs of producing the newsletter, which have increased over time.

-Lisa Leifels

—Lisa Leifel