Board of Directors' Minutes
January 2011

By Bruce Preston

Meeting Date: Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Due the blizzard, a virtual meeting using Skype was held. In attendance were: Richard Corzo, Richard DiFranco, David Green, Drew Kwashnak,Patrick Libert, Bruce Preston, Jim Scheef, Jeff Setaro, Andy Woodruff and Charles Bovaird (guest)

Called to order at 7:10 PM

Minutes of Last Meeting were approved.

Treasurer Report

Opening balance 12/1/10   $6,207.00
     
Dues $435.00  
Interest $0.52  
Total Income   $435.52
     
New Checks $33.35  
Printing $95.00  
Postage $125.60  
Program Supplies $42.62  
Resource Center $260.76  
Total Expenses   $557.33
     
Balance 12/31/2010   $6,085.19

Membership Report: 160 members; 157 valid e-mails; 1 new
Newsletter: 100 printed; 75 mailed (53 to members, 14 to libraries, 8 to other)
Meeting count: 41 seats (21 members, 20 visitors of which 4 came as a result of LinkedIn announcement,)

Old Business

  1. General meetings
    • January 2011: Jobs and Tech—John Barry, Preview: Richard Corzo, Review: Andy Woodruff
    • February: Computer Security—Jeff, Preview: Bruce, Review: open
    • March: open (see discussion)
    • April, John Patrick—state of the Internet, Preview: ________, Review: ________
    • For 2011 we have reserved the Danbury Hospital auditorium for the first Tuesday of the month.
    Possible future topics:
    • Cloud computing (Richard has contacted Jim Doran of IBM, waiting to hear back)
    • Andy reports that he has not been able to secure a speaker for DATAHR—accessibility and disability issues. Topic shelved.
    • Secure internet communications with family and friends; FBI presenter; how to avoid unwanted intrusions of your computer.
    • There followed an extensive discussion on anti-virus, malware, phishing, pharming, DNS poisoning etc. Jeff was recruited to put together a presentation for February.
    • Jeff Fox of channel 8—weather forecasting technology
    • People’s United Bank: person who presents program on secure banking etc.
    • David Pogue, columnist at New York Times—general technology
    • Tuning a machine—startup, background processes—Drew is looking into this as a possible topic for March, tentative title: “Windows 7 Tricks and Tips”
  2. Open positions
    1. Jennifer Anderson decided not to take on the newsletter editor position to replace Patrick Libert. Member Bob Green will fill the position at least temporarily. Ahmad Asgharian also volunteered and will be kept in reserve. Submissions are to go to dacseditor@dacs.org
    2. Membership chairperson position is still open.
    3. VP of Programs is also open.
  3. Using Drupal for the DACS Web site—As Jim had to leave the meeting there was no report.
  4. Projector lending policy: Andy wrote a proposed policy and waiver of liability on 1/4/2011 for our approval. Moved and accepted with one decline.
  5. Status of Jim Scheef’s plan to use MailChimp to send out DACS mailings—no report.
  6. The Facebook link on the DACS home page now points to the DACS Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Danbury-Area-Computer-Society-Inc/92713398983?v=wall) rather than the less useful DACS Facebook group.
  7. DACS communications infrastructure update:
    • The service was available during the month up to the day before the meeting when there was an outage. Jim will get the telephone line checked and serviced.
    • Charlie Bovaird has donated a replacement used telephone with speaker phone & electronic answering/voice. We will set up do not call.
    • Andy will follow up on using Google voice linkage to the DACS resource center number; will start by talking with Rob Limbaugh, who investigated this previously.

New Business

  1. Brief DACS web site outage on Sunday 1/9 was due to routine monthly maintenance. We are on Jay Ferron’s company servers (not APCUG).
  2. Need to replace the forum software package—currently PHP-BB—does not support content filtering, plug-in filters etc. Installations require editing scripts whereas other packages have semi-automatic installations. Looking at open source MyBB. There is a good import capability for migration which Jeff has evaluated. Discussion of alternatives to Drupal—including plug-ins for WordPress such as BuddyPress, SimplePress, BBPress etc. Action Items: Jeff will put up a prototype on his server. Richard will add a link to forum on the left of the home page, retain existing link on the right.

Moved to adjourn at 8:50 PM

Bruce’s note: We had no difficulty using Skype for the conference, further indication that there is a problem with the data line into the RC.

 


 


Click Here


DacsGear!
Mugs and more, visit CafePress to order

 

 
 
© Danbury Area Computer Society, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Web Site Terms & Conditions of Use