Board of Directors' Minutes
February 2011

By Bruce Preston

Meeting Date: Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Board Members Attending: Richard Corzo (President, presiding), Richard DiFranco, Drew Kwashnack, Rob Limbaugh, Bruce Preston (Secretary), Jeff Setaro, Jim Scheef, .Andrew Woodruff. Treasurer Dave Green arrived at about 9pm and was awestruck by the ongoing discussion.

Called to order: 7:10PM

Minutes of Last Meeting: (accepted with fix Geoff Fox)

DACS Treasurer’s Report for January, 2011

Old Business

General meetings

• February: canceled due to weather (re-scheduled to May)
• March: Exploring Windows 7 - Richard Corzo, Preview: Jim, Review: Bruce
• April: John Patrick - state of the Internet, Preview: Rich D, Review: Rob L
• May: Jeff – Safe Computing (oriented towards keeping your computer clean - virus, malware, etc.)
• June?  – Safe Internet Commerce – (oriented towards safe e-commerce activity etc.), representative from Fairfield County Bank Corp - Bruce to confirm with his contact.

Possible future topics:

• Cloud Computing – haven’t yet heard from possible IBM presenter
• David Pogue— Patrick Libert will try to contact
• Proposed by Charlie: secure internet communications with family and friends;
• FBI presenter; how to avoid unwanted intrusions of your computer.
• Should we invite back Smart Computing?  Bruce will look for UG

Open positions

• Bob Green, who filled in as editor last month, found new employment and will not continue as editor. Ahmad Asgharian, who previously volunteered, will step up.
• The membership chairperson position is still open.
• VP of Programs is also open.


• DACS web site and functionality issues – Due to the wide variation in capabilities, inter-connections, dependencies, etc. the next portion of the meeting swung back and forth between the pros and cons of various approaches and some ‘new’ topics logically worked their way into the discussion, and are reported here.  Jim has attended a Drupal training session, and that further progress has been made in learning to use the Drupal Content Management System. He will attempt to share this learning in the Drupal SIG.  The lack of multi-user access to the master mailing list such that, say, a SIG leader could send a targeted e-mail to participants is a disadvantage to using the MailChimp mailing list service.  Right now only Charlie can send bulk e-mails, and his mechanism does not provide for “rich” content.  The pros and cons of using MailChimp (a free service for small mailings – e.g. under 1000 recipients) was discussed and ultimately rejected.  Jeff recommended using PHPlist, a mail list server that we could host.  PHPlist is compliant with double opt-in requirements.  The discussion then morphed into a “new business” topic - integrating into the site social media capabilities such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter etc. We discussed an ultimate goal such that a forum post would automatically also appear on Facebook and/or Twitter.  The current situation of having two Facebook exposures was discussed and it was ultimately decided to close the ‘closed’ site and to publicize make the “DACS Inc.” site our Facebook presence. After much discussion, we agreed to convert the DACS LinkedIn group to “Open Group” so as to be visible to general searches. The LinkedIn group already has the regular LinkedIn privacy safeguards such that a member’s contact list is not exposed.

• DACS Resource Center communications infrastructure update:
• Jim Scheef reports that the circuit provider has checked the line quality from their site into the RC as far as the modem interface and that it is deemed to be within specifications.  That is as far as they can test.  This implies that the outages we are experiencing are likely to be caused by equipment or processor(s) within the RC.  Jeff has donated a combination modem/router/802.11n Wi-Fi Access point by Netgear.  He will leave it in the RC and Jim will install it, connecting only a single computer down-stream.  This should get us closer to identifying the cause of the drop-outs.
• Charlie Bovaird donated a replacement used telephone with speaker capabilities.  It needs to be installed.  It does not have integrated voice mail, which would need to be provided by some other mechanism (see next item.)
• Rob and Andy Woodruff will meet to put together an implementation plan for using Google Voice.  This could permit automatic forwarding of messages to voice mailboxes of designated recipients.  They will report next month.

New Business

• We’ll be putting together a display on DACS at the Danbury Library for September. Richard and Rob have several ideas as to what the exhibit should contain.  Richard is going to load a ‘starter set’ of ideas on the forum.
• Discussion of DACS social media presence – this topic became part of the ongoing DACS web site topic discussed above.  The net is that we should take all means possible to make ourselves visible.
•  We have received a renewal of our insurance policy.  President, Treasurer and Charlie (because he is familiar with previous policy) will review to see what changes are involved.  The premium increased slightly, however there may be components that are irrelevant to our operations and thus could be deleted.

Adjourned at 9:35