DACS Board of Directors - Wednesday, February 8, 2012

By Bruce Preston

Called to order: 7:15.

Attending: Richard Corzo, Jim Scheef, Lisa Leifels, Elizabeth Talian, Drew Kwashnak, Andy Woodruff, Bruce Preston, Dave Green

The minutes of the previous meeting were accepted.

Treasurer Report

INCOME

EXPENSES

The treasurer submitted a 2012 budget to the board.

Membership Report

General meetings

• February 7: Jim Scheef, Drew Kwashnak, and Richard Corzo—Windows, Mac, and Linux comparison—part 2. Preview: Richard Corzo, Review: Elizabeth Talian & Lisa Leifels.
• March 6: Rob Limbaugh—Windows Tuning. Preview: Richard Corzo Review: Bruce Preston (See DACS Forum thread http://forum.dacs.org/thread-352.html if you have further suggestions for Rob to cover.) What would be our backup plan if Rob is late getting back from his trip?  Backup: Bruce has 18 freeware utilities that he could demonstrate.
• April 3: Mike Kaltschnee—Tablets. Preview: Lisa Leifels Review: TBD
•  (Mike has iPads and Nook Color running different Android versions.)
• May 1: John Patrick—State of the Internet. Preview: ________ Review: ________
• June 5: Patrick Libert—Music Services. Preview: ________ Review: ________ (Pandora, Spotify, iTunes Match, Amazon Cloud Player)
• Possible future topics:
• Andy contacted Google and they are willing to provide a speaker. We asked them for someone to speak on Google Apps (Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Sites, and Google Docs) and Google Voice.
• Smart Computing – “Presentation in a box”—needs about 8 weeks of notice. Held in reserve.
• Apple – Lion OS, other offerings (Dave Marra?)
• Artificial Intelligence – from Alan Turing to Eliza to Watson. Bruce to develop targeting July or August.
• Cloud storage services—Dropbox, box.net, Skydrive, Mozy, Carbonite, YouSendIt, etc. Drew will look into a comparison of functionality etc., hardware supported (i.e. Windows, Mac, Linux, smartphones, etc.)   Jim and Richard would help with the smartphone support.  Richard will set up a thread on the DACS forum.
• Digging into Facebook.
• Smartphone comparisons.
• Open positions
• The membership chairperson/greeter position is still open.  Jim is in the process of implementing CiviCRM as a mechanism for board members to have access to membership data, create e-mails etc.  He will work on it during the Drupal SIG.
• 2011 income and expense report/budget for 2012—Dave Green and Finance Committee (Andy Woodruff and Richard Corzo) have come up with a design that David will implement.
• Andy Woodruff, Drew Kwashnak, and Richard Corzo installed the display for the Bethel Library; the duration of the exhibit is to be up through the end of February.
• We discussed putting some of the tri-fold brochures up at locations that are likely to have computer enthusiasts such as WCSU, Henry Abbott Tech, Heritage Village, etc...
• Elizabeth has looked into establishing a group on the MeetUp.com site.  Members look for local events by doing a search on distance, keywords, etc.  If their search matches up, they would see the DACS presence which would direct them to the DACS.org site for details.  Elizabeth’s cut on it is that it is expensive as well as labor intensive.

New Business

• We have approved Dave Mawdsley as the new Linux SIG leader replacing Jim Ritterbusch.
• Through APCUG we are now receiving a quarterly shipment O’Reilly books and e-book certificates. Jim will renew our Microsoft User Group Kit.
• Website changes: Added AddThis bar with social networking “like” buttons on a few pages, as suggested by Bruce and Jeff.  It supports Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.  At Charlie’s suggestion we added a top-level menu item (buttons on left) for Join DACS in addition to the menu item under About DACS and the link on the right. Membership form download links are now at the top of the Joining DACS page.
• Hog Advertising accepted our pricing for a DACS website ad. They have signed up for 6 months at $50. Annette created a graphic version of the ad.
• Patrick Libert added DanburyPatch at http://www.patch.com/ to our publicity list.
• Neil Corday has requested a DACS member who could give a presentation on computer-based scams for the Danbury Commission on Aging at the Danbury Senior Center on May 2nd. A couple of board members have provided links on the subject. Can we provide or suggest a speaker?
• Richard will modify our PayPal payment profile to provide an option for a nonprofit corporate membership.

The meeting was adjourned at 9:15.