DACS Board of Directors - Wednesday, March 14, 2012

By Lisa Leifels

The meeting was called to order at 7:10.
Attendees: Richard Corzo, Dave Green, Drew Kwashnak, Lisa Leifels, Jim Scheef, Elizabeth Talian, Annette van Ommeren

The minutes of the previous meeting were accepted.

Treasurer Report

INCOME

EXPENSES

Membership Report added after meeting

Old Business

• General meetings
• March 6: Rob Limbaugh—Windows Tuning. Preview: Richard Corzo Review: Bruce Preston
• April 3: Mike Kaltschnee—Tablets. Preview: Lisa Leifels Review: Possibly Joan Galligan or Patrick Libert or Richard Corzo (Mike has iPads and Nook Color running different Android versions.)
• May 1: John Patrick—State of the Internet. Preview:Drew Kwashnak Review: ________
• June 5: Patrick Libert—Music Services. Preview: ________ Review: ________ (Pandora, Spotify, iTunes Match, Amazon Cloud Player)
• Possible future topics:
• Artificial Intelligence – from Alan Turing to Eliza to Watson. Bruce to develop targeting July or August.
• 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.
• Apple – Richard Corzo suggested that we invite Dave Marra in October for this presentation after OX X Mountain Lion is due out late summer
• Cloud storage services—Dropbox, box.net, YouSendIt, iCloud, Amazon S3, etc. Backup Mozy, Carpbonite 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.  Drew suggested using the DACS forum to list what services everyone uses so we can pool our knowledge.
• Digging into Facebook – Jim suggested having someone talk about how to configure the security, privacy issues, what does “Like” accomplish, the difference between a group and a page.
• Online Learning – Khan Academy, iTunes U, Microsoft University, Lynda.com  Richard suggested we add the topic of education to the DACS forum.  We may be able to find a teacher or a librarian who can present this topic.  Elizabeth offered to get in touch with a librarian at the Brookfield Library to see if she knows anyone. Dave Green will contact his daughter, a librarian in Pennsylvania, to see if she knows someone locally.
• Software for the Home- landscaping, home building, recipe tracking, home inventory software.
• Open positions -The membership chairperson/greeter position is still open.  We want to transition to using Drupal/CiviCRM for maintaining the membership data.
• 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.
• The DACS display at the Bethel Library was removed and the majority of DACS brochures that were provided were distributed.  We may want to bring this display to another library.
• We do not plan to supply a speaker for the Danbury Commission on Aging on May 2, due in part to suspected overlap of material with other speakers being invited.

New Business

• Jim has received an export of Charlie’s MS Access membership database which he is entering into the CiviCRM module of Drupal. In addition to maintaining membership and visitor data, we’ll be able to send e-mails without relying on just one person. Initially we’ll set up Charlie so that he can update date, send e-mails, and create newsletter address labels. Going forward we need to set up a privacy statement and a policy on who can update the membership data, who can view it, and who can send e-mails.
• Richard placed some DACS brochures by the Information Desk at WCSU’s midtown campus. He also sent some brochures to the Robotics and Beyond open house held March 3rd. Jim stopped by and found they may be interested in becoming associated with DACS.  Jim suggested that we invite them to the next board meeting.
• Other outside contacts are the Hartford Business Journal (for whom we sent out a survey link on their upcoming tablet app) and a newly forming Greater Hartford Python Group.  The next meeting for the Greater Hartford Python Group is Tuesday, April 3rd, which conflicts with the date of our general meeting.
• We are interested in taking advantage of Microsoft’s Office 365 one-year subscription offer.  Richard is going to check that we meet all of the requirements.
• Charlie sent out an e-mail so we can determine who might be interested in a smartphone SIG. Three or four people have responded so far, one person with a Windows 7 phone, we will continue to monitor this. We could consider adding tablets to the mix.
• Any new job positions should be posted on the Job SIG.
• Elizabeth asked if flyers are created for the upcoming general meetings.  Richard said he will ask Allan to create the poster and send it out for distribution by the board.

The meeting was adjourned at 9:15.