DACS Board of Directors - Wednesday, April 11, 2012

By Bruce Preston

The meeting was called to order at 7:10 PM.
Attendance: Richard Corzo, Jim Scheef, Annette van Ommeren, Patrick Libert, Lisa Leifels, Elizabeth Talian, Drew Kwashnak, Bruce Preston, Rob Limbaugh, Andy Woodruff
Guests: Charlie Bovaird, Mike Morrissey, Paul Chayka, Mike Kaltschnee, John Gatrell

Minutes of Previous Meeting as corrected were accepted. The treasurer was unable to attend so there was no treasurer's report this month. He did provide the board with a list of received checks.

Membership Report added after meeting

Note: To accommodate the time constraints of our guests, New Business items 1 & 2 were discussed prior to Old Business.

Old Business

1. General meetings
   • April 3: Mike Kaltschnee—Tablets. Preview: Lisa Leifels, Review: Patrick Libert
   • May 1: John Patrick—State of the Internet. Preview: Drew Kwashnak, Review: Andy Woodruff
   • June 5: Patrick Libert—Music Services. Preview: Bruce Preston, Review: TBD (Pandora, Spotify, iTunes Match, Amazon Cloud Player)
   • September 4: Tom Schonder of Google—Google Apps (Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Sites, and Google Docs), Google Voice, and Google Plus.
2. Possible future topics:
• Artificial Intelligence – from Alan Turing to Eliza to Watson. Bruce to develop, targeting the July presentation.
• Apple—OS X Mountain Lion is due “late summer”, will invite Dave Marra, tentatively scheduled for October.
• Cloud storage services—Dropbox, box.net, Skydrive, Mozy, Carbonite, YouSendIt, etc. Drew will look into a comparison of functionality, platforms supported (i.e. Windows, Mac, Linux, smartphones, etc.) Jim and Richard would help with the smartphone support. Richard 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.  Drew requested that it be scheduled after August.
• Presentation on 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.  Not scheduled.
• Robotics – As a result of discussions with Robotics and Beyond (see New Business item 2) we will look into asking them doing a presentation on their activities.  August?
• Online Learning, focusing on personal enrichment courses rather than academic.  An example would be the offerings of Linda.com  Elizabeth will investigate.
• Jeff Robbins – Drupal expert – he is a friend of Andy, who will look into possible presentation.
3. Open positions
• The membership chairperson/greeter position is open.
4. Jim has started to set up Drupal/CiviCRM for maintaining membership data.  He has individual e-mail module working but not campaigns/broadcasts.  He also needs to load membership dates – join and expiration or termination for reporting.

New Business

1. Discussion led by Rob Limbaugh and guests Mike Kaltschnee, John Gatrell: a proposal for consideration of a new group to be affiliated with DACS, perhaps as a SIG.  The project is spearheaded by Mike Kaltschnee.  Mike is in the process of lining up resources to create a ‘hackerspace’ or ‘makerspace’ to be situated within Danbury.  He already has the involvement of various local government and greater public resources.  For example, Danbury Planning and Zoning has identified several possible sites; it would not be located in the DACS Resource Center. A hackerspace is a group that gets together to build things by pooling talents and resources.  They use a wide variety of technology and hardware such as 3D printers, computers running Computer Aided Design software, and power tools such as lathes, drill presses, table saws, workbenches etc.  While no motion of any kind was put forward, in general the board expressed interest in supporting the concept.
2. Robotics and Beyond (roboticsandbeyond.com) is interested in becoming involved with DACS. Mike Morrissey and/or Paul Chayka explained their program which has been a success in New Milford since it started in 2004.  To simplify, it is a program to introduce and involve youth (K through 12) with concepts and practices in engineering and science through the development of projects.  Their 3-week summer camp has been so successful that this year they will be running a second session to accommodate the demand.  They are now looking to going full time and expanding geographic coverage into the Danbury area.  We discussed a possible symbiotic relationship between the two organizations.  No motion was put forward, in general the board expressed interest in supporting the concept.
3. Annual Officers Election: Present office holders have agreed to continue.  The slate consists of President (Richard Corzo), Secretary (Bruce Preston), Treasurer (Dave Green), VP of Public Relations (Patrick Libert). Charlie Bovaird is continuing as Membership Chair only until we find a replacement.  Motion was made to elect the slate and the motion was carried.
4. We have signed up for a free one-year subscription with Microsoft Office 365 for use by the board and SIG leaders subject to various constraints specified by Microsoft. The portal is https://portal.microsoftonline.com and our Sharepoint Team site is https://dacs.sharepoint.com/ .
5. A preliminary meeting of the proposed Mobile Devices SIG will be held Thursday, April 19. This is an expansion of the idea of a Smartphone SIG from last month which will now also include tablets and e-readers.
6. Bruce Preston reported that the usage terms of the free Mikogo account which the MS Access SIG has been using since October 2010 have changed.  It is now restricted to a presenter and three attendees.  (Mikogo implements a webinar – screen casting of the presenter’s screen over the internet.) This resulted in several attendees being locked out of the virtual SIG meeting.  He listed several alternatives. 1) A paid “Pro” subscription which supports unlimited webinars consisting of up to 15 attendees at $19/month.  2) A ‘lifetime’ “Pro” subscription at a one-time fee of $539.  Either of these would be DACS accounts available to any DACS event such as SIG or board meetings.  He has asked Mikogo if they have a discount for 501(c) 3 organizations but had no response at the time of the board meeting.  3) A free account with www.anymeeting.com which supports up to 100 participants, but has advertizing placed on the attendee’s screen for the duration of the meeting.  In addition, this service does not provide some of the features used by the SIG meetings; most importantly (a) the ability to change which participant’s screen is being broadcast, or (b) the granting of remote control.  A demonstration of an AnyWhere.com session was made.  4) The Microsoft-provided Lync service may have suitable capabilities, but there may be licensing restrictions limiting use by SIG, requiring a license for each attendee (we have a limited number) or maximum number of attendees.  This will be investigated.  No motion was submitted at this time pending further analysis.

The meeting was adjourned at 9:30 PM.