DACS Board of Directors - Wednesday, July 11, 2012

By Bruce Preston

Called to Order:  7:15 PM.
Attending: Richard Corzo, Annette van Ommeren, Bruce Preston, Lisa Leifels, Drew Kwashnak, Elizabeth Talian, Jim Scheef Andy Woodruff, Dave Green.

Minutes of Last Meeting accepted.

Treasurer’s Report for July 2012

INCOME

EXPENSES

Membership Report

Old Business

1.         General Meetings

•           July 3: Microsoft Retail Store. Preview: Richard Corzo, Review: Elizabeth Talian
•           August 7: Robotics and Beyond - Paul Chayka & Mike Morrissey. Preview: Bill Saturno, Review: Jim Ritterbusch
•           September 4: Tom Schonder of Google - Google Apps (Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Sites, and Google Docs), Google Voice, and Google+. Preview: Lisa Leifels, Review: Bruce Preston
•           October 2: Dave Marra - OS X Mountain Lion.     

  Possible future topics:

1. Cloud storage services - Dropbox, box.net, Skydrive, Mozy, Carbonite, YouSendIt, etc. Proposed by Drew. This would be a comparison of functionality and platforms supported (i.e. Windows, Mac, Linux, smartphones, etc.). Drew may be able to pull this together for November or December. Jim and Richard could help with the mobile device support. Richard set up a thread on the DACS forum.
2. 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.
3. Windows 8 – perhaps Jay Ferron
4. Jim will see if he can find a Facebook ambassador.
5. Online Learning, focusing on personal or professional enrichment courses rather than academic. An example would be the offerings of Lynda.com. Annette said that Udemy.com has courses on a number of topics. Harvard and MIT have teamed up to offer free online courses. Elizabeth will continue to investigate this topic and try to find a speaker by emailing some of these companies directly.
6. Jeff Robbins - Drupal expert. Andy has contacted him. Jeff is interested in doing a presentation but is not able to commit to a date at this time. Andy will follow up again in August.
7. Bruce has initiated discussion with a former colleague who runs a private educational program for unemployed/underemployed IT professionals.  They are focusing on mobile applications, but also looking at possible other general interest topics.
8. Bruce may be able to find someone who could talk about processing Hubble data.
9. Bruce may have a person who would do an overview of Genealogy.

2.         Open positions

The membership chairperson/greeter position is still open.  We need a position description to distribute to assist in recruiting.  Membership should be separated from greeting task.

3.         Jim has loaded membership data into Drupal/CiviCRM and has been working on sending group e-mails. We sent out an e-mail for Mike Kaltschnee to invite members to take a survey on his proposed Danbury hackerspace.
4.         Member Mike Kaltschnee is continuing to plan a 'hackerspace' or 'makerspace' for Danbury. He held a second planning meeting on June 4 in the Resource Center. Andy Woodruff has attended the two planning meetings and has offered his thoughts on the possible integration of the hackerspace group into DACS. Andy suggested that we form a steering committee to gather additional information and make a recommendation to the board. Richard, Andy, Jim and Drew volunteered to be on the steering committee. Andy invited Mike to have a meeting with DACS, and Mike will get back to us when they are ready.
5.         We have a one-year subscription with Microsoft Office 365. The portal is https://portal.microsoftonline.com and our SharePoint Team site is https://dacs.sharepoint.com/ . Which board members have not yet confirmed their access? Does Lync conferencing work for everyone?
6.         Bruce Preston has requested a solution to holding remote SIG meetings such as the MS Access SIG. Elizabeth said that Bruce used AnyMeeting for the June meeting. Richard recommended trying to use Lync at the July Microsoft Access SIG, since it’s free and he thought it could do everything that Bruce needed. If there are Access SIG members that are not part of the Sharepoint team, they could be emailed a link. Lync 2010 can be downloaded from the Microsoft.com portal, which can be accessed from the SharePoint team site.
7.         We’ll plan on making a DACS poster and pamphlets available at the Robotics and Beyond (http://www.roboticsandbeyond.com) summer camp in July and August. Jim Scheef has these in his possession.

New Business

1.         Ahmad will be unavailable as copy editor for the week following the newsletter deadline, so  Richard Teasdale will fill in again this month. As always, newsletter submissions should go to dacseditor@dacs.org.
2.         As time permits we would like Patrick to document what is done to publicize the general meetings so that a backup person could step in when necessary.
3.         Sometimes need information is not getting into the weekly e-mails to the membership. Richard needs to work out a process with Charlie.
4. We still are having difficulties with the internet connection in the Resource Center.  Richard will see if a DSL modem that he has retired may operate better than the current one.  In addition, Jim suggests taking down the servers in the cabinet and simplifying the infrastructure.  Currently the server is only providing DHCP service which could be provided by the router.

Meeting was adjourned at 9:15PM