DACS Board of Directors - Wednesday, August 8, 2012

By Bruce Preston

Called to order at: 7:15 PM

Attending: Richard Corzo, Elizabeth Talian, Bruce Preston, Jim Scheef, David Green, Lisa Leifels, Andy Woodruff
Guest: Charlie Bovaird

Minutes of Last Meeting – accepted with correction.

Treasurer’s Report for July 2012

Balance on hand 7/1/12 $5,805.53

INCOME

Dues $116.05
Bank Interest 0.25
Total $116.30

EXPENSES

Resource Center Phone 76.24
Newsletter Printing 85.00
Newsletter Postage 48.75
Total $209.99

Balance on hand 7/31/12 $5,711.84

Membership Report

  June 2012 July 2012 August 2012
Paying members 131 132 132
-with email addresses 131 117 116
new members 1 0 0
       
DACS.DOC printed 100 100 100
DACS.DOC mailed 74 74 73
DACS.DOC mailed-member 55 54 53
DACS.DOC mailed-other 6 6 6
DACS.DOC mailed-free lib 14 14 14
       
General meeting Artificial Intelligence Microsoft Store: Microsoft Robotics & Beyond
       
seat count 22 32 22
members signed in 22 29 20
visitors signed in 0 3 2

Old Business

  1. General meetings
    • 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. Preview: Richard Corzo, Review: TBD
    • Possible future topics:
      1. Bruce contacted a former colleague, Joe Mazzeo, who runs a private educational program for unemployed/underemployed IT professionals. He says, “I would be glad to talk to DACS, and I would probably bring an associate... we usually talk at meet-ups about how the Cloud and Mobile Apps are part of a new paradigm, about the trends in mobility and what they mean, and then about the direction for mobile apps (the Native vs. HTML5 Browser-based issues).... talk only takes about 40 minutes but the interaction usually keeps it going for 1.5 - 2.0 hours.” Bruce asked him if he would be available for November or December.
      2. 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. Elizabeth still to research. Also Harvard and MIT have teamed up to offer free online courses (www.edx.org/courses) – about 6-7 so far. Elizabeth had positive response from Laura Nute from Lynda.com and Kevin Corcoran of CTDLC for participation in topic presentation.  She is also looking at including something on Coursera https://www.coursera.org) – Universities sign up to use their tool to offer courses. There are roughly 115 free course offerings today – about 40 of which seem to be computer related.  She is looking at the March time-frame, unless Lynda wants to do a full hour in an earlier timeframe, and DACs is interested. TBD.
      3. 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.
      4. 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. Jim was going to see if he can find a Facebook ambassador.  Jim has posted a request in a Facebook group which focuses on speakers.  He has asked for a speaker on Facebook itself, no response yet.
      5. 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.
      6. Bruce’s Hubble idea fell through, the contacts were all hardware engineering, processing is mostly done by JPL.
      7. Bruce’s Genealogy prospect is leading a tour of Italy; he has not gotten a response yet.
      8. Windows 8 – Richard will contact Jay Ferron to see if he is available.
      9. Jim is working with Allan Ostergren about possible tie in with astronomy observatory group working out of New Milford H.S. such that they might show computer control of telescope and capture of images.
  2. Open positions
    • The membership chairperson/greeter position is open.
    • Rob Limbaugh will be relocating out of the area in a month, so we will need to find a new board member to replace him.  Richard has a candidate in mind and will approach him to see if he would fill out Rob’s term.
    • Patrick Libert plans not to run again when his board term ends in December.
  3. Jim and Richard created a group for the Mobile Devices SIG in CiviCRM on the Drupal website. Jim sent the monthly SIG reminder using CiviCRM.  We need someone to start porting static content from the current site to the Drupal site.
  4. 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/ .  Andy, Lisa, Elizabeth, Richard, Jim have all been on the site. BOD members who have not installed the provided Office 2010 should look into it.
  5. Bruce Preston has worked with AnyMeeting.com and with Microsoft Lync.  The combined July/August MS Access SIG meeting only had two attendees so it was not a good test for Lync.  He will try again with the September SIG meeting.

New Business

  1. Do we want to put up another DACS display at the Danbury Library in September? Last year we did this, and had some number of pamphlets distributed, and reminded the library of our existence, but it’s not clear we got any new visitors or members from this effort. We will look into Newtown instead.  We need volunteers to put together the display, and notify Danbury that we will not be displaying this year.  The flyer needs to be modified to reflect changes in SIGs (added and discontinued.)
  2. Jim got a quote from Comcast for cable Internet to the Resource Center. It was more expensive than our current DSL service. We replaced the DSL modem and Wi-Fi access point.  We are still using the Cisco router, but have removed the server which had been providing the DHCP service.  It was stable for the duration of the BOD meeting.
  3. Should we consider again joining meetup.com? Who could post our meetings if we decide to join?  Probably not until we get consistent updates on Facebook, LinkedIn, and perhaps the membership/greeter position filled.

Meeting was adjourned at: 9:00 PM

 

 

 


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