DACS Board of Directors Meeting
Wednesday, February 13, 2013

By Bruce Preston

Called to order: 7:05 PM

Attending: Attending: Richard Corzo, Bruce Preston, Jim Scheef, Lisa Leifels, Richard Teasdale, Bill Saturno, Andy Woodruff, Annette van Ommeren

Minutes of Last Meeting: accepted.

Treasurer’s Report for January 2013

INCOME

EXPENSES

Membership Stats

Old Business

1. General meetings
• February 5: Drew Kwashnak—Cloud Storage Services. Preview: Bill Saturno, Review: Richard Corzo
• March 5: Toni McKeen—Genealogy. Preview: Bruce Preston, Review: Richard Teasdale. Jim will not be available for AskDACS at the meeting – Bill will cover.
• April 2: Laura Nute of Lynda.com and Kevin Corcoran of CTDLC.org—Online Learning. Preview: Elizabeth Talian, Review: Annette van Ommeren
• May 7: John Patrick—State of the Internet. We determined a publicity plan:  (a) we will assure that the Ridgefield newspapers are included, as they may have been missed in John’s last appearance; (b) Bill Saturno will provide additional radio station contacts, beyond our usual list of publicity contacts; (c) we will send both emails and faxes this month, to both the usual contacts and the radio station contacts; (d) we will include photos (or links to online high res photos) to the non-radio station contacts.  Richard Corzo [?? check this] will run this publicity plan by John. Preview: Jim Scheef, Review: ________
• June 4: Jennifer M. Scott—Twitter. Preview: Lisa Leifels Review:_________
• July 2: Bruce Preston—PagePlus X6 Desktop Publishing. Preview: _________ Review:_________

• Possible future topics:

• Presentation on Facebook. Jim is working on how to best use Facebook as an organization, and might come up with a presentation on how individuals may use Facebook.
• Jeff Robbins—Drupal expert. Jeff is interested in doing a presentation but is not able to commit to a date at this time. Andy contacted him this month to let him know our calendar is full the first half of this year. Andy will follow up in May and ask that he let us know when he will be near the area. (He resides in Rhode Island.) This is a “long shot” as to a presentation.
• Years ago we did “Surfin’ Safari” as a segment about interesting websites. Perhaps now we could do something similar with mobile devices – smartphone and tablets – what apps are found to be interesting, entertaining, etc. This could be a ‘forum’ type meeting with multiple presenters for a full session, or it could be a small segment after Ask DACS. The iBook (Apple iTunes store),“The Telegraph: 500 Must Have Apps” would be a good resource. Richard Corzo is interested in showing News Bento, RSS news reader, from the Windows 8 Store.
• Approach Dr. John Murphy, President & CEO of Danbury Hospital, about doing a presentation on Electronic Medical Records, etc. Danbury Hospital is leading edge on this topic. Jim was referred to the hospital’s CIO.
• Office 2013 sometime this fall? Or we could do a workshop in the Microsoft Store like we did for Windows 8.  It appears that this will be a subscription offering.
• Apple TV or perhaps the rumored Intel product, watching TV using broadband connection but not a cable TV subscription.
• Microsoft Surface Pro (the Intel-based Microsoft tablet that will also run Windows desktop applications).
• Bruce has gotten involved with OTR – Old Time Radio – 100% free and legal downloadable radio programs from the 30s through the 50s.  Genres include Detective, Comedy, Mystery, History etc.

 
2. Open positions

• Bob Green is starting to learn and take over duties of the membership chairperson/greeter position from Charlie Bovaird.
• Need a new APCUG representative to replace Patrick Libert, primarily to post to the APCUG website, field questions, receive quarterly postings, etc. Bill Saturno volunteered to look into APCUG, but Richard Corzo wasn’t able to find credentials yet for logging in. We also need a liaison with TechSoup – the fulfillment operation used by many software vendors for distribution to non-profits. The TechSoup function is to receive distributions of product announcements and distribute to the Board. This person would also be responsible for placing orders.
3. In addition our general meeting, we continue to post some of our SIG meetings on Meetup.
4. “Beginners” Workshop? Workshop could be held from time to time. Jim volunteered to do a workshop and Charlie volunteered to be an assistant. Jim and Charlie have scheduled Feb. 27th. It is initially intended to be only offered to members. Should we publicize this on Meetup, making it clear that it’s required to join, or be a member of DACS?  Need DACS website calendar and Meetup to be updated.
5. We switched from our former DSL provider to AT&T. Download speed is definitely faster, measured at about 5 Mbps. We need to monitor our next phone bill and make sure we don’t get billed by our old provider.
6. Richard Corzo would like to follow precedent and step down as president of DACS upon completion of his 3rd year in office. Officer elections are held by the board in March.  Bruce also alerted that he will probably only be available for one more year.

New Business

1. Bruce Preston, recognizing the lack of new activity and interest in Microsoft Access-based custom applications, has notified us that the Access SIG is ending as of this month.
2. Do we need some off-line publicity for DACS? Sean Henderson has suggested we get people to use DACS license plate holders available from CafePress.
3. To help launch the Innovation Center and Hackerspace, the City of Danbury is hosting the Danbury Mad Hacker Social Media Conference, which will feature the Danbury Mini Maker Faire. Mike Kaltschnee has invited us to have a booth at the Maker Faire in June and we have accepted the offer.
4. Separately Tom Carruthers asked to meet with us about possible participation in the Mad Hacker Conference June 8 and 9 in downtown Danbury. Tom says, “I have been put in charge of the task of organizing about 28-35 workshops, panels, symposiums and keynotes for the event. There will also be a Makers Fair on the green and at the Ice Arena as well as events, keynotes and a big bash at the new Danbury Sports Dome located on Shelter Rock Road.”  - Tabled until we get a better definition as to what they anticipate DACS participation to be.
5. Meetup perk offered to DACS – 15% discount on Mozy subscription for Meetup members.  We have listed it as an available perk.  It will be announced prior to the break at the General Meeting.

Adjourned: 9:22