[wplug-members] Draft Minutes for WPLUG Board Meeting, 6/21/2006

[David Ostroske]

Here are the draft minutes for last month's WPLUG Board meeting.

WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA LINUX USERS GROUP
Scheduled Board Meeting, June 21st, 2006, 7:00pm
8220 Wean Hall, Carnegie Mellon University

CALL TO ORDER
The meeting was called to order at 7:18pm.

4 of the 5 Directors were present at the meeting:
*Bill Moran, Chair
*Chris Teodorski, Director-At-Large
*David Ostroske, Secretary
*Beth Lynn Eicher, Vice-Chair

Patrick Wagstrom, Treasurer, had said that he was unable to attend.
This is an excused absence.

MINUTES
The minutes for the May 10th, 2006 meeting were adopted as
posted. The official minutes are posted here:
http://wplug.org/pipermail/wplug-members/2006-June/000027.html

REPORTS
* Vice Chair
Beth reported that Michael Nikithser, who works in her department, has
a cabinet that we could use for storage. We still need storage
containers, and we would need to measure the dimensions of the cabinet
so we can get containers that fit properly. We will take measurements
after the meeting.

* Internet Committee
Duncan Hutty reported:
--- BEGIN
Primary activity of the moment is creating a failover machine to serve
as a stand-in for penguin.wplug.org. Penguin needs to be rebuilt, but
since we do not wish to be without its services while this happens, a
spare machine has been acquired and an OS installed. FreeBSD was
selected after a brief but frustrating tussle with FC5. Since then,
progress has been delayed because Beth Lynn was at Usenix ATC and then
unwell. When this machine is placed back on the internet, we will begin
to install and test network services on it: http, smtp, listserv, db and
whatever else needs to be done to make it a testing ground and temporary
replacement for penguin.wplug.org

Feel free to go further into planning what should be done and how it
should be implemented if you want, but only if you let me know your
suggestions/decisions.

Otherwise our internet activities are swimming along satisfactorily,
although I have noticed a downturn in the amount of traffic on most of
the lists and #wplug...not that this matters much, it's not a cause for
concern IMO, just an observation.
---END

Bill reported that we will move our existing services to the failover
machine, then rebuild Penguin.

* Treasurer
No report. This will be picked up in July.

Beth hasn't spoken with Jennifer Landefeld recently. She will contact
her by Thursday, July 6, 2006.

* Program Committee
The Installfest will be held on Saturday, July 8, 2006. Six (6)
ErieLUG members are planning to attend the event. Dave offered to show
up for moral support and answer questions about running meetings and
Installfests.

* Secretary
Dave hasn't taken control of the -members list yet. He will speak with
Beth about this.

* Newsletter Committee
Vance had nothing new to report.

* Chair
Bill is going to be teaching a PHP course in the near future. WPLUG
members will get a discount if they sign up for the course. Details
will come in due time, and Bill will post this information to the
-members list when he knows more about it.

* Director-At-Large
Chris has nothing to report.

* Vice Chair (part 2)
Beth reported that WPLUG received three letters, including a bank
statement, this past month. One letter came from a person who was
requesting membership. Dave will take this matter up.

Beth raised the issue that we seriously need to get an official
snail-mail box for WPLUG. In addition, Beth has a recent need for some
outgoing mail, but she doesn't know if it will be properly delivered,
so she needs a valid P.O. Box address. Since Patrick has already done
research on mailboxes, we will consult with him on this issue. Dave
will continue to research this issue, and will check the Squirrel Hill
post office for this purpose.

* Venues
Beth reported that we had troubles securing a venue for our summer
dates, and that she won't be able to approach the subject for the
September 16 meeting until August. Since we need that date set firm
for nominations, she has taken the initiative to find an alternative
venue for that date. She is working with Judi Galardi to find a
meeting place.

October 14, 2006 will be the annual membership meeting. We will have a
paid lunch for the meeting. We will need to budget this meeting, to
cover the venue costs and the food. Beth proposed a budget of $130 for
food, $40 for venue overhead, and $40 for venue overhead at the
September 16 nominations meeting.

Bill moved: that Beth Lynn be apportioned $210 for finding dates and
venues for the nominations and annual membership meetings in September
and October. Without objection, the motion passed.

* Treasurer (part 2)
Beth reported that we currently have $87 in the refreshment fund. We
have a cap on the fund, so the surplus could be deposited into the
bank. Beth will do this, and will give all receipts to Patrick.

* Conference discounts
Beth discussed group discounts at USENIX, which typically are not
advertised. We could schedule a group of WPLUG members to attend the
LISA conference (to be held in Washington, D.C., December 3-8, 2006),
so that they may become eligible for such a discount. We would want to
be registered two weeks before the early-bird registration deadline,
which would be October 18, 2006. Beth proposed that we start
advertising a discount to WPLUG members for the LISA conference, and
that we establish a deadline.

Bill moved: that we authorize the Program Committee to pursue the
opportunity to get a group discount for the LISA conference starting
on December 3, 2006, and that this benefit be extended to WPLUG
members only. Without objection, the motion passed.

* Member Of The Year Award
Beth proposed that we offer an Member Of The Year Award to one
non-Board member of WPLUG that the Board would like to thank for their
service to this organization. We will sketch out the details later.

* LugRadio Live feasibility study
We will discuss the LugRadio feasibility study at the next Board
meeting on July 12, 2006.

Bill said that we seem to be falling behind, so we ought to schedule
another meeting. We will discuss this on July 12.

* PR Committee
These people are interested
*Greg Simkins
*Vance Kochenderfer
*Matt Hughes
*Steve Hancock
*Mike Hansell

Without objection, we appointed these five people to the PR Committee.

We had agreed to these duties in the past:
*Promote T-shirts. Interested parties can order shirts and other goods
from Cafe Press.
*Newsletter and pamphlet distribution. Vance can help with these efforts.
*Procure signage for events.
*Establish partnerships with the Pittsburgh tech community.
*Appeal to sci-fi events. (Bill is member of Parsec, Judi mentioned
that there's always a big Linux group at sci-fi conventions)
*Arrange for special bigger meetings to attract more people.

Dave will notify the PR Committee of their appointment and give them
these duties to attend to.

ADJOURNMENT
We adjourned at 9:30pm.

-- 
David Ostroske <eksortso at gmail.com>