[wplug-members] Official Minutes for 4/12/2006 Board Meeting

[David Ostroske]

The following are the official minutes for the April 12th, 2006 board
meeting (last month). They had been posted in draft form to the -board
list, but not yet to the -members list. Draft minutes for the May 10th
meeting will be coming shortly.

WPLUG Board Meeting
Scheduled Board Meeting, April 12th, 2006, 7:00pm
8220 Wean Hall, Carnegie Mellon University

CALL TO ORDER
The meeting was called to order at 7:16pm.

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

MINUTES
The minutes for the 3/8/2006 Board meeting were adopted as corrected.

REPORTS
* Secretary
Dave reported: We have 72 members, as of the morning of 4/12/2006.

We are not seeing the data correctly on the online membership admin
list. Dave will keep a duplicate database of the membership
enrollment.

* Treasurer
We have roughly $485.00 total. Patrick needs to get statements from
the bank account sent directly to him.

Beth found $36.00 in WPLUG funds. Patrick will put this in the account.

Beth also discovered a value of $350.00 in alleged funds, which may be
from the original WPLUG account from before 1999. Beth and Patrick
will meet with Jennifer Landefeld, who had acted as treasurer years
ago and who happens to be in town.

* Other officers
Patrick spoke with Lazlo at FreeNode. They are massively behind in
handling registrations, but they will eventually get us registered.

Beth reported: We had noticed that North Central Ohio Linux Users Group
copied our bylaws. At NOTACON, Beth ran into their leader, who copied our
bylaws just because the group needed some. They exchanged cards.

STANDING COMMITTEE REPORTS
*Internet Committee
Nothing yet has happened due to scheduling conflicts. Bill said that
he takes a measure of responsibility for this. Beth made the same
claim, regarding setting up mailing lists.

Bill hasn't got time to learn to use OpenACS. He will consider a LAMP
platform of some sort for the new Penguin server.

Bill will contact Mark Dalrymple to get a flat file of the membership rolls.

*Program Committee
Beth got the option from SunGard (formerly InFlow) to have a site
visit in June.

We still need a 2nd topic for June, and topics in July.

September will raise some problems. September 2 is Labor Day weekend.
September 9 might be hard to schedule at CMU because of the beginning
of the semester. Beth said that September 16 would work best for the
Board Nominations Meeting. The Board proposed this date for nominations,
pending room reservation.

* Newsletter Committee.
Vance gave us these notes:
----------------------------- BEGIN ----------------------------
WPLUG Newsletter Committee Notes
April 12, 2006

No meetings of the committee have been held since the last
report to the Board and the membership.

The April issue was distributed at the April 1 GUM.  There are a
number of left over copies in the WPLUG stuff in the CMU machine
room (I would guess ~30).  If we intend to hand these out at the
VMware talk, we should consider printing more.

I do not have a library distribution report for last month's
issue.  Collecting and managing this data is a bit trickier than
it first appeared.  The good news is that we *are* getting
copies out there and they *are* being picked up (in some
locations, anyway).

The monthly request for articles sent to the wplug list has been
somewhat effective.  We have gotten inquiries from some
prospective contributors.  However, this hasn't always
translated into actual material.  At this point, the May issue
should be fine but we do not have a backlog of articles to use
after that.  This is by no means a crisis situation, but we're
not sitting on a big pile of articles, either.

As far as I know, the requests relating to the <top at wplug.org>
alias and newsletter mailing list are still pending.
------------------------------ END -----------------------------

We have not been able to get in contact with Elwin Green.

* ErieLUG Revival Committee

Chris reported: The March meeting that J.M. Rice ("phreekbird")
suggested did not pan out, though he is still interested in scheduling
activities. Beth suggested getting a carpool together so that the Erie
people can come down to Pittsburgh, some of whom will be present on
April 29. The dates that Beth suggested are May 13 and May 27. Chris
will maintain communications with Erie.

Chris will fix up erie.wplug.org and moderate the wplug-erie mailing
list. He will receive the password from Beth.

* Nominations for PR Committee
We will send messages to the -members and -plan lists and ask for
nominees to step forward. We'll say that we need enthusiasm and people
skills more than technical skills.

The Board recessed at 8:16pm, and reconvened at 8:29pm.

* VMware
There is a concern about space for the VMware presentation at this
time (we have over 70 RSVPs so far). We might need a larger room.
There may be free space to be had, but it must be done as soon as we
possibly can arrange it. Beth will see what the real capacity of NSH
3305 is (NSH 7500 is our immediate back-up), and if the AV is working
properly in the venue.

VMware has agreed to purchase pizza for lunch for the event.

We will promote the event further, seeing if we can get a bigger room.
We will consider bringing in other members of the local IT community,
including CMU's School of Computer Science. SCS can co-sponsor the
event. If they can, then they could offer additional promotional
materials and provide additional funding for promotions.

Chris will ask VMware if there is an image (a photograph, logo, or
screenshot) that we can use to promote the event. We will make a flier
with the information that we have so we can advertize the event.

Bill had created a first draft of a WPLUG 8-1/2" x 11" promotional
flier. It was created with the April 29 event in mind, but it could be
adjusted in the future. We examined and suggested improvements to the
promo flier.

Patrick suggested building partnerships between other organizations in
the Pittsburgh area, such as SnaPGH. We will take this up at our next
board meeting.

We will need to find volunteers for the event, and we should get them
as early as possible. Patrick volunteered to host the event, Bill
volunteered to co-host, and Chris volunteered be a roadie, to help Bob
Good with his needs for the presentation. Dave volunteered to be a
door greeter. Patrick contacted the -plan list to get additional
volunteers.

Chris reported that he contacted Fast Signs, and described a sign that
we could use at future events. This sign would be expensive, but we
might be able to use such a sign. Chris will continue to investigate
signage.

Patrick will make an OOo presentation that will explain Linux, open
source, and WPLUG to passers-by.

* Discussion of formality of membership meetings and methods to handle
problems at.
We came to the following agreements:
1. The board will make an effort to sit close to one another at the
membership meetings.
2. We will check about 30 minutes before the meeting time to see if we
have a meeting. If not, we will starting calling members who are not
present to see if they can attend.
3. We will schedule our meetings in the morning, and maintain a strict
schedule to prevent putting off the meeting.
4. We won't say that we won't have a membership meeting on April 29th,
but we will post an announcement of when our next meeting will be.

Bill will ask the folks on the -plan list what services we want to
provide on Penguin. The idea is to hash out the rough details on
-plan, and then present topics for discussion on the next membership
meeting agenda.

ADJOURNMENT
The Board adjourned at 10:25pm.

--
David Ostroske <eksortso at gmail.com>