Our next Grex Board Meeting will be Sunday, March 7 at 6 p.m. EST in the
Kids Room (upstairs) at Zingerman's Next Door in Ann Arbor, MI and by
dial-in conferencing. Here is the current agenda.
1. Call to Order - 6 p.m. EST
2. Schedule Next Meeting
3. Treasurer's Report
4. Staff Report
5. Old Business
* Grex Status & Future
* E-mail whitelisting/postfix
* Personal web addresses
* Communication when Grex is down
6. New Business
* Staff appointments
* Staff conference access
* Google rank & Updating Grex's web pages
* Increased disk space?
7. Any Other Business
8. Adjourn - No later than 9 p.m. EST
All are welcome. Conference calling details will follow as an item
response.
42 responses total.
As a note to staff: I suggest we try to have some kind of a meeting prior to this next board meeting. How about that same weekend?
It should be noted that there is no such thing as "Old Business" in Roberts Rules of Order. A lot of people think that because there is "New Business", there must be "Old Business". However the items that might fall under "old business" are taken care of in Reports and Special Orders. The latter are items that are always scheduled (such as budgets) and business postponed from a prior meeting. I also suggest adding "Introduction of Guests", a President's Report, Minutes of previous meeting (to amend and adopt), Is there a particular meeting when a budget is adopted? And is there also a meeting at which the report of an audit commitee on the annual Financial Statement is considered?
I hate Robert's Rules of Order.
This agenda follows previous Grex agendas in format. As far as I know, we can develop our own terminology. It's helpful to point out what we need to finish from the previous meeting(s) as we don't want it build up. Also, as far as I know, we are not strictly following Robert's Rules of Order, so don't expect chapter and verse in the agenda. Budget is part of the Treasurer's report. If necessary we can have a separate budget meeting, but I don't think it has been an issue up to now. I agree it is something we need to keep a close eye on. I don't believe we have the budget for an independent audit of financial records. Or at least we don't have the budget for that and keep the system running after that. The approval of minutes is a good one (allows for corrections, if any). I'll add that. In general, I think our agenda is ambitious enough without a lot administrative items, but I'll see what we can do in terms of Introductions.
They way we've been handling "approval of the minutes" is by simply making any corrections in the minutes item itself. The archives always include the first 30 days of discussion. It's a pretty casual system but it's worked well. A long, long time ago we had some pretty robust conversations about Grex using Robert's Rules. The end result, much to Rane's horror, is we do our own thing, keeping the meetings as casual as possible. I guess we could always revisit that question but I'm not sure why.
It's only worked for 20 years now, we clearly need to immediately change the way we do everything.
Okay, so it sounds like we'll just mention the minutes in passing at the meeting (in case anyone wants to do any updates on-line). Thanks for the history, Mary.
Re resp #4: Kent, the agenda doesn't follow traditional Grex format. The item numbering is too obscure.
It's true that I love Roberts Rules. They can greatly expedite the business of a meeting. It's like brushing teeth - it's some work, but the benefits are great. But I lost that battle with Grex - I'm just suggesting some things that might help organizing the agenda - forget I used those provacative words "Roberts Rules".... Incidentally, an *internal* audit committee is legally acceptable in most cases. Only businesses seeking big grants need external audits. An internal audit committee consists of three persons, not including the treasurer, that review the books annually and submit a report, which is adopted by the board (treasurer reports should not be "adopted" by the board as the board cannot verify their accuracy - that's what the commitee is charged with doing). This all, by the way, comes from (shhhh...) Roberts Rules. Forget I said that.....
Know we love you, Rane.
Okay, then, I'll use Roman numerals in the agenda next time :) Do we have people qualified to do an internal audit? It just seems like more bureaucracy to me, but of course, it could be considered a safeguard against any wrongdoing. It seems like it would be a bit difficult to get this going and keep it going when we have trouble finding people for other tasks. I gather you are volunteering to be on this committed, Rane. Do you have a background in accounting?
s/committed/committee (or maybe you need to be committed to be on this committee...)
re #10: hehe
Unless there's a bunch of money being sent and received that hasn't been discussed, it seems like conducting an audit is an unnecessary hassle. If this were the late 80's when grex had a lot of money coming and going it'd be different, but it seems like grex has got like 2 or 3 bills and a dozen or so members...
Then an internal audit would be a snap. The IAC just checks the checkbook and against the bank statements. If the treasurer is the one also receiving all payments and depositing them, it is even simpler. I'm familiar with a small nonprofit that has an "office" (our house) which receives dues and sends transaction information to the treasurer. Small errors are sometimes found. On advantage of an IAC is that someone will notice if the treasurer disappears...
We'll give it some thought. Right now, we have a bigger need to make sure money is coming in at all than we do to make sure there isn't a small error in the treasurer's reports.
Quite true. I'm expecting to be asked to pay dues soon.....
Add to the agenda-- Formal board vote on Tonster's offer to join staff and host Grex
"Staff appointments" covers offers to join staff. As far as hosting Grex we might discuss that under the Staff report or add it to the end of the agenda (Any other business). At this point, we have more than enough agenda items to keep us busy.
You forgot to mention, website updates and cheat-sheet! Right now, it's unclear how ppl are supposed to access mysql, email or the system.. etc.. Think in terms of a kid, a mere babe in the woods, trying to access Grex.. (he knows the Unix spelling and that's it) (after he logs in to resh) 1. 'Welcome to Grex. This is resh. Type 'help' if you are lost.' He won't know what 'resh' is. He isn't lost. I'd maybe change that to something very explicit and simple. "You are currently using a restricted Unix shell; this shell has a lot of features turned off. Please type 'help' for more information." 2. I totally approve off the new help thingy :) Bet that's cross' doing :) But we need to point to opt-ins there (email, mysql, etc) - after all said kid will know about email and maybe his book will have 'mail' in it. Remember, he's expecting a standard Unix box at this point. 3. So could we have a simple text file (which is absolutely authoritative) on the current status of features being offered. Every time staff adds/removes a feature, this file gets updated. Made web- accessible.
One step at a time, veek. There are only so many hours we can meet. But I'll try to keep it all in mind for the near future.
Having an internal audit sounds like a great idea, if there are three people interested enough to take a look at the books. The assessment above is fairly accurate: Grex has paid for internet service and phone over the last year, and taken in a few dollars here and there. It should be a fairly simple audit. I will try to post a summary of Grex's finances before I officially turn over the books to TS (in a week and a half).
It's a good idea for preventing errors. It's mainly that we need people to do it and a procedure to follow, two things that Grex tends to be short on.
Mark has done a fantastic job as treasurer and he'll be a hard act to follow. Thanks, Mark, for being treasurer all these years.
Absolutely!
Lynne, I'm going to be downtown today and also at the board meeting, on Sunday, so how about I free that gavel and get it to Kent? May I pick it up early afternoon?
Yes! do you have my cell number? I go swimming between around 1:30-3 though.
I have your cell number if it's the one ending in 73. If you're going to be out of the office just leave it with a co-worker, if that's okay. But I'll try to be there before 1:30.
Ok Mary. I'll leave it if someone is here. That is my cell #
Thanks, Mary and Lynne!
The gavel has been rescued!
You are welcome. I'm planning to stream audio of tomorrow's meeting for those who want to be there but can't. All you'll need is the url of the feed - which I won't have until I start the feed. So check this item at 6:00 pm and I'll supply the link. You don't need an account on QIK to see/hear the videos/audios but if you do sign into a free account you'll also be able to read and ask chat comments and questions. The program I'm using is at http://qik.com . See you at the board meeting!
Oh, fair warning. Depending on how late the meeting runs I may have to leave, taking my stuff along. There is this Academy Awards party I go to every year...
"Restoring lost data" should be worked into the agenda somewhere. For instance, a big chunk of the Grex website went missing when the SCSI drive died.
Steve made a backup around that time. I hope he was able to grab it all. Can we do this discussion in the Staff report? It might require investigation to see what we have on backups.
We'll also have a teleconference line available courtesy of tonster: 1-877-647-3411 passcode: 567 783 2892 Zing's again has allowed us to use the room if we purchase enough food and drink ($90), so the $5 minimum is in effect (it actually might be more than that depending on the number of people in the room, but if we order several sandwiches we should be okay). We'll be in the Kid's Room upstairs at Zingerman's Next Door in Ann Arbor, MI. The meeting starts at 6 pm. EST and adjourns on or before 9 p.m. EST. I hope we'll have enough bandwith for all the Internet connections, but we'll find out! The teleconf line also has the ability to record the meeting (voice).
I don't think the backups Steve did made included the missing data. However, the USB drive that used to be attached to Grex has that data on it, almost certainly. If we can get that back on Grex, the data can be restored. Oh, and we can resume nightly backups. I've asked for the drive to be returned a couple of times, but so far, no response.
If folks feel the teleconferencing line will work to bring in folks who can't attend then I'd be happy to go that route. Less work for me! ;-) Let's give Tony's line a try.
Sounds like something we can discuss at the Board meeting tomorrow. It would be good to get backups going again.
Okay, Mary, let's take that route and see how it goes. If we have issues at least people could listen on your system. It never hurts to have options.
Under the "Communication when Grex is down" item: I've suggested the Twitter micro-blogging service as a replacement for the current Grex status page at http://sites.google.com/site/grexstatus/. Advantages would include (1) a log of all status updates, (2) users could arrange to be notified automatically when there's a new update, and (3) the status page can be accessed from the web or any of the numerous third-party Twitter clients. Lots of organizations use Twitter for status updates in exactly this way. Twitter limits each post to 140 characters, but that should be more than adequate. A person wouldn't need a Twitter account to access the updates. See http://www.twitter.com/grexstatus.
This one, I think, basically needs the Board to decide on an official communication medium/site and then to implement accordingly. If we find that a particular site is not working in practice, then we can revisit the issue. Twitter sounds like it would work quite well for those who want to get updates on their cell phones or on the web. We can discuss tonight.
You have several choices: