Minutes of the 9/24/97 meeting of the Cyberspace Communications board of
directors
Mail: Initial Gavel Pounding (valerie)
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Valerie called the meeting to order at 7:43 PM. Board members present were
valerie, janc, scott, aruba, and dang. scg joined us late. Others present
were kaplan, irvingp, irvingp's non-Grexer friend John, wolfg676, llanarth,
jared, jiffer, davel, dea, qt314, tsty, steve, and srw. Since Misti wasn't
there, aruba volunteered to take notes.
Elm: Treasurer's Report (aruba)
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We did OK in August, taking in $1000.07 and paying out $560.49. Those numbers
are deceptive, though, because $465 of our income was earmarked for the ISDN
fund, so the general fund actually lost about $30. So far in September we've
taken in $747, $50 of which is ISDN money, so we will be able to meet our
normal expenses this month. The balance sheet will show us in the red,
however, because we paid for the ISDN routers and the ISDN line installation.
Speaking of the pledge drive, we have received $795 of the $1035 pledged. 5
people made pledges but haven't yet followed through. We expect to receive
another $80-$90 before all is said and done.
We are currently at 97 members, 94 of whom are paid through at least the end
of September.
Pine: Publicity Committee (mta)
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Misti is organizing a cable TV show about Grex, featuring herself as host and
janc and valerie as guests. She's looking for one more guest who's "diverse".
Valerie asked if anyone had had any ideas for publicity since the last
meeting. Suggestions included:
- senna (through someone else, since he wasn't there) suggested we advertise
in the program of the play he's working on at Pioneer this fall. This
will likely cost money, in the $40 range.
- jiffer, who works for ken, said that she is working on a new catalog for
Consumer Electronics Inc (CEI), and she suggested we might be able to get
something put in there.
- irvingp said he knew some e-mail addresses for K-12 administrators who might
be interested in Grex. He'll forward them to valerie.
- There was some discussion of painting "Grex" on one of the two rocks in town
that get painted a lot. The legality of this is not entirely clear.
valerie said she would enter an agora item to solicit more ideas.
Mh: Technical Committee (STeve & co.)
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The routers have arrived, and were paid for - they cost $1155.68. scg
configured them, and we're waiting for the last bit of wiring to be done.
void has started here cfadm career, and recently installed the new tv
conference.
valerie wrote a script to help people change their iseps and rseps. She got
some complaints about it, so she's going to work on it some more.
n8nxf brought some "muffin fans" (sans poppy seeds) over to the dungeon, and
one of the disk drives that was not previously enclosed is now enclosed. The
important stuff still isn't enclosed.
dang and valerie installed a version of the vi editor called vim.
We're still running on 32 Meg of memory.
There has been little progress on the Sun 670. The current stumbling block is
that it hangs during the boot sequence.
Most everything on Grex has been pretty stable lately.
Mailx: ISDN Connection (staff)
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Both ends of the ISDN line are now installed, but there was a 27-day gap
between the installation at the Pumpkin and the installation at dorian's
apartment building. STeve whined about it to Ken Kiernan, our Ameritech rep,
and he finally gave in and agreed to give us a 1-month rebate on the cost of
the first line, on the grounds that it wasn't useful to us because there was
nowhere for us to call.
The bill for the installation has arrived, and the cost is $336.97. STeve
thinks this is erroneously high, and will complain to Ken K. about it.
The last obstacle to getting the line working is that there is currently no
wire going from the phone box at dorian's apartment building to dorian's
apartment. This has to be installed by the apartment complex's repairman.
jared called him about it, and he said that he's really busy but will try to
get it done by the end of the month. We suggested that jared tell him 11,000
people are waiting for him to get it done...
We need to talk to ICNet about whether we can keep our current 28.8 connection
after we get the ISDN line up and running.
Mutt: Auction Report (valerie)
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Currently in the auction there are
3 open items
8 items which are closed but haven't been paid for (total: $89.47)
18 items which have been paid for but not delivered (total: $307.65)
25 items which have been paid for and delivered (total: $424.42)
The 8 unpaid items were bought by 6 people. Three of them have promised us
money within the next week, one of them is a long-time contributor and is
likely to pay us enentually, and the other two we're worried about. We may
soon begin contacting second-highest bidders for the items in question, to see
if they are still willing to pay what they offered.
There was a little discussion of the possibility of holding the auction at a
different time of the year or more than once per year. It has replaced the
JCC sales as our second-largest source of income, but at the current rate it
doesn't generate as much money as the JCC sales used to.
Eudora: New Business (all)
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tsty announced that M-Net is having a benefit Saturday, and he invited
everyone to come.
scott asked about the status of the Grex store, and valerie said it's on hold
until she fills out the tax paperwork. She promised to do that tomorrow.
srw reported that HVCN currently has no dialup access, and might not for a
while. He broached in a very general way the possibility of Grex and HVCN
forming some kind of official alliance, so that (for one thing) HVCN could
point people who want free e-mail over to Grex, and concentrate its own
efforts on things that Grex doesn't do. He said he had a lot of other "half-
baked" ideas that an alliance would foster as well.
At this point qt314 served refreshments, which consisted of the whiskey cake
that nt bought and paid for in the auction. We all felt a little buzzed after
a few bites of cake, and we applauded and thanked both Marla and Sri for the
delicious food, which probably had something to do with this being the best-
attended board meeting in recent memory, and possibly he best-attended ever at
ITI. Next month jiffer will provide cheesecake (also courtesy of nt).
MS Mail: Final Gavel Pounding (valerie)
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valerie ended the meeting about 8:45 (sorry I didn't write down the exact
time).
Respectfully submitted,
Mark Conger, stand-in secretary
17 responses total.
Thanks, Mark. I was feeling *really* under the weather yesterday.
No problem. I forgot to mention that at the end of the meeting there were three pieces of cake left, and Marla auctioned them off to the highest bidders, which were aruba, srw, and steve, who paid $2 apiece. So Grex got an extra $6 out of the meeting. Thanks Marla, Steve and Steve!
I hate to appear demanding but, whatever... ;-) We still haven't had minutes entered from the August 27th Board meeting.
Oops, I thought I'd entered those. Stand by, I'll get them in tonight or tomorrow.
Would ICnet either drop Grex or insist on a new contract with drastically raised rates because gre x is going to a faster connection and will thushave significaltly more traffic? Maybe grex needs to prepare for the contignecy of having to find a new provider. I'm guessing grex, like most places, has a potential backup list of providers in case something goes wrong and it loses is relationship with itw current provider?
Also I dont think grex and HVCN should have an alliance...HVCN is strictly local to the Huron Valley, Grex is not. To the extent to which grex commits time and/or resources to HVCN, it does not serve the interests of those grexers, members and users, who do not live in the Huron Valley. If Grex aligns itself with a local or regional site, it would create the impression that this too is a local-interest site, when in fact grex has users around the world. If the right perceptions arent fostered, then it isnt worth doing.
Re 5: The new ISDN connection is not with ICnet. We will not be dependent on ICnet once the ISDN connection goes live. The question we need to ask them is if they want to remain our backup and/or supplemental Internet link in the new ISDN era. ICnet sells ISDN service, but it is not cheap enough for us.
I like the Grexrock idea!
I'll follow up on the add sale in the program (price-wise). There will be several options to choose from, eventually. Chances of high and diverse circulation are good, though... over four nights we're hoping to bring in 3000 people (or that's how many tickets we printed)
I think the Grex / HVCN alliance is a fine idea. Sure, Grex has a global flavor to it, but there is also very much a local flair to us, and the HVCN thing fits in with that perfectly. I see no problem in concept with this, and would find the practical side very likely a good thing for both parties.
Grex is definitely a local interest site. It is other things too, but it has a large connection to the place that is its home. And I will point out once again (though it makes me more unpopular each time I do) that almost 80% of Grex's supporting members are in Michigan.
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I'll move the HVCN-Grex thing to a separate item. It is warranted. The discussion should not be tacked onto the minutes item. Thanks, Mark, for getting these minutes posted so quickly.
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Misti, you still haven't entered the minutes from the August 27th Board meeting.
*sigh* You're right, mary.
You have several choices: