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Grex > Coop > #334: Board Meeting Minutes - December 16, 2012 | |
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Message |
ryan
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Board Meeting Minutes - December 16, 2012
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Dec 17 04:41 UTC 2012 |
Meeting called to order 6:45pm
Board member attendees:
Kent Nassen
Joe Gelinas
Ryan Antkowiak
Non-board member attendees:
Denise
Motion to approve prior meeting minutes (From Septemebr 2011???)
Minutes Approved
Discussion about holding the next board meeting.
Meeting in the New Year.
Joe has been unable to log in, so Kent agreed to reset Joe's password and
send it to him.
Joe moved to elect Kent the President.
Ryan Seconded.
Vote was Unamimous.
Joe moved to elect himself as Treasurer.
Ryan Seconded.
Vote was Unamimous.
Joe moved to elect Ryan Secretary.
Kent seconded.
Vote was Unamimous.
Treasurer's report:
Kent mentioned he spoke with TS last Wednesday, and several times
over the year.
We think the "State of MI update forms" have been completed, so
Grex is still a corporation in Michigan
Grex will lose its 501(c)(3) if we don't do the forms for 3 years in a
row.
Kent believes that we did them in 2009 and 2011.
Kent said that TS has the password for the IRS webpage to do the
paperwork for 2012, but he had trouble logging in to it.
Kent will give TS a call regarding it.
Kent: The bank balance as of Nov 30 2012: $564.53
Kent: Paypal as of December 12 2012: is $874.38
Total: $1438.91 available cash
Kent: Recent expenses
Keeping the "Grex" $5 (every 5 years)
State update forms $20 each (every year) (Three this year, total: $60)
Our bank was charging us fees for having a checking account.
TS changed it to a "Free Community Group" checking account that doesn't
have monthly charges.
Domains Expiring:
cyberspace.org expires in mid-January (Needs to be renewed by Dec 28).
grex.org expires in February.
Kent will follow up with TS.
Business:
How will we run a board election?
- Remmers resigned from staff. He wants to do other things in his
retirement. Thank you for your years and years of service to Grex.
- Discussion about who will run the election software (since Remmers used
to do
it.)
- Joe said that when he gets his account back, he can run the elections.
- Joe's board seat is up for election this year.
- Joe believes he is voteadm.
- Board nominations are handled in Co-Op. An annoucement should be made
in
Agora that nominations are open.
Joe: Motion: Open nominations for the board today. The nominations will
close
on December 31st. Nominations must be accepted by January 15th, 2013.
Voting
will start on January 16th 2013, and will run through January 31st, 2013.
The
new board member will take office February 1st, 2013. The term of the new
board
member will last through December 31st, 2014. Ryan seconded it. Kent
seconded
too. Motion passed unanimously.
General status:
Next Grex?
Kent:
* Dan Cross talked about donating a rack mount computer to Grex for our
use.
(last summer) Dan shipped it to Tony P. Dan set it up with FreeBSD.
Other
staff members have not weighed in on it yet. Joe: Thinks this is a staff
issue
instead of a board issue. The new computer is quite a bit more powerful
than
what we have now. (We currently have a quad core desktop that Remmers
donated,
which has been working quite well.) We had several outages during the
year
(most less than a half day.) The plan was to put Dan's computer into A2
Hosting. We would have to put an A2 Hosting logo on our web page, and we
would
have to give a letter to A2 Hosting, informing them of our 501(c)(3)
identification number. (This would help prevent accidental power-downs.)
The
hosting from A2 would be free. The remaining data migration to the new
server
needs to be: conference data and user files. (This would need to be done
at
the time when we actually transition over to the new machine.) Dan donated
a
similar machine to M-Net.
* Discussions about having a separate server handle Grex's email and spam
filtering.
* Discussion about re-doing the website, possibly with CSS and templates.
* Kent put a note in the MOTD about users getting access to the full Unix
shell. There was an increase in requests for user validations following
it.
* Kent has been doing user account password resets, fixing email, website
updates, etc.
Move to Adjourn
Seconded.
Meeting ended 7:46pm.
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| 15 responses total. |
remmers
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response 1 of 15:
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Dec 19 23:21 UTC 2012 |
Nice minutes - thanks. Moving to the new server with A2 Hosting as colo
strikes me as excellent ideas. (Not that Tony hasn't been doing a fine job
as interim host.)
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tonster
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response 2 of 15:
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Dec 22 21:16 UTC 2012 |
I've got access to the Dotster account now to renew the domains. Do we
really need to stay with Dotster? Looks like it's about $17/year per
domain to stick with them, which is about twice as much as we could be
paying for the service. I've used DirectNIC for years at $15, and I
know GoDaddy is much cheaper. Not that we have that many expenses, but
it seems silly to pay any more than we need to. Neither domain expires
before January, but we can pretty easily transfer before they expire.
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kentn
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response 3 of 15:
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Dec 23 03:18 UTC 2012 |
You'll need to talk to TS about it, I think. He was going to renew
them the other day when I talked to him. He was able to get into the
Dotster account, too. This has been something the treasurer has done
in the past.
As to staying with Dotster, what would be the potential problems
of transferring to to a new provider? Would there be any delay?
And do they allow private registrations (to hide the contact info)?
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cross
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response 4 of 15:
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Dec 23 04:03 UTC 2012 |
TS is unresponsive and barely involved. Move to GoDaddy.
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tonster
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response 5 of 15:
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Dec 23 09:03 UTC 2012 |
Yeah, we can do private registrations with most any provider. GoDaddy
seems like the cheapest option, and they're stable.
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ryan
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response 6 of 15:
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Dec 23 14:12 UTC 2012 |
Yeah, I've been using GoDaddy for my domains for the past several years. I
have no problems with them.
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kentn
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response 7 of 15:
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Dec 23 18:27 UTC 2012 |
The thing we need to watch out for is too many people trying to renew
or change things at the same time (or nearly so).
I last spoke to TS Dec 21 about this (after talking to him about it Dec
13) and he said he had the bank card for doing the renewal and was able
to log in on the Dotster account for Grex. Previously, Mark had this set
up to auto-renew using Grex's bank card, which ended when we set up the
bank account with a new treasurer. I don't know if he got the actual
renewal with Dotster completed, though, as I never heard back.
I think saving some money is great, but it would be good to do any
changeover in a coordinated fashion. The last time I asked about this,
I was told it was a treasurer thing. That said, I don't want to go to
the last minute in getting these domains renewed.
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jep
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response 8 of 15:
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Dec 24 00:56 UTC 2012 |
Who's currently the treasurer?
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kentn
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response 9 of 15:
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Dec 24 04:34 UTC 2012 |
Joe Gelinas is the Board Treasurer. TS Taylor is our day-to-day
treasurer.
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