Item 349 by (cross) Dan Cross entered Wed, Jul 9, 2014 (21:59) as: Minutes for board meeting: Wednesday, July 9, 2014. Meeting begins slightly early to account for inevitable technical difficulties. Called to order at 20:35 EDT. roll call: kentn, tod, walkman, cross (tsty is missing) * tod motions to approve minutes from previous meeting. - cross seconds - Motion carries unanimously; previous minutes are approved. * Next meeting scheduled for Wednesday, Sept. 10 at 8:30 Eastern. * Business: 1. Less frequent Agora updates? Is 4 times a year too much? a. walkman thinks a year is fine b. tod suggests trying every six months c. cross asks if we care? Is conferencing something we should worry about? 2. cross motions to roll agora every six months - Roll on July 1 and January 1 - tod seconds - Motion carries unanimously 3. Rolling Coop - We haven't rolled Coop in quite some time: 350ish items - The current coop has several (different!) versions of the bylaws. - kentn will roll it. * We'll have one bylaws item with current bylaws. 4. Ammending bylaws to change the 4:3 election split to 3:2. - This is a vestige of when we had a 7 person board. - It has to do with the length of board terms and the distribution between odd and even election years. - Right now, the distribution is 4:1; this will cause some awkwardness in the next election cycle (someone will have to take a short term or a longer term). An ammendment must take this into consideration. - cross asks how we can bring something to a member vote? * Need to get 10% of the membership to endorse a proposal for change before we can bring it to vote. - Talk of how we can attract members, how we manage membership, etc. * Most of this is specified by the bylaws. * Should we amend the bylaws? - cross motions that we bring the following to a member vote: a. 4:3 to 3:2 split amendment b. Change bylaws to move the membership due structure out c. Suggest an annual membership structure with fees TBD by the BOD. * tod seconds * Motion passes unanimously; Dan will post the items. 5. SSL Class 2 certs for our domains - Our certifying authority needs proof we are an organizaton. - Requires a letter from the treasurer. - tod will talk to Tony. 6. Staff recruitment? - There are only a few people doing staff work - Lots of plans, little action (time for staff) - If we solicit new volunteers, what would they do? - If we solicit new volunteers, will anyone respond? - What about soliciting specific projects? * What projects would we want to do? - Who would we want on staff? - Something to think about. 7. Status reports - Treasurer report (tod): * $988 in PayPal * tod is waiting for access to the bank for the rest - Staff report (cross): * Grex rebooted four days ago; a block device in /dev changed mtime (maybe a fsck?) * We need to figure out a story for backups * We get lots of people trying to run bots and bouncers and stuff. - Should we care about that? - The firewall catches most of it. 8. Walk-in business. - tod has a question about the bank: * He'd like to look into using a national bank * kentn asks what the fees would be? (We don't want to get nickle and dimed to zero) - Criteria: no or low fees. No minimum balance. * cross asks if we could just use paypal? - tod says can't write a check with paypal * tod will investigate going to a national bank 9. cross moves to adjorn - tod seconds - motion passes. We are adjorned at 21:54 EDT. 17 responses total. From (kentn) Kent Nassen #1 of 17 in item 349 at Wed, Jul 9, 2014 (22:10): Thanks for the quick minutes, Dan! From (tod) Novichok #2 of 17 in item 349 at Thu, Jul 10, 2014 (00:43): :) Nice chat this eve. From (kentn) Kent Nassen #3 of 17 in item 349 at Thu, Jul 10, 2014 (22:46): Thanks to all the Board members who attended and for all the ideas. For those who picked up tasks, thank you for doing so. From (rcurl) Rane Curl #4 of 17 in item 349 at Thu, Jul 10, 2014 (23:53): I would have opposed rolling agora less frequently. More often might help more. As it is items become redundant and stale very quickly and at least when it is rolled the decay has to start over. From (cross) Dan Cross #5 of 17 in item 349 at Fri, Jul 11, 2014 (11:02): Of course you would have. From (kentn) Kent Nassen #6 of 17 in item 349 at Fri, Jul 11, 2014 (15:08): Every time we roll agora we get less and less items. So that's not helping at all. From (rcurl) Rane Curl #7 of 17 in item 349 at Fri, Jul 11, 2014 (15:24): More (and longer) items will not be an attraction to new users. Also, if getting fewer items is a problem, just create more. Even automate it, creating particular more popular items automatically. It's the appearance of accumulated old stale items that will put newcomers (and oldcomers too) off. From (kentn) Kent Nassen #8 of 17 in item 349 at Fri, Jul 11, 2014 (20:32): Are you willing to help? From (rcurl) Rane Curl #9 of 17 in item 349 at Fri, Jul 11, 2014 (23:49): I don't have the skills required. From (kentn) Kent Nassen #10 of 17 in item 349 at Sat, Jul 12, 2014 (07:52): Okay then. From (cross) Dan Cross #11 of 17 in item 349 at Mon, Jul 14, 2014 (09:14): resp:7 This presumes that conferencing should remain the focus of Grex. But it will not. Indeed, it has not been the focus for quite some time. From (rcurl) Rane Curl #12 of 17 in item 349 at Tue, Jul 15, 2014 (15:48): Doesn't matter if it isn't a "focus" of Grex. Why can't it be just a service? I haven't been looking for other bbses, but Grex is Ann Arbor centered, and can host the few people that enjoy it (or might even find it useful), so why eliminate it? From (nharmon) Nathan Harmon #13 of 17 in item 349 at Tue, Jul 15, 2014 (17:00): How many of the current regulars are from Ann Arbor? From (cross) Dan Cross #14 of 17 in item 349 at Wed, Jul 16, 2014 (10:44): resp:12 In resp:7 you wrote, "More (and longer) items will not be an attraction to new users. ... It's the appearance of accumulated old stale items that will put newcomers (and oldcomers too) off." Newcomers to what, exactly? Grex? Again, this presumes that conferencing is the focus of what Grex is about. Newcomers to the conference service on Grex? Again, you presume that they're interested in that if they're coming to it. If conferencing is not the focus of Grex anymore (newsflash: it isn't, and hasn't been for many years), then why would we worry about the roll rate in Agora to attract new conferencing users? Grex is also no longer "Ann Arbor focused." Most of the users aren't even from the US, as near as I can tell. From (nharmon) Nathan Harmon #15 of 17 in item 349 at Wed, Jul 16, 2014 (12:52): Grex isn't even located in Ann Arbor anymore. :P From (rcurl) Rane Curl #16 of 17 in item 349 at Thu, Jul 17, 2014 (15:58): I've never presumed that "conferencing is the focus of what Grex is about". But some find it useful. Why should they be excluded from it? From (cross) Dan Cross #17 of 17 in item 349 at Thu, Jul 17, 2014 (16:47): No one is suggesting that they should.