Notes of Genesee Free-Net Board of Directors Meeting  
May 22, 2003.

Flint Area Convention and Visitors Bureau Board Room
Flint, MI

Marketing Committee:

The pre-meeting marketing discussion began at 5:15. The meeting began with a discussion of marketing issues. Bookmarks as a tool for promotion (at libraries, for example) were discussed. The cost for these tends to be $30-40 for a ream with 4-5 bookmarks to a sheet. Vahid's marketing plan was discussed (the plan was distributed with the agenda). Marilyn moved to accept the plan, Sol supported. Kay expressed a concern that this would spread board members too thin; Vahid suggested we could deal with this by stretching timelines or decreasing the scope. The motion was accepted unanimously. Part of the plan was creating three marketing teams. The teams were created as follows: Team A: Scott, Chad, Kenny, Vahid, Denny. Team B: Georgia, Garry, Lynette, Pat. Team C: Marilyn, Sol, Jerry, Kay. Each team should select a spokesperson, identify tasks, and create a timeline for the next meeting. 

The board meeting was officially called to order at 5:30. 

Officers' Comments

Garry: None 
Vahid: None 
Kay: Presented the financial review from Dupuis & Ryden. She stated that their review said everything looked fine, with no irregularities. Marilyn noted that we will be spending more on postage because of letters to charters; Kay suggested that we can adjust the budget if we need to. Vahid moved that we accept the financial review, Marilyn supported, and the review was accepted unanimously. 

Committe Reports 

Web Site - Chad reported that: * Mary Ann's links have resulted in 200 new links, and he is currently in the process of cleaning and reorganizing the links. * Our user of wusage is happy, and Chad will write scripts to set up wusage for all organizational accounts. * The new hard drive is ready, and Kenny installed it. Partitions were created for server logs, TUCOWS, and /home. The old drive is still in the machine, and will be removed soon. 

Office Operations - Larry wasn't here, but the following points were discussed. * Requests for username changes. Some users have asked for username changes because of changes in name or becuase somebody was sending them abusive mail at their old email address. Vahid moved that we allow one free username change per year per user, giving the office staff discretion to override if they feel it is appropriate. Marilyn supported, and the motion passed unanimously.

Finger information. Sol wondered whether the information revealed by the GFN's UNIX "finger" command was too much (full name, where mail is forwarded, and whatever plans and projects the user has entered). The consensus was that most members don't realize information like their name is available this way, most members don't use the finger option, so we should move it to the administrative menu. Marilyn moved that we moved finger to the administrative menu and also add support for giving mail quota information, with support from Sol. The motion passed unanimously. 

Tech Committee - Kenny * Problems with the server last month. Two nasty crashes happened, and after some much-needed software updates the problem has not recurred. * RADIUS is upgraded and now properly supports per-day time limits, uses the database instead of RADIUS config files. All sysadmin requirements for free 2-hour accounts are now complete. * Sporadic reports of connection problems were discussed. Most of these are likely to be customer/telco wiring issues, especially wet lines this time of year. * SPAM issues. Since the beginning of the year, spam logs have grown from 50-70KB to 300KB! The load is increasing to 4-5, and some mail is being deferred because of sendmail's load limits. Mark and Wayne are getting estimates on upgrading the primary server. Two routes were proposed: + Cheap route - $1K for a machine which is 3-4x faster + Reliable route - $2.5K for a machine which is 10-20x faster and is a server-class machine with redundant power supplies, etc. Kay moved we authorize Kenny to spend $3K on upgrades to the system. Chad seconded, and the motion was passed unanimously. 

System Administration - Chad * Upgrading mySQL. The upgrade shouldn't break ODBC, but may break other things. Chad will be careful during the upgrade to minimize problems. * Sol wanted to know what notification procedure we had for system downtime. The sysadmin committee will discuss this and make a recommendation. 

Educational Partnership - Vahid had no updates. 

Other Business

Board vacancy - A board member has not attended meetings in some time, and needs to be replaced, creating a board vacancy. 

Endymion - We need to coordinate a switch to AcmeMail with Wayne, but will go ahead after the newsletter is sent. Scott will resend the AcmeMail URL to the board and to Robin, and we'll do the switch on June 10th. 

VolHere - Scott says it's working fine, and has no updates. 

Merit Meeting - Merit is having a users' meeting, with a cost of $129/attendee. No board member felt it was necessary, so we didn't send anybody. 

Possibilities of making board minutes searchable were discussed, and Chad will look into it. 

Meeting was adjourned.