Minutes of Genesee Free-Net Board of Directors Meeting
Annual Meeting  
October 30, 2003.

International Center
Flint, MI

PRESENT

Garry Viele, Board, Chairman
Vahid Lotfi, Vice President
Pat Peterson, Board Secretary

Kay Schwartz, Board Treasurer
Jerry Preston, Board
Les LeMieux, Board
Scott Gifford, Board
Sol Johnson, Board
Dennis Cavanaugh, Board
Larry Porn, Board

Also present:
Kenny Thomas, Staff

Absent:  Chad Cramer, Lynnette Griffen, Marilyn Sage, Georgia Kitchen

Call to order 7:00 pm. Meeting conducted by G. Viele.  

Member Comments:

George Karsloff expressed concerns about spam.  K. Thomas explained what is done to control spam on the Free-Net. 

REPORTS:

Chair:  Report of accomplishments

• Work with the Tall Pine Council in doing dynamic web pages.  Everything worked and this service will soon be available to other members.
• New member plan is almost completed as is the new member database.
• There will be an educational partnership with UM-Flint.
• Budget shortages.
• New board members
• Explained Spam Assassin now in use.
• The marketing plan and the teams working on the three parts:  message identification, a brochure and bookmarks, and customer service.
• The DuPuis and Ryden review was completed.
• The system upgrades that were implemented.
• The web e-mail Endymion that was deleted and replaced.
• Merit billing changes:  we must commit to a number of modems for one year.
• New server installed.
• Newsletter will be on web site.
• Application blanks distribution.

Vice Chair:

There are six openings on the board.  Four current members will fill positions, but two new members are needed.  A ballot will be e-mailed to members.  

Treasurer: 

The net loss on a cash basis is about $8000.  More members are needed.  86% of expenses are for direct services to the membership.

Revenues through 9/30/03 are slightly higher than same period last year, partly due to the reestablishing of the setup fee for new users.

Expenses have risen compared to last year because 2003 reflects a full year of the new modem fee from Merit ($38/month/modem) and we purchased new server equipment and software (about $3,300).

We have about the same number of paying users as we have had since 2000.  That year's annual meeting reported just over 1,000 paying accounts and that number is expected to be approximately 1,100 fully paying accounts for 2003, plus about 70 charter accounts paying $25 each.

Secretary

The minutes are on the web site.

Marketing Committee:

G. Viele had updated membership in his report.  He ask membership to help with marketing and  passing on new ideas.

Web Site Committee

Kenny reported accomplishments:

• 705 active links.
• 4500 page views per day.
• 9 virtual hosts.
• 45 working organizational custom web sites.
• Hard drive replaced tripling space available for web site.
• Database server upgraded.
• Added the GFN newsletter.
• Added the new mission statement to the web site.
• Tucows mirror is working.  It accounts for 50% of bandwidth usage.
• Search engine is configured to search the board minutes.

Plans for coming year:

• Re-configuring links and reducing number of categories
• Cleaning up and updating GFN web site.
• Adding help and setting up information to the web site.

Office Operations

Larry Porn reported achievements: 

• Charter account conversion 

• New office procedures in place 

• Ongoing training on database Capability of creating basic accounts Database has automatic updates with MySQL database 

• Instant account status - access by office staff  

Database Development goals  

• Account generation and maintenance 

• Basic accounts (available now and accessible by office staff in January) 

• Financial data in database and financial reports (January) 

• Renewals (January) 

• Reports (now) 

• Over quota status (November) 

• Block/Unblock (November) 

• Change password (now) 

Future database work:  Organizational accounts, web accounts, and home access for office staff.

System Administration and Technical Committees Report:

Modem Pool usage:  There are 17 users per modem and 20/25 are in use at once typically; there is only one no token error per 278 connection attempts.  The average is one per 52 connections.  There is plenty of room for GFN to add members.

E-mail usage:  80% increase in incoming e-mail and 95% of that is estimated to be spam.  

Spam Assassination is the tool the GFN uses.  It attempts to label spam as spam and tag it as such, and then not allow it through.

Accomplishments of Committees:

• New primary server installed
• New larger hard drive in the web server
• The database is now live
• Changes made to RADIUS to support custom and basic accounts, basically tracking time
• New web mail system installed
• Automated over quota system installed
• Expired accounts now automatically deleted
• Anti-spam filtering system installed 

Goals for next year:

• Basic accounts available for use
• User selectable option to have suspected spam automatically deleted by serer
• Increased automation in other functions
• Security issues kept up to date

GFN Board objectives for 2004 will be announced.

Announcement:  Les LeMieux was awarded the Laura Austin Award.

Next Meeting:  December 4, 2003 at 5:15 pm at the Flint Area Convention and Visitors Bureau in its new location on Water St.  The marketing plan will be discussed at 5:00 pm.

Respectfully submitted,

Pat Peterson, Secretary