PRESENT:
Dennis Cavanaugh, Chair
Larry Porn, Vice Chair
Solomon Johnson, Secretary
Janet Craig, Board

Les LeMieux, Board
Charles Wright, Board

ABSENT:
Chad Cramer, Website
Beverly Duval, Board
Scott Gifford, Board
Kenny Thomas, Systems

Call to order at 5:15pm. Chair Dennis Cavanaugh presiding.

Marketing.
Dennis Cavanaugh reported on marketing efforts he attempted. He spoke with a representative of Valpak.com who quoted $150 to place a GFN ad on their Website for six months. For $1330 per month Valpak would mail out 70,000 flyers with GFN ads two months in a row. A promised written proposal had not been received.

The Flint Area Convention and Visitors Bureau (FACVB) produces a quarterly marketing brochure. A one year membership in FACVB would cost GFN $200 and an ad would appear in the marketing brochure. Larry Porn moved that GFN become a member of the Flint Area Convention and Visitors Bureau for membership fee of $200. Charles Wright supported the motion. The motion carried.

It was reported that Georgia Kitchen distributed 200 GFN account application brochures to State Senator John J Gleason's office.

Technical Committee.
Larry Porn reported on a meeting that he, Chad Cramer and Scott Gifford had with Bryan English who is developing Website content management software that may be available to GFN. The software would allow churches, schools, service organizations and other GFN members to generate and maintain their own Web space. The software may be available to GFN by the end of summer.

Another technical issue discussed was developing a schedule of mailings to members still using the Merit modem pool. Larry will use the daily server root file report to generate e-mail messages. Also raised was the issue of the costs of our services. Apparently our greatest cost is providing the dialin service. We need to estimate our costs of expanding Web space services, both with and without the dialin overhead.

For Family Accounts service, only one sub account would be allowed online at a time. The first order of business though would be to get members off the Merit modems. Then drop the cost of lines for dialin by transitioning out of the OTC lines to more Telnet World Wide lines.

Does GFN need a new Web server? The current server is several years old with limited memory. Likely, more memory will be needed to support expanded Web space and Family Accounts services. OTC cabinet space costs $500 to $800 (with office space) per month and holds GFN equipment and provides some bandwidth.

Budget and Funds Discussion.
About this time last year GFN had operating losses of about $11,000. So far this year losses are about half that much. It was estimated GFN needs six (6) new members a month to stay solvent. Other rambling discussion revolved around what GFN can offer and how to implement offerings on the servers.

Charles Wright moved that GFN proceed with development of Family Accounts through a trial setup in the database. Larry Porn supported the motion. The motion carried. The next step is to have Kenny Thomas and Scott Gifford fix the servers to handle the trial database setup.

Denny Cavanaugh commented on the need to discuss contract matters with OTC and strategically reduce OTC PRI lines, eventually to zero, and phase in more Telnet World Wide lines.

Additional Volunteers.
Larry Porn reported on his response to Bernie Taylor, a retired computer programmer, who offered to volunteer with GFN. Larry indicated that we have many opportunities, not only with the office function, but in other aspects of running a volunteer ISP.

Adjournment: 6:15pm.

Next Board Meeting.
Thursday, June 28, 2007, 5:15pm at the Flint Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, 316 Water Street.

Respectfully Submitted,

Solomon T Johnson, Secretary