Minutes of Genesee Free-Net Board of Directors Meeting
December 11, 2008
Flint Area Convention and Visitors Bureau
502 Church Street
Flint MI 48503

PRESENT:
Larry Porn, Vice Chair
Solomon Johnson, Secretary
Janet Craig, Board
Scott Gifford, Board
Chad Cramer, Website

ABSENT:
Dennis Cavanaugh, Board Chair
Les LeMieux, Board
Kenny Thomas, Systems

Call to order at 5:16pm. Vice Chair Larry Porn presiding.

Alternatives for Email Service.
Scott Gifford reported on his preliminary contact with SectorLink. Co location appears available. Estimate cost at $170 per month for rack space rent (one inch per unit) or $200 per month for four units. SectorLink appears to offer a better email product, fifty domains and two hundred email accounts. Hosted email service with Spam filtering pricing was not obtained. Scott, Larry and Chad are scheduled to meet with SectorLink representatives on 12/12/2008 to obtain firm pricing and discuss possible GFN member password transfer and coding problems that may be incurred with co location.

Larry indicated that about thirty (30) GFN members may be dialed in at a time. OTC charges $1100 per month for rack space, bandwith usage and office space rent.

Web Based Server Information.
Action to be taken will be decided early in the year 2009. Scott Gifford moved and Chad Cramer supported that Scott, Larry and Chad be granted authority to make the decision on email hosting with SectorLink. The motion passed.

Expect to go with FuseMail email hosting if SectorLink does not look promising. Try to contract with FuseMail to lock in a year's service fees after email up and running.

Systems Report.
The GFN system is in bad shape. An email certificate is still needed. It appears GFN has lost system support from Kenny Thomas. He works with email, DNS and TC/IP issues on the GFN system and developed the scripts and queries in the “C” programing language for MySql and RADIUS. The Board discussed reducing his consulting fee to an hourly rate with monthly documentation of service provided to GFN. The Board questioned what type of support could be expected by hosting with SectorLink or FuseMail?

Office Report.
Members are dropping their GFN membership because of the large amount of Spam they receive in their email. The Spam filtering problem must be solved! Larry attempted to send a notice message to the membership but the attempt failed. Scott and Chad will look at the error message Larry received.

Matters Arising.
Scott is still working on the pilot Web project with the Resource Center. Needed is a new PHP version software on the GFN system. GFN passwords for personal Web pages are different from those for email. Chad has to set Web page passwords. Brief discussion of developing a Web form for staff to easily reset/change member passwords. Would need programming to sync email and RADIUS password changes.

There was preliminary mention of steps to be taken after GFN servers are moved. Questioned servers to keep, interface coding that will be required, requirements for synchronizing coding between host and GFN and other support side issues? Suggested recruiting volunteers to be contact persons for specific organizations when GFN Website hosting is launched.

Adjournment: 6:30pm.

Next Board Meeting.
Thursday, January 22, 2009, 5:00pm, at the Flint Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, 502 Church Street.

Respectfully Submitted,

Solomon T Johnson, Secretary