The meeting was called to order at 7:08pm by the DACS President, Dave Green.
In attendance were Board members Richard Corzo, Dick Gingras, Bert Goff, Dave Green (President), and Andy Woodruff. Also present was guest: Mike Ross. The minutes were taken by Richard Teasdale.
(Names in italics denote responsibilities for actions.)
- The Minutes of the 6/28/2017 Board Meeting were accepted.
Reports
- The June and July Treasurer’s reports were received from Bert Goff.
- Dues receipts in June were $280 (minus PayPal fees), better than June 2016 receipts. Total Year to date (6 months) dues receipts were slightly above the first 6 months of 2016. Expenses continued to be normal and the 6 month year to date totals were again slightly below 2016, adjusted for John Patrick’s book expenses (that he covered).
- The Resource Center Fund continues to have a balance of $655.
- Highlights of the July report were that dues were down in July but not as much as in July 2016, so in year-to-year comparison, we were again ahead of last year in dues collection.
- The Membership report was received by e-mail from Jim Scheef.
- 93 paid-up members (including 5 new), and 7 in-grace, for a total of 100.
- 35 people attended the 8/1/2017 general meeting, including 6 visitors. No information was available about how visitors heard of the meeting, e.g. via Meetup. Andy repeated that this information should be collected. The form that visitors are asked to fill out should capture it. Dave will follow up with Jim. Andy also pointed out that after the meeting we should routinely send follow-up greeting messages to visitors.
- The topic of each general meeting has been added as a new column on the summary page of the Membership report spreadsheet. Dick requested that the names of speakers be also added.
- Press Coverage:
- Dave reported that the press release for the August General Meeting was sent to at least 17 recipients. The release was sent manually due to the CiviCRM problem (see below).
- Websites: Richard reported two issues.
- An update to CiviCRM was installed, after which it was discovered that the software was not working correctly. The problem was resolved by restoring the system from a backup but the cause remains unknown, and we are not on the current version.
- Malware was detected on the DACS website by Sitelock (a monitoring service provided by Bluehost), which Wordfence did not find. The bad code has been removed. A second instance has not yet been resolved. It is unknown why Wordfence did not discover the malware.
Old Business
- Programs:
- Shannon Calvert, of the Westport Astronomical Society, will speak at the September general meeting about Astrophotography.
- Preview: Andy.
- Review: Dick will call a DACS member known to have an interest in astronomy, to ask if he will write the review.
- A number of ideas for publicizing the meeting were discussed.
- Richard will contact a member of the Danbury AI Meetup group who may be able to help identify a speaker about Artificial Intelligence.
- Richard Teasdale will contact Mike Kaltschnee to follow up his offer of an interactive session using TinkerCAD, to teach the audience about 3D Printing. Prospective general meeting date: October.
- Shannon Calvert, of the Westport Astronomical Society, will speak at the September general meeting about Astrophotography.
- Renovation of the Resource Center (RC): The donation of used carpeting from Meadow Ridge Senior onlinepillen.ch Living Community in Redding is stalled. Andy’s contact there has not responded to recent calls asking for information.
- Follow-up from the June 28th discussion of the future of DACS.
- DACS should consider changing its name.
- The usefulness of the weekly e-mails from DACS was discussed.
- Andy will research how to get DACS events listed in the hospital’s newsletter.
- The scarcity of people willing to perform tasks necessary for the continued operation of DACS limits what can be done on many fronts. This group consists of the Board and only a handful of other active individuals.
- Mike R: try to recruit journalism students who might be willing to write newsletter articles.
- There does not seem to be any great advantage to changing the venue for general meetings (as suggested by Mike Kaltschnee).
- The board agreed to follow up with Mike Kaltschnee on his suggestion of cross-promotion of events between DACS and the Hackerspace. Andy will contact him.
New Business
- Snacks for General Meetings:
- Dave will approach Bert Goff regarding snacks for September, and will bring beverages.
- The poor quality of the internet connection at the Resource Center was discussed. Andy will contact Mayor Boughton’s office to find out the status of the City of Danbury internet initiative.
The meeting was adjourned at 9:10 pm.