Meeting called to order at 7:15pm by president Dick Gingras.
Meeting audio recorded by Sean Henderson, transcribed by Tom Zarecki
In attendance:
- In person: Dick, Richard, Jim, Lisa, Bert
- Guests: Sean Henderson
- By phone: Andy, who arrived in person around 8:20pm
- Late arrival: Tom Z arrived 7:45pm
- Absent: Cathy Q., Bill S.
Minutes of last month’s Board meeting were approved.
Treasurer report was submitted separately by Bert. YTD balance sheet comparison is $640 better than last year.
Membership committee report:
- Current Members 93
- Grace Members 19 – Total 112
- General meeting attendance 27 members, 51 total (head count)
No postcard mailing reminders have been mailed over the past few months. Jim agreed to provide labels to Charlie B. for post card mailing reminders for members more than 30 days past due and to members whose dues have recently expired. Currently there is no automated way to send email or postcard reminders with our CiviMail setup. They are done manually each month. Jim will look into what needs to be done to automate this process.
Program Committee report:
- Excellent feedback from Tuesday GM attendees on Windows 10 presentation by Jay Ferron.
- Upcoming events: September 1st, LinkedIn, by Don Wittman. October 7th, Android App Dev, by Mike Kaltschnee.
- Lisa announced that she will no longer be able to chair the program committee. Someone else needs to take over those responsibilities starting with the November GM. She suggested that the choice of topics for upcoming presentations be made by the Board until a new program chair is found.
There was some discussion of having PR, Membership, and Program committee meetings meet together just prior to the Board meetings sometime in the near future.
The PR piece about Dick’s and Bert’s election as DACS officers was discussed. It is being prepared by Richard Teasdale and will be ready for publication later this month.
Guidance for running a SIG/workshop was discussed and outlined as follows:
- Write the agenda for the evening
- Send the preview to webmaster@dacs.org
- Go to MeetUp and post the event
- Do Social media promotion
- At the event:
- Introductions
- Go thru agenda
- Announce length of meeting
- Present your material
- Open for questions throughout
- Review key points at the end
There was further discussion about how SIG/workshop leaders should get access to post upcoming meeting content directly to the website. Until then, meeting announcements should be sent to the webmaster@dacs.org. Meeting reviews should always be directed to the newsletter editor (DacsEditor@dacs.org) for publication in both the newsletter and website.
New Business
Marketing committee preparation for Hackers Fair discussion was led by Jim and Sean in Cathy’s absence. Hackers Fair is scheduled for October 17th at the Danbury Library. It hasn’t been determined how many tables we will have, power setup, or where in the Library we will be located. We would like everyone who helps at this (and all future events) to wear similar if not identical jerseys with the DACS logo. Pricing has not been determined and color of the fabric was discussed but there were differing views. The most mentioned colors were white, light blue, and black which seemed to have the best contrast to our logo. Sean will look into pricing and availability at Café Press and also at Rankin Textile Printing in Danbury, and discuss further at the PR committee meeting. It was agreed that directors would each pay for their own shirts.
An activity being considered by the PR committee as part of the 25th anniversary is a Tech Crawl where people go from house to house looking at computer setups and end at Danbury Hackerspace. Other ideas and dates were discussed at the last PR/Marketing committee meeting and posted, but not mentioned specifically.
Tom brought up WestConn’s 2nd annual Day of Service, where college students are sent around town to help commercial and non-commercial organizations in mid-September. DACS could get 2 students to help us clean our resource center. Jim says it would take 3 or 4 months to review which computers we keep or dump. It was noted that this has been an ongoing agenda item for more than a year and keeps getting pushed off by some individuals. Decision was made not to use the students for this reason.
Dick reminded everyone that an inventory of DACS resource center assets and replacement costs is still needed, which led into a discussion of what to do with the main meeting room and in what ways it can be updated, including new paint, new carpeting, tiled floor, and major decluttering of unused equipment. Andy said he would help create an improvement plan including cost estimates that we could use to raise money, but will not be available for this until October.
The meeting ended at 9:27 pm after informal discussions of some new and lingering topics carried forward from past Board meetings.