Tuesday, September 6, 2005
The meeting was called to order at 7:03pm.
Present were Board Members Allan Swensson, Karen Lindner, Cathy Doser, Caryn Roberts, and later Mike Grueter.
- The August minutes were approved unanimously with no changes.
- Treasurer's Report - Karen reported that we have about $5,000 in our account. That includes the Capital Improvement Fund. Cathy suggested we consider raising the dues. It has been many many years since we last raised them. Karen moved and Allan seconded that we raise the dues from current $60 to $75 for regular membership, from $48 to $60 for seniors and students, and to $40 for family memberships. Dues will increase to the new rates at the beginning of the year. Members who renew now will do so at current rates. Caryn pointed out that a couple of hours worth of help at a Saturday dBug Cafe would be worth at least $200 of professional support.
Karen reported that we have $1,900 in the Capital Improvement Fund. We have collected $3,400 for the fund and the figure above represents what is unspent. Caryn said we should buy more chairs. She said she had seen some stacking chairs at the UW surplus store for only $3 apiece. The designs are variable. Karen recommended we go for that price point. The goal is to have around 70 decent chairs. Stacking chairs would probably be better than folding chairs.
- Old Business
- Karen offered to sell the very old Bondi iMac that doesn't recognize the RAM we try to put in it. Caryn said the UW store is now selling Sawtooth G4s for $120 apiece to non-profit organizations. We could fix up such machines and perhaps sell them for profit. Karen said we would need a member that would take on such a refurb project. The beige G3s donated to us from Tacoma Power have no RAM or hard drives. Karen suggested doing a demo project with them, to fix them up and sell them for maybe $50 to members.
- ExChange Update Project: Curtis was not in attendance to report on status.
- Mac Maintenance Class. We should hold a basic class for Macintosh beginners, perhaps titled "25 Killer Tips to Make Your Mac Better." We need to set up a way for people to sign up for the class. It is proposed for Friday September 30th in the afternoon. There will be handouts for attendees.
- The Website looks good, but Dick and Mike are not in attendance this evening. Mike will arrive later.
- Mike Grueter arrived and discussed a proposed UNIX class to be taught by Bill Campbell. Bill is ready to do it any time. The class should be two hours long, and is proposed for the 3rd Saturday of October, the 15th. It would begin at 1:30pm. Curtis can help set up the class.
- Another class would be either Final Cut or Studio Pro, taught by Clark Schroeder. He can't charge admission as a condition of his employment, but we could encourage free will donations. We need to promote such classes more effectively, via the ExChange, MacNews, the dBug e-mail list, etc. Clark has also offered to lead a Music SIG, as part of his working schedule. Since his days off are Tuesday and Wednesday, it would need to be a different evening.
- There has been no progress on the recovery of the dbug.com domain name. Cathy knows who we need to contact to pursue this, and will pass that on to Mike to do.
- New Business
- Board Elections: Karen Lindner is moving to Spokane next year. She will not renew her position the Board. She offered to serve on the Elections committee. Nancy Siburg is also willing to serve on the committee. Cathy and Caryn are also considering leaving the Board, since they have family commitments that require increasing attention. They have not yet decided about leaving. Other suggested Board member nominees were Nancy Siburg, Michelle Honey, and Dick Harrell. Other suggested Elections Committee members are Dick Carter, and perhaps Joyce Schowalter. The committee needs three members.
- We need someone to be in charge during the dBug Cafe to take membership checks, help people sign on to the ExChange, etc. Jim Sobota was suggested as a candidate for "Cafe Host".
- We need to locate a place for a possible November Swap Meet. Cathy will look into it.
- Mike will put up a sign-up form for the Basic Mac Maintenance class, on the website.
- We need to replace the projector. We have enough money to do so, and Evan wants to buy the old one. We will buy the new one and sell Evan our half ownership for around $100 to $200. We also need to replace the projection screen. Allan offered to research the specialized paint for making a wall into a projection surface.
- Upcoming Monthly Events
- September Main Meeting will feature NetNewsWire and FileMaker Pro
- October may be Adobe. Cathy will contact them.
- November may be a Swap Meet.
- December will be a holiday party.
- January will feature a report from Macworld.
- The Good of dBug: Xcoder SIG Leader George Storm mentioned us on the radio.
- The G4 iMac is overburdened with private files, mainly long video projects. The hard drive is filling up and third party apps threaten to make it unstable. This public machine can not be used for private file storage. The policy shall be thus: if a SIG Leader is making a presentation of a project, the files can be loaded onto the machine but must be removed after the class is over. Video projects and cartoons don't need to be loaded onto the iMac hard drive. They can be stored on CD-ROMs, DVD-ROMs, or portable drives.
- Mike Grueter will hold a SIG Leaders meeting soon.
- We still need to set up a new bulletin board format. LDAP data is now loaded onto the server, so we are approaching that goal.
The meeting was adjourned at 9:04pm.
