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Board of Directors Meeting Minutes
Tuesday, February 6, 2007

Attending: Board Members Tom Auciello, Cathy Doser, Mike Grueter, John Livingston, and Dona McAdam, as well as members Richard Knights (Treasurer), Wil Nelson, Caryn Roberts, and Bruce Robertson.

The meeting was called to order at 7:20pm.

  1. John moved to accept the January minutes as written, Mike seconded the motion, and the motion was approved unanimously.
  2. Treasurer's report - A rent check from October or so was held/lost by Nelson Electric, so we thought we had more money than we actually do, and our last rent check technically bounced, though it was paid by our bank, so Nelson Electric was not inconvenienced. Richard will contact our bank to get the current info about our account so we know what checks are outstanding, etc.
  3. Old Business
    1. Capital Improvement Project - Resource Center Upgrades
      1. Projection Screen Upgrade - no new news from Allan. This project will be placed on the back-burner until dBug becomes financially solvent.
      2. Sale of Old Projector - Evan Kentop suggested that he and dBug enter into a seal bid to purchase the projector. Whichever party bids the highest will purchase the projector from the other party for the bid price in their envelope. Evan and Mike will meet to complete this business.
      3. Cathy has been watching for a low price on a new internal dual-layer SuperDrive to put in our existing external CD burner case, and will purchase a Pioneer model when the price is about $40.
    2. Exchange Update Project
      1. The E-Plan group is now targeting and learning about Plone as a replacement for FirstClass as the dBug ExChange.
    3. Fundraising Ideas
      1. Classes - to be held following the Saturday Cafés (after 12:30pm), weekdays, or Sunday afternoons.
        1. The iWeb class on January 27th raised about $340 for dBug.
        2. Motion Training Seminar by Kevin Monahan and the Digital Video SIG will be held on February 25th.
        3. Beginning UNIX by Bill Campbell will be held on March 10th.
        4. Mac Maintenance by Wil Nelson will be held on March 31st.
        5. FileMaker Pro class by Bruce Robertson is targeting April.
        6. iWeb class by Mike Grueter will repeat in April.
        7. Xcode/Cocoa class is targeting May.
        8. Office?
        9. WebObjects Basics?
        10. Genealogy?
        11. Migrating to Mac from Windows? + Parallels
      2. Increase membership (see ideas below).
      3. Rent the room to members and perhaps offer the room for 1/2 price or free for say 2 hours once a year, etc. as a new benefit.
      4. Tim Mayer runs classes on UNIX/Linux, Perl, Shell, etc. at about 3 or 4 per month. Cathy and Curtis will ask him if he is interested in using our RC instead of hotels for his classes.
      5. Find someone to sub-lease our space on weekdays.
      6. Save dBug letter (last resort).
    4. Web Site
      1. Mike Grueter reported that normal maintenance and article updates were done this month.
    5. Newsletter - Dona and Karen finished the February mailer and it was mailed on February 5th. The full web PDF will be finished and online soon.
    6. Bylaws Revision - Tom and Nancy met to work on the ByLaws and have an updated document to show us at a future meeting.
    7. Corporate Sponsors - Mike and Joe Heck have been trading ideas via e-mail.
    8. Dropped membership exit interviews - Bruce will send Tom a list of members who have not renewed in the last six months and Tom will start e-mailing people to find out why they have not renewed. Bruce will also send Cathy a full list of all ex-members since the start of dBug.
    9. There was additional discussion about the benefits of being a dBug Member. Some ideas include: renting equipment to members, making some classes cheaper for members, 1 free raffle ticket at each main meeting, note that parking is free at the Resource Center, create a nicer updated online community.
    10. Someone needs to pickup the sign-in sheets at the RC, transcribe them to digital form, and send the e-mail addresses to Sandro once per month. Wil Nelson will as Henry and/or Stacy if they can do the job. Cathy suggested that we forgo paper sign-in sheets in favor of a web application. She will create a specification document for Mike.
    11. How can we grow our membership? Cathy is planning a small focus group with some mid-twenties Mac users to see what they want in a MUG. UW does not currently have a MUG. Cathy will call UW bookstore and Ed from Digital Video SIG to see if we can get some promotional materials on campus. Leopard campaign - canvas the Apple Stores and hand out promotional material to people waiting in line to buy Leopard. Contact ex-members (Tom). Focus on increasing the awareness of the value of being a member. Visit and speak at SIGs that have attendees who aren't members, and ask SIG Leaders to prompt for new members every month.
    12. When ExChange validation requests come in, Mike will verify with Richard Knights if the person has current membership status, and relay that info to the validation conference which is checked by Cherie Nickel.
  4. New Business
    1. Upcoming Main Meetings
      1. January - Macworld recap on 3rd Wednesday
      2. February - VOIP with Tom Auciello and Fred Taub
      3. March - Parallels
      4. April - Open (Two options include DiskWarrior, TechTool, and other maintenance tools, and Canon cameras)
      5. Future ideas - King County's hazardous waste or electronics recycling (John), Leopard (after release)
    2. Cathy and Dona have each created a postcard sized, Leopard-focussed, dBug advertisement. We'll look at both and pick the best features to use. We hope to have a version ready to print by the end of March, though we'll wait to print it until days before Leopard's release incase anything changes.
    3. Caryn will look at ideas posted recently on the ExChange regarding how to retain existing members.
    4. Due to the accumulation of unwanted older hardware and software at the Resource Center, dBug will only take working Macs with built-in FireWire and Mac OS X native software. No peripherals, no old monitors, no Classic/OS 9 software.
    5. Cutting costs
      1. Drop our Qwest business phone line and AccessLine service and go with k7.net for free phone service. Caryn will setup the k7.net service and Mike will stop our existing services currently costing us $100/month.
      2. Charge for donuts at the Saturday Cafes.
      3. Ask Nelson Electric for a reduction in rent (last resort).

The meeting was adjourned at 9:40pm.

- Mike Grueter, Scribe