Board of Directors Meeting Minutes
September 8, 2005

Attending:

• Dale Crory
• Tom Daly
• Ed Dyer
• Bernie Hart
• Marilyn MacDonald
• John McKay
• Tanya Moxley
• Alan Turner

Regrets:

• Mark Alberstat
• Bill Matheson
• Marni Tuttle

Minutes of Previous Meeting

Alan / Tom moved approval of last month's minutes as circulated online. CARRIED

Note: Tanya will miss the next two meetings because she has to take French class this fall for her new job. The class is on Thursday nights. Someone else will need to take notes for the next two meetings (Oct. & Nov.).

Staff Matters

Johnathan's part time summer term expired at the end of August, but we would like to hire him full time for the fall to do some specific projects. Johnathan reports to Andrew, but works closely with Ed on various projects. Johnathan is available full time for this term, if we wish to use him partly for tech, but also partly for admin work so that Andrew can go out of the office and work with organizations and group. this would mean that we will be about $4,000 over the budgeted figure for salaries for this year. it would mean we could get v.92 working:
- faster uploads, faster connections (shorter beep period when connecting), allows call waiting for Internet (so you can answer a call)

Other projects: updates to Sun servers, creating a backup/ghost version of the production servers, replacement / upgrade of CSuite

Ed / Tom moved that we employ Johnathan full time at his current salary for Sept 1 - Dec. 31, 2005.

Bernie - we are a bit low on budget target for income, but even lower on expenses, so at this time we can handle the expense. Ed feels we can forego some equipment purchases (we are only currently at half of the projected amount), which would help. Having Johnathan full time should allow us to pursue some projects that involve new services, as well as providing Andrew with time to work on recruiting new accounts and building relationships with existing organization account holders.

Motion CARRIED. Some discussion re: how do we start thinking about succession planning, i.e. what if Johnathan leaves?

Board Membership

Now that we have lost Bob, we need a replacement for the rest of his two year term. John has gone looking a bit, and has a lead to follow up on. Anyone who has any other suggestions should contact John directly.

Situation Updates

HRC@P: Account has been cancelled.

HRDA: Ed, Andrew & Johnathan met with Gerald Gabriel & Victor King from the HRDA this morning. The HRDA web site and their mail have been moved to HRDA offices; they may purchase one dial-up account. They are interested in us as an information resource, source & destination for referrals, future project partner. They are keen to partner with us to help small organizations and businesses become knowledgeable about Internet services.

CVIJohnathan & Andrew are meeting with CVI's tech person tomorrow. Bernie will attend as well. The focus has to be on outcomes and building this relationship, not technical solutions. This opportunity is a good way to get an idea about what kinds of outcomes an organization would be looking for - this gives us an "in" for public relations to organizations.

General: Andrew provided some graphs to show current trends in account activations and renewals; organizations are about 15% of our current revenue stream. In general our account numbers are falling, but this is largely in the text service and not yet quite being made up for in the slow rise of graphical accounts. As long as we maintain our current level of graphical users, we can continue to subsidize accounts for a few people, as we do now. Trends show that revenue from donations and services are slowly growing as well.

Working Group Reports

We've lost Bob, but no one has stepped forward to take that on. Nothing has happened with the Business Plan group. Dale is working on contacting the groups that have their web site hosted with us, to get our logo on their site. Bob had suggested that we get in touch with some groups / departments at Dal (School of Public Admin) / SMU about turning us into a class project. Marilyn spoke to SPA and was told that Keith Sullivan is in charge of coordinating these projects. She has been in touch but hasn't heard back yet. This would be January to get started, by this time.

Tanya noted that if we need money to hire someone, it is an option to write a proposal to HRSDC to get money to hire someone. For example, if we wanted SMUBDC.

Volunteer group - nothing has happened. Marni is planning to circulate some stuff shortly.

Items For Decision

CAP/OED Forum: Sponsored by HRC@P, this event will take place at Terence Bay Fire Hall on Sept. 30 / Oct 1. Bringing together ideas for community participation using IT; how could HRM be more responsive to community needs? The city seems supportive at this time; several councillors will be attending. Bernie will be there; others are encouraged to go with the CCN 'banner' to speak up about the role we could play. John is able to go. Bernie will send directions on how to get there.

Computers for Schools: Program has been ongoing for some time. has morphed from just for schools to recently for community organizations (CO) and now for individuals through COs. A new partnership between CfS, LakeCity, HRDA, and Parker St. Food Bank provides an educational upgrading option and work experience - working on computers, yes, but also just having a regular job. It is a 12 month program for 12 people, through HRSDC's youth at risk program. At the end, they get to keep the computer. Could CCN make available an account for the person for the six months after they leave the program, to get started on their own? Dale - there might be funds available through a rotary club to cover the costs of the accounts (Parker St. is already a recipient charity for Dale's rotary club). Bernie will follow up with Dale. Tom - it would make more sense to get them CCN mail in the first place, so that's what they're used to when they leave the program. All the computers being produced by the program could have a splash screen with CCN info - logo & a half-sheet brochure. This is an area where we can try out the HRDA's willingness to partner with us on projects.

Committee Reports

Technical Committee

Things have been pretty quiet. Virus traffic has been up (30,000/day) & down (13,000/day) again. This is against a total of about 100,000 e-mails per day, much of which spam. Mail not tagged as spam is about 15% of that. Generally things are going well. These stats about our spam capabilities might make a good Mouse Pad column.

Finance Committee

Bernie provided a handout. He & Andrew have figured out the ongoing discrepancies between their two sets of numbers. Tom will provide Andrew with an Excel macro that can assist with tallying of financials and creating reports.

Policy Committee

Nothing to report this month.

External Committee

Flying Cow ads have commenced; no direct feedback so far. Ad for the Coast was submitted (circulated) and has led to some calls, but no accounts so far. Got a call from HFX about placing ads with them. An ad similar to the Coast one has also been used in the upcoming Dal Gazette. We are also investigating the SMU paper.

Internal Committee

There was no report.

Other Business

• John had preliminary meeting with friend to pursue Wi-Fi.
• Intel is proposing to make donation to some cities for implementing Wi-Fi.
• John and Andrew are also working on Wi-Fi.

Adjournment

The meeting adjourned at 8:17 PM.

Next Meeting

October 13, 2005, 6:30 PM, Colloquium Room