Chebucto Community Net Board Minutes January 21, 1997 Attendance: Jan Fullerton, John van Gurp, Ben Armstrong, Bernie Hart, David Trueman, Joan MacIntosh, Doug Rigby, David Murdoch. 1. Policies John van Gurp would like to collect existing and proposed policies. Joan MacIntosh suggested that Joan Brown-Hicks might be willing/able to help with this project from home. Joan will contact Joan Brown-Hicks about this. David Potter had proposed a policy related to mailing lists; Ben Armstrong will post this with a motion for approval. Everyone is asked to fill in any desired details regarding running a list etc. -> powers/rights of list owners and so on. Some guidelines are needed for when a list creation is/is not approved, such as no duplicate lists, no lists that are too resource- intensive, etc. The guidelines don’t have to be global; instead, there could just be a global requirement for each list to have its own policy. There is also the issue of lists requested by non-CCN people, such as Atlantic Women On-Line. There is some feeling that this should be discouraged. Until a policy is developed for this, Jan Fullerton will act as list owner for Atlantic Women On-Line. Also, non-local lists should be targeted for donations, especially those that use a lot of CCN'’sresources. On a related note, David Trueman would like to see a Board “manual” containing policies, role descriptions, etc which would be available to new Board members. 2. Windsor-West Hants Community Net WWHCN has been trying to get local dial-up access but has been having considerable problems. They recently met with Global Links representatives who were very interested. The Global Links reps were leaning toward hosting all of WWHCN instead of preserving the virtual community net aspect. Overall, this looks pretty good for WWHCN. They contacted CCN because they were concerned about their relationship with CCN. David Trueman suggested they go ahead with the agreement in principle, then later work out a detailed memorandum of understanding. This process could begin at the meeting with Global Links the coming Monday. David Trueman and Bernie Hart will be present at that meeting. Other projects may be possible with other community nets that are coming on-line: Eastern Passage, Middle Musquodoboit, and Hubbards. For some of the local ones, a neighbourhood concept might be better, generating more revenue for CCN phone lines but preserving the neighbourhood emphasis. 3. TC97 One of the two assistant deputy ministers for Industry Canada was contacted to ask whether they would be prepared to use the conference as a sounding board for where people are regarding universal access. Essentially, they are being asked to co-sponsor the conference. No official response has been received from the assistant deputy minister but the feedback was favourable from one of his staff who was asked to speak at the conference. At this point, it looks like there will be a fairly strong federal presence at the conference, which may also draw in more participants. Within the partnership theme, organizers are looking for some government positions on universal access, as well as government, organization, and community perspectives on the partnership idea. The committee is just about ready to send out a call for papers. The deadline for these will probably be the end of February. 4. Internet Show Joe Baker was absent, but has put out a call for volunteers. Plans are in progress for equipment transportation, setup, etc. Sample graphics pages will be running as local files in addition to a dial-up text connection. David Trueman will put a message in the MOTD to request more volunteers. 5. On-Line Boutique CCN is doing well financially, although much of the money is committed. Someone is still needed to coordinate the on-line boutique, including a design contest etc. Joan MacIntosh will try to get the ball rolling on the design contest and the development of a ‘boutique” team. Also, some market research should be done to find out what people would like to have: t-shirts, buttons, pins, etc. A notice of the contest could be put in the newsletter. The team might also want to develop an alternate name instead of “boutique” which may not have a really universal appeal. People are needed to collect entries. Another possible idea is the development of a CCN board game. 6. HRM Allan Waye from HRM has some money from the government to do something with youth and the Internet. He may be willing to do something with CCN for this. Joan MacIntosh will give Jan Fullerton'’s number as a contact person for Allan Waye. 7. Access Cable Doug Rigby suggested that he take one of the library PATs home to conduct some more intensive, closely-observed tests of the cable connection. David Trueman suggested working it out with the library. Doug will contact Ken Burke. 8. Co-op Student David Murdoch proposed getting a co-op student through the NSLinks program. The student would be 50% funded by the program, CCN'’s half would be about $3000. David Murdoch suggested getting a student in media relations to work with various CCN/CSuite projects. There are various funding options for this, the details can be worked out later. For now, David is just looking for initial feedback. Are there any possibilities for involving unemployed individuals? The deadline for applications is the end of February; basically, the plan is to apply now and sort out the details later. 9. Press coverage The last meeting was held as the child pornography issue was just hitting the media. The Halifax Herald article was reasonable and focused on Friedman himself. CBC news focused on the alt.binaries.* heirarchy. The Daily News printed one article about Friedman, one about CCN giving easy access to police. A clarification about this was printed the next day. Overall, there was some feedback but it wasn’t too bad. Most media coverage didn'’t target CCN but stated that this could happen to anyone. As for the press conference, John Manley announced successful CAP applicants, including 34 in Nova Scotia. The planned demonstrations were done, including David Trueman as the third demonstrator with the French version of CSuite. He only had about three minutes but it went well. CCN got some political exposure but little if any media exposure. However, the political exposure is important. English and French Csuite brochures were distributed as well. 10. AGM A date can be set later so long as it is in the first four months of the year. Financial statements are needed for this, as is a nominating committee. For this, the Board needs more planning, research, and selective recruitment. There should be 4 people on the nominating committee: two non-Board members, two Board members who are serving a two year term. Joan MacIntosh will check the list to see who is serving a two year term and forward it to the Board. 11. Information Rights Week Panel CCN is co-sponsoring a panel with the Halifax Regional Library at the end of April as part of Information Rights Week. The topic is positive parenting on the Internet. Jan, David Trueman, and Denise Parrott will form this panel. Advance work needs to be done to collect good sites etc, possibly develop a children’s educational shareware download area. 12. CSuite The most evident progress is with the French documents. There is now a fully French version of LYNX. There are also several potential new Csuite “clients” including the Montreal Freenet. Next meeting: Tuesday, February 4, 1997.