OCLUG Board Meeting Sept 21 2010

Location: Roland's

Present: Roland, JST, Eric, Lisa

Guest: Dave Sampson, Computers for Communities

Meeting called to order at 7:08 p.m.

• Approval of agenda - Completed

• Approve Last Month's Board Meeting Minutes BoardMinutesAugust2010 (note that JST was not present) - completed

• Dave Sampson of Computers for Communities was invited to speak about some ways OCLUG and C4C can work more closely together
  • Introduction: What C4C does
    • 54,000 households in Ottawa without computers, 128,000 households without internet
    • Help bridge the digital divide, keep computers out of the landfill, spread free software
    • Works with many public service organizations to distribute the free computers
    • Provides 1 year of support to free computer recipients
    • Help give kids projects to do and marketable job skills
    • C4C is losing its workshop at the end of the month
  • Report back from Eric and Lisa - ways OCLUG can work more closely with C4C
    • Coordinate with C4C to do installfests and provide community support, to reach a larger audience
    • C4C has some excellent documentation on how to do installs, which we can use together
    • Help provide the 1 year of support
    • Help provide computer instruction for end users
    • Wiki page specifically for installfests and cooperation with C4C - sign up interested parties there
    • OCLUG members can benefit by building computer repair and networking skills
    • There were discussions of accessibility technologies since people with disabilities are disproportionately affected by poverty
    • October - opportunity for community awareness session for GNU/Linux and free software with Calvary Christian Academy
    • Decision was made to work more closely with C4C as a board, coordinating events together etc.
    • Decision was made to present this at general meetings and encourage the membership to pursue these options, elicit feedback
    • These activities may attract attention to OCLUG and attract more members
    • Send announcements out on the mailing list of joint events
    • Announce upcoming OCLUG/C4C events at general meetings
  • Roland will follow up with Dave about him coming to speak at the November meeting
  • Dave put forward a long-term proposal for a Community Technology Centre
    • Co-lo space with other technology groups in the area
    • Lower overall costs for space
    • Classes, workshops, codefests, attracting groups into town, FLOSS conferences, fabrication labs
    • Build marketable job skills
    • Exposure to environments and technologies that people might not normally be exposed to
    • Green technologies to lower/eliminate power needs
    • Central location
    • Need formal partnerships between organizations
    • Start with funding and make it self-sustaining
    • This has been discussed with organizations such as Carleton U and stirred up interest
    • OCLUG may find such an arrangement beneficial for hosting installfests, conventions, master classes, etc.

• Access to Tux, including review of list of those authorized to access
  • Do we need those with access to acknowledge that they have access and will “do no harm”?
  • JN has composed an AUP - Decision was made to begin implementing it on the new Tux

• Discuss reimbursing RGB for his Tux-related power consumption - we haven't done this for some time
  • This brought about a discussion of availability of checks, since Mike K. was unable to attend today, and it was decided that they should be kept at more than one location in case the need presents itself if one person isn't available. This is not a risk since two signatures are required.
  • Roland will look into previous amounts and get back to Lisa to arrange writing RGB a check

• Tux status report
  • Lisa and RGB worked together on Tux for 5 hours last Friday, and were able to get it booting up with desired framework
  • Hardware appears stable
  • Software may need some tweaking but the hardest part of the groundwork (encryption and partitioning logistics) is done and we are mostly ready to go - many thanks to RGB for his work on this

• Discuss options for new Tux
  • Discussion began by reading JN's TuxMigration(Fall2010) document as a starting point
  • There was discussion of specific roadblocks volunteers have come against due to our current complexity
  • It was agreed that the setup must be simplified in order to accommodate changes in volunteer availability and expertise
  • Possibility of a script to automate, with documentation in the script
  • It was agreed that installations should be from packages whenever possible and avoid compiling from source
  • Need to keep it as simple as possible to increase the number of potential volunteers
  • Extensive documentation is a must
  • Possible option: guiding document of “the purpose of this server is to do {item(s)} - and all software should be in line with this purpose,” - any proposed software that must be manually compiled should be re-examined as to whether it is actually required
  • Lisa has looked into the existing setup of Tux and explored options in depth, and the Board has given her latitude to make the final decision on the application to use for a web presence (as was done with Mike K. for the bookkeeping software)
    • FLOSS, well-supported, full-featured, in active development, and easy to use and administer (backups, etc.) - prefer flat files to database
      • Dokuwiki or MoinMoin
  • The Board has given Roland and Lisa latitude to further discuss mailing list matters and come to a decision on a solution

• Discuss OCLUG's Google calendar - MCR mentioned that this was used in 2009-2010 to track our events
  • It was agreed that this is very useful and we should be using it
  • Lisa will post a link on the website

• Review OclugBoardForwardAgenda - discussed

• Update on action items from last Board meeting - discussed

• Serving different classes of users - discussed
  • Update on Week101 ideas

• Other

Meeting was adjourned at 10:36 p.m.