SUN CITY COMPUTER CLUB
EXECUTIVE BOARD MEETING
December 1, 2005 , 9:00 aM
CyberCenter Meeting Room
The Meeting was called to order at 9:00 A.M. by Gael Miller, President .
Present :
Peter Roll , Founder
Gael Miller, President
Dick Smith, Vice President
Linda Shanhouse, Treasurer
Dave Hanna, Communications Director
Don Snapp, CyberCenter Director
Peggy Uselton, Membership Director
Rex Davenport, Programs Director
Joe Razek, Training Director
Linda Walke, SecretaryAgenda Changes
Atrium Overflow was added to Unfinished Business
Guests
Grady Manley, Training Director Nominee
Janice Manley, Computer Club Member
Nelda McQuary, SIG Director nomineeApproval of Minutes
A motion was made by Gael on November 11 to accept by e-vote and publish on the Computer Club web site the revised minutes of the November Board Meeting. The motion was seconded and passed by e-vote.
Financial Report
Linda Shanhouse presented the November, 2005 Financial Report. A motion was made by Dave Hanna and seconded by Joe Razek to accept the report. The motion passed. The Financial Report will be filed for audit. Linda explained that purchase of the Atrium Screen was reported as a Special Project.
DISCUSSION OF DIRECTORS’ REPORTS RECEIVED BY E-MAIL
Communications, Dave Hanna
Request for email address for Sun Rays
The CA has asked that an email address for each Charter Club be listed in Sun Rays. After a short discussion Dave will create "info@sctxcompclub.org" for this purpose.Sale of Cox's Georgetown Cable Operation
On November 1 Cox Communications announced that they had entered into an agreement with Cebridge Connections, Inc. whereby Cox would sell their cable operations serving about 940,000 subscribers including their Georgetown operations to Cebridge. The sale is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2006. This will lead to another email address change for our members who currently have Cox addresses.
With the addition of the former Cox properties, Cebridge will be the eighth largest cable operator in the U.S. Their current offerings appear to be similar to those of Cox here in Georgetown .
Verizon Drops Price of DSL to $14.95 per Month
Verizon has reduced the price of their entry level DSL service to $14.95 in all of the areas where they provide basic telephone service. The speed of this DSL service is said to be up to 768 kb/s downstream and up to 128 kb/s upstream. While this is not as fast as Cox's most popular offerings it is still about 15 times faster than dial-up. A one year commitment is required and the modem is included. A $19.95 set up charge applies to new subscribers that covers the cost of shipping the modem and the first month's service is free. Existing Verizon DSL subscribers can change to the new rate with no set up charge.
The $14.95/mo. rate is good for a year and could be changed at the end of that time. This seems to be the best deal in Sun City for ISP service although you may have to give up some "bragging rites" to the Cox Cable modem subscribers who are touting download speeds of from 2 to 4 Gb/s. Many will choose to save more than $200 per year and will tolerate the slightly slower speed. Much of Sun City was limited to 768 kb/s download speed for their DSL service due to Verizon equipment limitations.
Dave sent an email to all members with verizon.net email addresses advising them of the new lower rate and several have made the change.CyberCenter, Don Snapp
The December 12 Annual Lunch ticket sales were going great; but have slowed way down. 331 tickets out of a possible 360 have been sold. Accents needs the final total by December 8.
The failure of DVD burners in several of the Lab PC’s to reject the disk when finished was discussed. Rebooting the machines seemed the best solution.
A burner in L13 is to be removed and the second burner relocated on the tower .
Changes for a new Computer Club brochure will be gathered and forwarded to Joan Keith for printing. Whether the Computer Club URL will remain the same using the new SC sponsored portal should be known by mid-January 2006.
Membership, Peggy Uselton
The number of club members as of November 30, 2005 1,924
The number of new members who joined in November, 2005 87
The total number of new members who have joined in 2005 573
The number of members who are current through 2006 560
We now have 113% of last year’s membership.
A Reception for New Members was held Tuesday, November 29, in Meeting Rooms 3 & 4, at 9:30 a.m. 32 invitations and reminders were sent; and the 8 new members who joined Monday, November 28 were phoned. 52 (37%) attend the reception. That is a better turn out than at the August reception (42 / 150 or 28%), and slightly better than May (27 / 77 or 35%). Each was given a handout featuring the volunteer opportunities within the Computer Club and the SIGs sponsored by the club. The next New Member Reception will be January 31, in Meeting Rooms 3 & 4 from 9:30 a.m. to 11 a.m.
Programs, Rex Davenport
Monday Program Calendar 2005/2006
Dec 5: SIG
Dec 12: Annual Meeting Dec 19: Netiquette (Barbara Resnick)
Dec 26: No Meeting
January 2: No Meeting
January 9: SIG
January 16 Computers in Libraries: Present and Future (Eric P. Lashley).
January 23: You Bought A Digital Camera – What’s Next (Gary Resnick )
January 30: CyberSocial.
The Program Committee will meet December 13, 4 p.m. Arrangements have been made for a February meeting on a step by step use of Turbo-tax by a CPA. A discussion was held on the feasibility of setting up wireless for the Atrium. Peter will research the possibility.
Training, Joe Razek
November was a good month. The results are:
CLASS ENROLLMENTS FOR NOVEMBER
Introduction to the PC 101 5
Introduction to the PC 102 6
Windows 101 Introduction 7
Windows 102 Files/Folders 8
Word 101 7
Power Point 101 Cancelled
Greeting Cards 101 4
Digital Cameras 101 6
Photoshop 101 8 Full
Photoshop 102 8 Full
Photoshop 103 7
Mac-Internet 6 Full
Mac iPhoto 5
Total 77
The courses that filled were Photoshop 101 and 102 and, surprisingly, Mac-Internet. Power Point 101 was cancelled due to a lack of students. Most other courses offered had reasonable enrollments. November was definitely a significant improvement over October.
December is progressing nicely. All five courses have made, although none has filled yet. January’s calendar is complete and is fairly ambitious. Fifteen courses will be offered; one of which is a new Mac course about “Cleaning up Your Desktop”. Two new instructors are Charlotte Brinkley, who will help Grady with “Introduction to the PC”, and Louise Anderson, who will take “Spreadsheets 101-Excel”.
To end his last report, Joe said it had been an interesting two years and a lot was accomplished during that time. He thanked most of the students and instructors for their help and support. He especially thanked Jan Miller, Joan Keith and Clara Anne Griffith, as well as Wes Odell and the Photoshop group and Joan Keith and the Mac group, for all their efforts on behalf of this activity. Without their assistance and support it would never have happened. He hopes that they will continue to give similar support to Grady.
Special Interest Groups, Doug Willoughby
Temple Pouncy has resigned as leader of the Genealogy SIG effective January 1.
The November meeting was devoted to reorganization. Ben Grimes volunteered to be the leader and several members volunteered to be the program committee. Enough ideas were discussed for the rest of 2006.
We are still looking for a leader for the Hardware & Technology SIG. A program committee was created to lead the SIG and have generated many program ideas for the next year.
A leader of the E Bay SIG and the Website Design SIGs are still being sought. They are currently being led by the respective program committees. Both have several program ideas to pursue in the new year.
The Website Design SIG will not meet in December but will meet in January when the new Sun City Web Portal project will be the topic. This SIG will be very helpful in the migration to the new web portal.
The procedures for doing VHS tape capture using Adobe Premier Elements is available and we are looking for leaders so we can schedule workshops.
Windows Kaffee Klatch SIG has begun meeting twice a month and the attendance at both meetings has been adequate to continue that schedule.
UNFINISHED BUSINESS
Position Descriptions
Gael has incorporated changes and fine tuning of the Computer Club job descriptions. He will forward the entire document to Dave for posting on the website.
2006 New Equipment update
The New Equipment Task Force established by the board at the last board meeting met and have made an outline of what will be purchased in 2006.
Atrium Screen
Gael reported the Atrium Screen has now been completely paid for.
Atrium Overflow
Doug reported thatafter much consideration, it has been decided the best solution to having more people at Computer Club meetings than room in the Atrium will be to have additional attendees see the programs from the Cyber Center Meeting room via video transmission. If this area is filled, then adjacent meeting rooms will be used if available. Peter is working on the technical steps required to make the transmissions possible. He is also considering other technical options.
NEW BUSINESS
PhotoShop plans
As incoming Training Director, Grady Manley brought to the Board concerns about groups of instructors who wanted to structure their programs differently from past Computer Club practice. Some of these differences are class intervals, location of classes, total number of participants accepted in the class and after hours sessions. After discussion, it was decided that there is a difference between classes, labs, workshops and SIGs. Charges must remain as consistent as possible. Use of licensed software must be within the legal definition. The possibility of programming the registration software for pre-class notification will be researched.
Discussion of Lab Hours
Success of the recent expansion of Lab hours was discussed. When additional extension of the hours was brought up, it was acknowledged that constant facility use resulting from the Ball Room expansion would make it very difficult. It was agreed to revisit this topic later in 2006.
OTHER BUSINESS
Web Portal Project Training
Peter pointed out that non-Computer Club members will be receiving training in the Cyber Center with out charge as students as this is a cooperative project with the CA.
Appreciation of Gael Miller
Peter expressed the Board’s appreciation of Gael Miller’s service to the Computer Club during his term as President.
The next Executive Board Meeting will be 9:00 A.M. Thursday, January 5, 2006 , at the Sun City CyberCenter Meeting Room.
The meeting was adjourned at 11:40 a.m.
Linda Walke, Secretary
Date of approval: December 9, 2005
12/10/05