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SUN
CITY
COMPUTER CLUB
EXECUTIVE BOARD MEETING
April 5, 2007, 9:00
AM
The Meeting was called to order at 9:05 AM by Dick
Doane, President
.
Present
:
Dick Doane, President
Gael Miller, Vice-President
Linda Walke, Secretary
Don Snapp, CyberCenter Director
Jim Crutcher, Programs Director
Nelda McQuary, Special Interest Groups
Director
Grady Manley, Training Director
Peter Roll, Founder
Guests
Communications:
Meredith Mitchell, Webmaster
Pat Hillcoat, Newsletter & Website Development
Absent
Linda Shanhouse, Treasurer
Peggy Uselton, Membership Director
Dick Smith, Past President
Approval of Minutes
A motion was made by Dick Doane on February 12, 2007
to accept by e-vote and publish on the Computer Club web site the revised minutes of the February
1, 2007 Board Meeting. The motion was passed by e-vote.
Financial Report
Linda Shanhouse presented the February and March 2007
Financial Report to the Board by email. A motion was made by Don Snapp and seconded by Gael Miller
to accept the report. The motion passed. The Financial Report will be filed for
audit.
DISCUSSION OF DIRECTORS’
REPORTS:
CyberCenter, Don Snapp
We have been experiencing up to four members waiting
to use Lab computers on various days during the last month. It is time to consider expanding
the open hours in the Lab, starting on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Gael Miller agreed to
review the various schedules and availability of meeting rooms and report back to the Board.
Don also brought up the need for more positions in
the Lab. The MAC computers were not being utilized to any great extent. Peter Roll
reported that once the new OS was made available, the MACs could be used for Windows as necessary
and provides greater utilization in the lab. He will check on the pricing in June or
later.
Membership, Peggy Uselton
March & April 2007
March
April
The number of club members as of February 28,
2007
2,031 as of 3/31..
2,111
The number of new members who joined in
February
82 in March…
48
The number of new member who have joined in
2007
274
322
Current membership as a percentage of 2006’s
membership.
86.3%
89.7%
Interesting number:
97.3% of our members have given us their email address.
March
Since the Planning Session last month, a group of us (Dave Hanna, Ray Wright, Meredith Mitchell,
Pat Hillcoat, and I) have been working out the details for using the CA portal for the club’s email
communications. Barbara Resnick (with a little assistance from me) developed a program to
convert the CA numbers in our database to the format used by the CA (no leading zeros, a hyphen
before the last three digits, etc.) This part now works smoothly. However, we
discovered that more than 130 of our CA numbers were rejected by the portal system. About 30
of those rejected are short-term renters who are not in the CA system; (We will never be able to use the portal for mailings to these members.) others may be
widows, who are now 000, but who are still 001 in our database, some are just plain typo’s, the
rest, who knows! Ray worked the list and found the correct number for many, but we still have
36 not corrected.
One problem we found that the board may want to
discuss: some of our members have trusted us with their email addresses, but withheld their email
addresses from the CA. They receive the Weekly Update now, but will be left out when/if we
switch to the portal for mailing. I also found quite a few that had corrected their email
addresses to “suddenlink.net” in our database but were still with “Cox” in the portal! How
can we be sure that the CA portal will be a better system than our current mailing
procedure?
On the happy side, my staff and I appreciate the new Admin computer desk.
April
The New Member Reception on March 27 was warmly
received and well attended for a bad weather day –42 out of 175 invited or 24%. Before the
next Reception, it would be nice to get a big sign/poster to place by the door to direct members to
the New Member Reception.
The incorrect CA numbers in our database have now been corrected with much help from Ray Wright, CA
staff, and Sondra Carlton. As for the remaining 36, as it turned out, our CA numbers were
correct.
Programs, Jim Crutcher
The program committee schedule is shown below; the
programs above the line have already happened and the programs below the line are yet to
happen. We had a pretty good first quarter with only three glitches, which were fairly easily
fixed. Fortunately, I had a Google presentation already partially put together, so I
used it to fill in. I am planning to develop several presentations to have ready for
emergencies.
The future programs shown below look pretty solid
except for the two with question marks. The ProShow gold program is dependent on the
availability of the Austin ProShow gold employees for making the presentation and their schedule
is, in turn, dependent on their trade show opportunities. The May 15 program on buying a
computer was scheduled a long time ago, but at the last meeting was deemed not very appropriate for
this time of the year. We had changed it to a different topic, but the presenter for that
topic will be out of town on that date. We will resolve this at next Tuesday's program
committee meeting.
PROGRAM COMMITTEE SCHEDULE
April 2:
Selling on E-Bay (Strayer)
April 9:
Quicken (Chapman)
April
16 How did you do that
(Bosch)
April
23: Care and Cleaning of Your Computer
(Willoughby)
April
30: Cyber Social – Program on lab
facilities (Snapp)
May 7
SIG – Taking better
pictures
May 14
Medical Advice on the Internet
(Willoughby)
May
21 How did you do that
(Bosch)
May
28 Holiday
June 4
Media Conversion of VHS &
8mm
June 11
Making XP work like Vista (Crutcher)
June 18
Use of web cams
June
25 Computing on the go
(Crutcher)
July
2* Tricks with the control
panel
July
16 open
July 23
TACC Presentation – Ranger Super
Computer
*
May be a holiday
Special Interest Groups, Nelda
McQuary
Beginners & Beyond SIG
is the new name of Beginners SIG meeting at the same
date & time.
EBay SIG
has moved to Rooms 3 & 4 – new date & time –
1
st Wed. 10:00 a.m.
Mac High Tea SIG
has replaced the The Mac Kaffee Klatch SIG. The
new meeting date & time are1
st Wed 3:00-4:30.
Web Site Design SIG
has added a second monthly meeting which is the 1
st Tuesday at 1:30.
Media Conversion SIG
has been removed from the category of SIG status
since it does not operate as a SIG. Doug Willoughby will continue to be the Leader of that
Group which will fall in a category of workshop, called Media Conversion Project, according to
Doug.
We now have 13 SIG’s.
Pat Hillcoat has been informed that Mentors’ Meeting
should not be listed under the SIG announcements in the Weekly Update.
Jim Crutcher has been asked to announce, at the
Monday Meetings, all SIG meetings for the upcoming week.
************************
Total attendance
– Attendance to SIG meetings continues to rise.
In February the attendance was 376 and in March 398. AOL did not meet these two
months.
Training, Grady Manley
March Class Enrollment
Subjects
Classes Enrolled
Basic
skills
4
39
Graphics
5
29
Mac
2
5
Other
5
27
Total
16
100
Media Conversion
There seems to be some confusion among the club
members about how to register for the multimedia conversion “classes”. Many people apparently
think these are part of the training program. The fact that Media Conversion
Workshops are different from classes can be mentioned at the Monday meetings.
Vista-related training
Since we are recommending that our club members
should not be in a hurry to move to Vista, it seems that we will need to provide training in both
XP and Vista for some time. This can be accomplished by leaving the old units in the
classroom with the new units so each station could have access both to XP and Vista.
I would request that both units remain in each
classroom station for a period of at least 3, and no more than 6, months to facilitate the change.
This may require some physical setup change of the keyboard, mouse, monitor at the stations for
different classes, but it seems a good solution to the problem. (We will also have to
consider Dual-Boot.)
Projecting the impact that Vista will have on our
training program, I am sending a preliminary survey to all teachers who will be affected by the OS
change in order to determine what software will be compatible (or not), what new software will be
needed, and how we need to change our curriculum and teaching to conform to the change. I am
beginning to recruit help for teaching and writing curriculum for the new classes.
I would request that we install the programs that we
are now using in class onto one of the Vista units in the Lab in order for the teachers to have
opportunity to experiment with them and see how their classes will be affected. This will
enable our teachers to get acquainted with the OS environment and verify program
compatibility. We will see, then, which of our programs can be used as-is and which will need
to be updated. Grady expects to begin teaching classes using VISTA beginning in January
2008.
Revision of class times.
Grady requested that, beginning in June, class times
be changed as follows:
9:00-11:00 12:00-2:00
3:00-5:00
OR
9:30-11:30 12:30-2:30
3:30-5:30
Instructors need more time between classes to do
their set-up. Everyone that uses the facility needs to be apprised of the schedule and vacate
the room at the proper time.
The time is not too far in the future that we may
need to consider adding night classes to the schedule.
Communications:
Webmaster -
Meredith
Mitchell expressed his appreciation for the full cooperation and help
he has received in this new job
.
He reported the results of the member survey
showed that the majority are happy with the Computer Club website. The most frequent item
noted that needed improvement was the navigation of the site. There was a discussion of the
possibility of adding a forum to the website. It was pointed out that the Open CMS (Content
Management System) used by the CA has a forum that is not used. It is probably not used
because it is not easy to use. More work will be done on that feature before it is added to
the Computer Club website.
It is agreed that it is a Computer Club priority to
retain our website management independence. We continue to look for solutions to the problems
found from the differences in the two membership data bases. Meredith listed three
recommendations as guides for our integration with CMS. They are: Work positively with the
CA; Endeavor to transfer our current functionality into the Web Portal; Begin to identify and
address the functions we need that are not currently available.
Meredith will send to the Board a prototype of the
revised Computer Club website home page. The mouse responsive drop down boxes will not work,
but he will display one to show how they will look.
Newsletter and Website Development – Pat Hillcoat distributed a
Computer Club Web Site Implement Recommendations & Strategy summary to the
Board. She also included a table of
Requirements, Decisions and Actions divided by phases. The implementation is
expected to be toward the end of 2007. Dick Doane asked about the timing of expected
expenses. Pat explained they would apply to the 2008 fiscal year. More immediately,
there is the need of a computer equipped with both XP and Linux. It will be used as the test
server and UPS. The estimated cost will be $1.500. Adding memory to L-12 for use by the
team has been assigned to Dick Smith.
A motion was made by Peter Roll to accept the
recommendations and when requested to authorize the expenditure of the money for the test server
computer. Gael Miller seconded the motion. The motion carried.
Dick Doane announced that in Pat’s 6 month absence
from Sun City, Linda Walke will be sending out the weekly newsletter for the Computer Club.
STANDING COMMITTEES
Recognition –
Gael Miller continues to research this
topic.
MS Partners Program & VISTA –
Peter Roll will work with Jim to schedule a variety
of program for the Monday meetings on different aspects of VISTA. More copies of the books on
VISTA will be ordered and made available.
Social –
For the April 30 Cyber Social in the Ballroom, Don
Snapp will have a 20 minute presentation. Since there will be no caterers, members will be
requested to volunteer to help with the set up and clean up.
SPECIAL COMMITTEES
Junior Camp –
The Camp will be held during two weeks: June
19-22 and June 26-29. Don Snapp is prepared to order the gift to be given to each camper.
Peter Roll suggested that a committee may be formed for the Camp in the
next month.
UNFINISHED BUSINESS
New Amenities Study – 3/16/07 –
Dick Doane reported a favorable attitude toward the
Computer Club by those working on the CA New Amenities Study. Gary Newman noted that the
Computer Club was the largest at this Sun City. He thought it logical to expand adjacent to
our current rooms. The Art Studio will move to new facilities, but these changes are not
expected to be available until the end of 2009.
NEW BUSINESS
A
CA Board Candidate has requested to speak to the
Monday Club Meeting. The Board agreed to affirm the SCTX Computer Club’s policy of focusing
the time, resources and talents of the members exclusively on Computer related endeavors.
With this as the Computer Club’s mission, we will not provide a forum for topics outside those
parameters nor can we endorse or promote unrelated subjects.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
A Georgetown computer business requested that they be
added to our “preferred list”. We do not indorse any business as a Club.
Members are reminded that Mentors do not represent
the Computer Club but go to a resident’s house as an invited individual. Mentors are not paid
for their time or knowledge. Recommendations they give are their own personal opinion, if the
scope of the work is beyond their ability.
Gael Miller reported on the review of our Inventory
for the Reserve Fund by the Finance Committee. He suggested a few minor revisions for them to
consider. The deadline for our Club to submit a budget to the Non-Sports Committee is August
31, 2007 for next year.
The next Executive Board Meeting will be 9:00 A.M.
Thursday, May 3, 2007 at the Sun City CyberCenter Meeting Room.
The meeting was adjourned at 11:22 A.M.
Linda
Walke
Secretary
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