Council 2006 04

In Attendance

Tall Wes, Seamus (board), Laurel (board), Matteo, Marie (board), Liane (staff), Debi, Richard (staff), Oso (staff), Wren (board), Joe B, Kerm, Sean, Vagrant (temp staff), Jeff R, Pete F (a-scribin), Rick (staff), Scott 28313, Jeff S, Steve (staff), Matthew H, Dave H (staff), Rev Phil (facillin), Stacey, Bill S., Charlie, Mark B., Sophia

Old Commitments

• Mark will announce a web site he's aware of about board nominations.

(correction: non-profit information) CARRYOVER

• If the Board has additional comments on what Board member qualities are desired, they will post to the Council list. (see reports, coming up)
• All will think about possible Board nominees, and refer them to New Director Agreement. CO
• Pete and Richard will post something to the Council list about Receiving position. DONE
• Bobby and Pete will discuss a coupon (Lifestyles NW) for senior discount. DROP
• Marie & Phil will create a video that can go on the web, etc. (by March 3rd Thurs) CARRYOVER (will be done by April 20) DONE - will be shown tomorrow night. Will be posted on web once it's ready.
• Martin, Wren, Clout, Wes will convene to do needs assessment for blind linux distro. Martin will send email to schedule a meeting DROP (until after martin comes back) Martin--NEW COMMITMENT to convene a group.
• everybody give feedback on Media Kit DO IT! DONE! DO MORE IF YOU LIKE!
• recycling and action committees will develop a plan to make sure tools are safe ONGOING EFFORTS. (Drop from commitment list.)

Reports

REQUEST FOR VOLUNTEER PROGRAM REPORT NEXT MONTH

board report

• Seamus: How's the recycling committee-based approach going?
• Liane and Oso: The team approach is working well. There have been short term issues, but the committee is adjusting; that has been worked out. Space usage is way better in recycling.
• Jeff: Income is great, but every time he's been back there it's been a bloody mess. Is there a plan to deal with that, or is it bad timing on my part...?
• Oso: That's the nature of recycling. There will always be some bottlenecks. However it's way better than how it was 3 months ago.
• Vagrant: Staff coverage has not been solid. Big backups, a willing volunteer, and nobody to train them. Not good.
• Liane: the schedule has some gaps.
• Matthew: backlog of systems to be recycled happened recently. Whats the plan.
• Oso: This was basically a one-time issue to get to a sustainable level.
• Jeff S: let's send concerns to Recycling committee to be addressed in the future. recycling@freegeek.org
• Jeff R: There's a fluid nature to Recycling, seeing it at any given moment does not necessarily give an accurate view of how it is. Also, we should structurally make sure there are core volunteers to cover when there is a hole in the staff sched.
• Liane: we need more recycling volunteers

Space Usage

Jeff S. presents

Space Usage was brought up 6-8 months ago. We agreed we should figure out how to manage space. The minutes from a meeting were posted, but the issue has been dropped. A reminder to Council to readdress this issue.

Jeff, Matteo, Steve S, Rick, Oso, Sophia, Stacey, Mark are interested, and will figure out a way to meet amongst themselves.

Uganda Presentation

projector thingy aint working. Martin reports low-tech and verbally!

Martin went to Uganda.

We sent 80 diskless terminals, etc, to Gulu University. and they were really happy to get them. Nearly all hard drives broke in transit, lots of CDs too. This was organized by Beaverton Rotary Club, funded by International Book Club (or some such.) There was some stuff we should have sent, some we didn't think of (spare parts), some we didn't have (screwdrivers, tools.) UPSs would have been really good. More networking hardware (especially long-distance, like directional wifi or fiber optic.) They already had 3 labs with Pentium IV computers just for internet access...they didn't realize they had way more than they needed in some areas. Local networking was high quality. It was all running Windows, much licensing questionable.

New Commitments

• REQUEST FOR VOLUNTEER PROGRAM REPORT NEXT MONTH