Vancouver Community Network
Board Meeting Minutes -  May 3, 2001

Minutes of the Regular Meeting of the Vancouver Community Network, Board of Directors, held 
on Thursday, May 3, 2001 at 6:30 P.M. in the Boardroom, 411 Dunsmuir Street, Vancouver, 
BC.

Present: Veronica Aimone, Jason Currell, Alison Curtis, Amali De Silva, Mary Hammond, Jonn 
Olldym, Alexandra Samuel, Jim Sayre, Sharlene Smith, Greg Sturk

Staff: Steven Chan, Peter Royce

Absent: Lyle Gardiner, Michael Gurstein, Sujay Nazareth

Chair: Alison Curtis 	Secretary: Greg Sturk


1. Adoption of the Agenda, with time limits and some member objections to the look of the 
timer, M/S/C.

2. Acceptance of minutes of March 26, 2001, with amendments, M/S/C.

2. Co-ordinator's Report - Peter will bring to the Board next month, a review of office needs and 
a plan to decentralize financial reporting. Rupinder has left and has temporarily been replaced 
by Terri, which means some reorganizing in the office.
We are looking at having library users use their library card to validate email accounts with the 
VCN. Steven is working on a simple system to get people online.

4. Financial Report Ð Amali presented the Financial Report. She noted that the current 
accounting system shows a negative revenue. Our present accounting system is a combination 
of the cash and accural systems. Because the VCN has grown, a cash system is no longer 
effective whereas an accural accounting system will give an appropriate matching of revenue 
and expenses for the month. What is needed is more work on a budget which will put in place 
the process to break down our revenues and expenses. There will need to be quite a few more 
discussions in order to form the budget. Once the budget is in line it will be possible to get 
good statements. Several Board members made comments of appreciation to Amali.
Motion to approve Financial Statements, M/S/C.

5. User Agreement update - A draft of the VCN User Agreement that will be posted online was 
given. Clarification was asked for user / member status and access to privileges. At present 
organizations are considered to be users with no real distinction, agreed that a more legal 
definition would be stated at the begining. General discussion was made on points of use and 
some ambiguous sections were removed. Agreed that an appeal process should be mentioned 
but the specific details are not needed in the agreement.

6. Web content guidelines -  General discussion was held on the need to clarify the oganizations 
and groups that the VCN will linking to, on the Web pages. Peter noted the need to consider 
our missions and goals when providing a "public space". Agreed that the guidelines for the 
VCN links would be: 1) Local not-for-profit, and where of wide public service 2) Local 
Groups, and where individuals maintain sites of social use 3) Local information sources 4) 
National and international sites that have a local interest.
Motion to formulate guidelines, in a hierarchial arrangement to encourage public space web 
content, M/S/C.

6. Board list spam - Suggested that there be separate lists for internal and external postings to 
reduce the amount of spam that each Board member has to read through.
Motion to create a Board list as an internel list with an alias to board@vcn.bc.ca to a monitor, 
M/S/C.

6. Any other business - Veronica is to send out particulars for the strategic planning session on 
May 12.

Meeting ajourned at 9:40.