VANCOUVER REGIONAL FREENET ASSOCIATION
                          BOARD OF DIRECTORS
                          MINUTES OF MEETINGS
                            April 18, 1995.
                       411 Dunsmuir Meeting Room

Present: Brian Campbell, Margaret Coates, George Lindholm, Eric Teachman,
         Eric Yung, Phil Lyons, Penny Goldsmith, Neil Guy, Claire Toynbee
         
Absent: Larry Kuehn, Stephen Gauer, Vic Vaivads, Tom Hansen, Sharon Zaluski

Guests: Howard Hunchak, Ross Penner

1.0 Agenda

Motion: (Margaret/George) That the agenda distributed be approved. PASSED.

2.0 Minutes of March 28th.

Motion: (Phil/Margaret) To accept the minutes of March 28h. PASSED

2.1 Phil's Resignation:

* introduction and brief biography of Ross Penner

Motion: (Margaret/George) To accept Phil Lyon's resignation from the Board
        of Directors of VRFA. PASSED.
Motion: (Margaret/Eric T.) To accept Ross Penner as the new Chair of
        Community Content. PASSED.

3.0 Policy Issues:

3.1 World Wide Web:

* a brief discussion, based on the distributed paper from last Board meeting.
* WWW was promoted by Neil as the most viable, long-term alternative and that
  we should look to moving over to this format.

Motion: (Neil/George) That we investigate ways of moving our information
        over to a Web-based system. PASSED.

3.2 Staff positions:

* This item will take place "in-camera" at the end of the Board meeting

4.0 Treasurer's Report:

* We have $205,000 in bonds, and $10,000 in cash on hand.  Also,
  we took in $1000 in cash this week.

5.0 Committee Reports:

5.1 System Design: Vic absent, no report

5.2 Fundraising: Ted absent, no report

* it was noted, that this being Ted's 3rd consecutive absence without
  explanation, that concerns were raised over the Fundraising Chair's position.

Motion: (Eric Y./Margaret) That Brian be authorized to ask Ted for his
        resignation as Chair of the Fundraising Committee. PASSED.

5.3 Public Relations: 

* the poster box and sign will be worked on this week
* May 4th - Harry's Cafe is the focus of our involvement in Mayworks.
  Penny is doing some workshops, and Larry is helping coordinate.
* Penny is also doing an article for Kinesis about the FreeNet.
* Eric to do some monitoring of newsgroups.

5.4 Community Content: report distributed

* Neil - concerns about brochures for conference at Ottawa
* meeting for IP liaisons next Tuesday, at 411 Dunsmuir, 7pm

5.5 Hardware/Software:

* The HDs were purchased
* SATAN - a security program, was installed and run through our system. In
  addition, some new software was installed to the FreeNet.

6.0 Public Access Liaison's Report: document on Public Access sites distributed

* Concerns about the location and publicity of Public Access sites.

Motion: (Margaret/Ross) To accept the working paper on Public Access sites.
        PASSED.

* next meeting of the PA Committee is next Tuesday (April 25th).

7.0 Vice-President's report: cover in the "in-camera" session at the end.

8.0 Membership Coordinator's report:

* we have 1,745 members, for a total of 5,269 users.
* the numbers of users that have applied, but are inactive are a priority.
* our renewal response has been about 10 or so out of 230 mailouts.
* discussion about the disappointing renewal response.
* suggest that Eric T. prepare a plan of action for next Board meeting
* options for online advertisements to go to the Operations Committee
  on Monday.
* suggested a possible user satisfaction survey may be included in future
  mailouts.

9.0 Volunteer Coordinator's Report: Sharon absent

* there will be a Volunteer orientation on May 27th.

10.0 Labour Liaison's Report: Larry absent, no report

11.0 User Training Coordinator's Report: Stephen absent, no report

12.0 User Support Coordinator's Report:

* next meeting is Monday the 24th at 6:30pm
* Valerie Westfall is updating the Help Desk material
* Help Desk menu - possible addition of a download function to get offline
  reader and help files?
* posting meetings to a broader audience was discussed.
* online support is being assigned to Gerry Laminsky
* Microcomputer support - approaching VCC instructors for help.

In-camera session then held to discuss staff positions and VP's report.

* personnel - we've hirde 1 UNIX system admin, Alex Bardos. He's to 
  start part-time next Monday, and fulltime the week after that.

Meeting was adjourned at 9:30pm.