WPLUGBoard/Meeting-20120807

Venue Info

Meeting to be held at The Coffee Tree Roasters at 5524 Walnut Street in Shadyside, Pittsburgh, PA 15232. 6:00pm, Tuesday, August 7, 2012.

Agenda

• Approve minutes of July 3 board meeting
• List your item here
• List your item here
• List your item here

Minutes

DRAFT

The regular meeting of the Board of Directors of the Western Pennsylvania Linux Users Group was held on Tuesday, August 7, 2012, at 6:19 PM, at Coffee Tree Roasters in Shadyside. The regular presiding officer was in the Chair and the Secretary was present. The minutes of the July 3, 2012 meeting were approved as read.

The Chair reported that the WPLUG summer picnic will be soon, and there will have to be an announcement made. Also, there will have to be some talk about what to do for Software Freedom Day. Together, the board will have to talk about it on the wplug-board mailing list and decide on a location for it quite soon.

The Vice Chair has nothing to report.

The Secretary reported that there is currently 18 members.

The Treasurer reported that the account balance as of the last bank statement (7/31/2012) was $919.65. There are no pending bank transactions not reflected in the statement. The petty cash on hand is $67.65. The total funds available is $987.30. The Treasurer stated he needs an updated membership list from the Secretary in order to make future projections accurate.

The Treasurer would also like to discuss the Linode renewal under New Business. Additionally, there needs to be discussion about payment to Patty Doody, as well as payment to the Chair for past expenses that need reimbursed. Lastly, the Chair would like to talk about what will be used to fund the summer picnic.

The Internet Committee reports that there is a goal to have a member information portal put into place. There is some old code lying around, but it is a MediaWiki plugin, which may or may not be useful. It is also not certain that the code actually works. Regardless, this should still be pursued. With respect to online payments, Stripe <https://stripe.com/> seems like it will be the best option. It is not permanently bound to a single person, unlike Square, which is great. They also have an API that is easy to interface with, and they even let you test your setup in a "playground" of sorts before actual deployment, which is quite convenient. The cost is 2.3% plus 30 cents per transaction, which is competitive. They handle all of the private credit card information, and WPLUG just has to worry about storing basic contact information like name and address, as well as renewal date. All code to trigger renewals must be done on the WPLUG side, but that shouldn't be too difficult to code.

MOTION: The Chair proposes further research be done into Stripe, and then people can be found to write the code that is needed; seconded and passed. This should all get started at least by the end of 2012, and the new board can see this through. This will need to be brought before membership at the September meeting, at the very least to bring it to their attention and hear their input.

The Program Committee reports that Software Freedom Day is coming up, and is still looking for suggestion about location and execution. Thus far, other local groups have not been contacted about the possibility of sharing a venue. Perhaps there should be some discussion with PACC, CPUG, or Hack Pittsburgh with respect to collaboration and venue possibilities. That all said, the Pittsburgh Public Market utilized last year does have a lot of foot traffic, even if the crowd isn't totally technologically-focused.

The WPLUG summer picnic is also coming up, so need to make sure enough funds are allocated for that. Fifty dollars will likely be a good set budget, especially relying upon people bringing other food/supplies due to the potluck style. Last year there were 10-12 attendees, so the 50 dollars should be sufficient. A shopping list of what should be bought with the 50 dollars and by whom will be discussed outside of this meeting. The Events Committee will determine this shopping list, and people will need to be delegated to buy different items, such as food, plates, eating utensils, etc.

MOTION to allocate 50 dollars to be used for the summer picnic; seconded and passed.

The Investigating Committee has nothing to report.

The Wilkins School Networking Committee has nothing to report.

The Newsletter Committee has nothing to report.

The Public Relations Committee has nothing to report.

There are no Special Orders.

There is no Unfinished Business to discuss.

With respect to New Business, Patty Doody needs to be paid for WPLUG's room usage. The chair proposes that a check be written to her and either have it be mailed or hand-delivered.

MOTION to pay Patty Doody 60 dollars for WPLUG's room usage; seconded and passed.

Also, a decision still needs to be made about whether to renew Linode for one year or two years. After some discussion, it seems that the best idea will be to renew for a year, and then the new board can decide next year if they want to renew for one year or two. For now it makes more financial sense to do one year, and then hopefully once the online membership system is put into place, more paid memberships will result in more funds that can be used for hosting.

MOTION to renew Linode for one year; seconded and passed.

The Treasurer will likely renew with Linode via his credit card, and then get reimbursed. It would be nice to use the WPLUG debit card, but currently that would require a bank visit that may be hard to make happen for both the Chair and the Treasurer during normal banking hours.

The meeting adjourned at 7:10 PM.

Joseph Prostko
Secretary, Western Pennsylvania Linux Users Group

DRAFT