WPLUGBoard/Meeting-20130521

This meeting was held on IRC. A complete transcript can be found here: http://www.wplug.org/w/images/6/60/Wplug_meeting_5-21-13.txt

MEETING START

The meeting was called to order at 7:37 p.m. All four members of the WPLUG Board of Directors were present: Chair Pat Barron, Vice Chair/Secretary Justin Smith, Treasurer Terry Golightly, and Director-at-Large Joe Prostko.

READING OF THE PREVIOUS MINUTES

Terry asked to review the minutes from the previous board meeting since he was absent. Justin gave a brief summary:

-We mainly focused on the Raspberry Pi workshop - what we were doing, etc. -Touched on some of the things involved with 5-18-2013 general user meeting at Carnegie Library Brookline, like the networking there. -And we finished up by ratifying Stripe as our official method of online payments. We felt that Stripe's terms and conditions were acceptable. There is a risk that they could ask us to perform some sort of security audit, but we didn't think that was a likely scenario.

A brief discussion followed regarding Stripe's terms and conditions and the merit of Bitcoin as a method of accepted donations.

REPORT OF OFFICERS

Chair Pat had nothing to report.

Vice Chair/Secretary Justin reported an incidental decision that may have implications for WPLUG: he has decided to pursue a career in system administration and is going to speak with Martin of SNAPGH. Justin is willing to ask if SNAPGH would be willing to collaborate with WPLUG.

Treasurer Terry reported a revised balance since last meeting. WPLUG now possesses $699.81 + $20.00 in new membership fees.

Director-at-Large Joe had nothing to report.

NEW BUSINESS

Pat spoke with the Executive VP of PACC, the Pittsburgh Area Computer Club, over the weekend. Like WPLUG, it is a very old technology organization that has lost members over the years and is interested in staging a comeback. To that end, PACC invited WPLUG to pass along an event invitation to the main WPLUG mailing list. The board agreed that this is a reasonable course of action. Pat (already a PACC member), Justin, and Terry will try to attend future PACC meetings.

Justin noted that PACC's Web site, like WPLUG's wiki, looks outdated, and suggested that we pool resources to produce a new Web site for each organization. Pat felt that Pavel, the PACC webmaster, would be receptive to this.

Justin reported that Google recently rolled all of its communication services into a new, unified service called Hangouts. In the process, it intentionally broke compatibility with XMPP, an open communication protocol, in effect making Hangouts 100% closed and proprietary. Google won't even release an API for Google+, the social media network integrated with Hangouts. Based on that, as chair of the Marketing & Communications Committee, he proposed that WPLUG immediately discontinue using Google services and make Twitter the sole component of its social media portfolio. The board unanimously agreed.

Justin brought up WPLUG member Vance Kochenderfer's idea to host a DDNS (dynamic DNS) service for WPLUG members. Each member would be assigned a personal address at [name].member.wplug.org, and settings could be adjusted via a Web interface. The board unanimously supported Vance's idea. It will be referred to the Internet Committee on the assumption that Vance is contributing personal involvement to this project.

Justin briefly returned to his comments in the report of officers regarding SNAPGH. He will ask Martin in a general sense if SNAPGH would be interested in working with WPLUG.

MEETING END

The meeting was adjourned at 21:16.