[Imc] Steering Mtg. Notes 11-11-01

[Paul Riismandel]

imc steering meeting notes 11/11/01

present: james j., ellen k., sascha m., russ r., 
mark e., mike l. (facilitating), aaron k., brian h., 
paul r. (recording), pauline b.

REPORTS

Space: moved magazine rack to go with new bookshelves, slightly
rearranged front seating area.  Sascha moved book shelf in
front of network closet.  Paul suggests putting it back in the
production room, Sascha says there are plans for a wrap around
shelf in there.  Need to see where Dave J. is on the minidisc
shelves.  Need a new window sign -- looking for someone to do it.

Librarians: they filled the bookshelves and cleaned up the 
holding area. Periodicals are being sorted into bins to be
moved out front shortly.

News: continuing good pitching-in on the radio show, though there is
a sense that more people helping would be good. Starting to discuss
regular features, such as segments on city counsels, permaculture, or
continuing coverage on issues like death penalty.

Print: in the editing and formatting stage for the Nov. issue, should 
come out this coming week.  Discussion about planning another fund
raiser.  It's mostly been subsisting on the last fundraiser.  Paul asks if
Print could consider putting in small ads for the IMC's functions
like sales, library and Ellen and Mike suggest calls for volunteers. 
Aaron says that it should be possible for next month's issue.  Paul suggests
that print reserve the space ahead of time, general consensus that
the ads can rotate amongst the groups so that there are different
ads each month.

Outreach: Moving meeting to alternating Weds. at 7:30, sharing the
same alternation with Space and Finance.  Next scheduled Wed. is
the evening before Thanksgiving, should meeting be moved?  Discussion
about changing meetings from every other week to 1st and 3rd Wed.
of month.  Decided to do this for Dec.

Discussing having an outreach project on Thurs or Fri nights -- a open
cabaret
style event with music, poetry and other entertainment to attract
people.  It could provide a venue for open mic, now tht it seems like
Cafe Paradiso will be ending their's.  Would need people to help Brian
and Darrin do this, such as make and serve coffee and snax. Anyone
who'd like to help should contact Darrin and the outreach group ASAP.
First one is set for Jan. 4th.

Brian posted notes from the IMC Gathering on our site and global IMC.

Mark asks if the planned visit from the News Director from WORT is 
outreach, general consensus that it is a news thing and there should
be collaboration with outreach and anyone else.

Tech:
Dave Y. and Brandon B. will work with Dan L. on finishing up our
fileserver, which will help take storage load off of Sergei and
Mother Jones.  Tech will host an open meeting to discuss desired
features for a new version of website software, hope that Clint P.
will help see the software into being.

McLeod now offers more DSL options than Ameritech/Soltec, from whom
we currently get DSL.  McLeod is cheaper and offers more bandwidth.
May change providers when our contract is up next year, with an eye
towards hosting the IMC webserver at the IMC, and maybe adding 
streaming media and other more bandwidth intensive apps.

A local group is working on a wireless Internet free-net, which may
use the IMC as an access point.  Hard core tests start next year.  People
interested in wireless can join cu-wireless at groogroo.com, meeting is sunday
1:30 at
Sascha's house.

Mark says he's having trouble burning CDs on Mother Jones. 
Brian figured out the problem--the Nero burning software requires 
you to be an Administrator.  Brian will install
Easy CD Creator. Paul will install a fan in Mother Jones'
case to keep it from freezing.

Finance:
We recieved $500 from Global to help with costs associated with 
the Regional Conference -- money came from the Glacer grant. 
Still need help with calling people to remind them of their
payments -- accounts receivable right now is approaching $5000.  
Two projects are asking to be fiscally sponsored by us. 
 We just deposited about $2500.  Now is an opportune time to be
looking for grants -- we have generated a huge reputation nationally
and internationally as a place to watch.  Grantmakers are asking
around to know if we are going to be applying for grants.  There are
lots of opportunities for big money, we only lack the people to write
the grants.

Related to Grants and Library -- at the University library sale Ellen
picked up the 1999 Grant Support Register.  A big multi-hundred $$ 
reference book (we got it for $3) of who gives grants, contact info and
such.  It's two years old, but still mostly up to date.

OLD BUSINESS

School of Americas:
About 15 people are going, including several IMCistas.  Non-IMC folks
are interested in reporting as well.  Danielle is one of the main IMC
people going.  Planning for reporting back is underway.  The group is
leaving this Friday.

Staffing: 
Staffing has had some changes, and there are some holes.  Sascha asks
that we specifically list open times.

WORT visit:
Al Kagan did make contact with the news director at WORT at it looks
like he is willing to come in late Jan. to give a talk. It would be both
for the newsgroup to learn some skills at local news gathering, as well
as a draw to the whole community to get interested in local news gathering
and the IMC.

NEW BUSINESS

e-mail lists:
Mike notes that the IMC list got added to the IDF list, they added a bunch
of lists, us included.  Not sure why, but it's bad nettiquette.  It's been
undone.

Paul brings up the issue of search engines, discussion on Global. Because
all of the IMC's mailing lists are archived on web pages, they are searched
and indexed by search engines like Google and Yahoo.  Messages posted to the
lists can come up from a web search. There has been some discussion about
this on IMC Global Tech, trying to decide whether or not
to make them unsearchable by adding a text file (robots.txt) that instructs
compliant search engines not to index a site.  

Discussion about whether we should ask search engines not to archive or 
make it explicitly known to all IMC e-mail list users that their posts are
archived and can be accessible to web searches.

Mark notes that early on there was some concern about news stories we're
working on being accessible to the news-gazette. Mike wonders if we want to
make  it easier for people who might be outto make our lives difficult to
find out info on us. Sascha points out that it's a byproduct of openness --
the fact that we don't hide things is an asset, although it means that
communications are transparent.

Sascha suggests sending out an e-mail reminding everyone that we do have
open lists and having it appended to the monthly e-mail that gets posted
to all the lists.

Consensus on sending out notice and seeing where things go.


Adjourned at 1:01 pm.