Washington Area Commodore User Group Minutes of the Board of Directors Meeting 29 January 2000 Board Meeting Attendance - Lance Cutlar, Jorn (Lance) Dakin, J.B. Davies, Geof Goodrum, Bob Mason, Kathy Perrin, Lu Spriggs, Jim Spurlock, and Mike ten Kate Minutes - Minutes from the December meeting were read and amended as follows. "December 10" was changed to "December 18" and "Geof Goodwin" was changed to "Geof Goodrum." The minutes were accepted as amended. Comments on General Meeting - Club elections went (relatively) smoothly. Jorn Dakin, Bob Mason, Lu Spriggs, and Mike ten Kate were elected as board officers. We also had a very good presentations on WinTV by Geof Goodrum and cable modem service by Lance Cutlar. We also had a wonderful "new user" Q&A session led by Lance with contributions from Bob and Geof. Attendance at General Meeting/Club Membership - Total attendance came to 29. Club membership currently stands at 40. Treasurer's Report/Other Financial Business - The January report was distributed and accepted without amendment. Geof gave Jorn the receipts from several club member renewals. Bob gave Jorn $57 from the sale of 18 PC disk sets and one Linux CD. The board agreed to purchase 25 shareware disks being offered by the APCUG for $1.44 apiece. Cursor Production/Software Reviews/Web Site News - The deadline for article submission for the February Cursor has already passed since the newsletter must be out in time for our February 12th meeting. Geof noted that there are still some minor "production issues" involving the Cursor. For example, there was still a title overrun on the masthead. This particular problem, however, should be solved with the new Cursor masthead developed by Bob which features a white on black background center, updated WAC and APCUG logos, and a nifty "Next Meeting" notification box. We discussed the option of using color on the first page of the Cursor. Bob agreed that we need to revisit this idea at a future board meeting. Mike asked for an update on outstanding software evaluations. The list is as follows: Quicken 2000 (assigned to Lance, received software at November meeting/review due by February Cursor [Overdue]) Partition Magic 5.0 (assigned to Bob, received software at December meeting/review due by March Cursor) Corel Draw 8 (assigned to Bob, not time sensitive) Corel Print House (assigned to Kathy, received software at December meeting/review due by March Cursor) Microsoft Photo Draw (assigned to Lance, received at January meeting/review due by April Cursor) Mike reiterated that he will handle the job of mailing copies of the Cursor with completed reviews to vendors. Geof noted that he plans to have WAC's web site moved to its new APCUG address by February 1. He will also handle the redirect from our old TIAC site. Geof said he is toying with the idea of establishing color coded web pages by computing platform-one page for Linux, another for the Amiga, another for the Palm platform, etc. These pages could then be linked to related web rings. This would serve many purposes including "back dooring" people to our web site and introducing them to WAC. In a related matter, Bob said he would establish WAC's new email account. General Discussion - The first order of business was to agree on officer positions for the newly elected board. Bob agreed to be club President, Lu will be our Vice-President, Jorn will be Treasurer, and Mike will serve as club Secretary. It was agreed that Lu would keep his "secondary" title of "Internet Support" leader. Mike will retain his secondary titles of "Newsletter Reviews Editor" and "Vendor Contact" point for the club. Lance, Geof, Kathy Perrin, and Jim Spurlock agreed to serve on the board as members-at-large. Geof agreed to head up a new Linux SIG. Kathy will retain her function of serving as the club's newsletter editor. We will check with Bill Walsh to see if he wishes to be a member-at-large. We will continue to list Bill under "Meeting Setup" in the Cursor. Geof noted that he will give Bob the username and password to the APCUG member database. Bob agreed to update the database to show the latest officer assignments for the club and make related changes to our email and web address as necessary. Bob said that he will look into whether local merchants will accept our new WAC club cards for discount purposes. Mike confirmed that he did mail in the Virginia Corporation Report. Bob, Geof, Kathy, and Mike divided up the 1999 non-renewals list and agreed to make follow-up phone calls to urge prior members to renew. Future Meetings - The February meeting will involve our annual review of tax software. Alex Goodale will demo TaxCut. Bob Mason will demo TaxAct. Mike said he will demo Microsoft's new TaxSaver program if he decides to go with TaxSaver this year and if he purchases it before the next meeting. The March meeting will feature "computer graphics" as the theme and we expect a representative from BladePro to demonstrate a plug-in product for Adobe's Photoshop. Mike will ask the BladePro representative if he would be willing to give an overview of Photoshop as part of his presentation. Bob Mason will demo CorelDraw8 and Geof will demo the open source product GIMP. Meeting adjourned