Open to the public, San Francisco, 12:00 PM Pacific Time, March 2, 2002
Please email board@onlinepolicy.org for specific location if you wish to attend.
Board Meeting Action Item Summary
Meetings listed at the top, followed by new action items from this meeting, then
followup on action items from prior meetings.
Action Item: Roger, Will, and Graham (by phone?) to attend Terms of Service meeting at 7:00pm on Monday, March 11.
Action Item: David W., Biella, and Will to attend meeting to plan LAN Party event over dinner at 8:00pm on Monday, March 18.
Action Item: Biella and Will to meet about which projects
to push for the interns at 4:00pmn on Tuesday, March 5, then schedule interviews.
Action Item: Will to check on Josh's contribution to CCCP.
Action Item: Will to add forms.shtml page to site.
Action Item: Will to get Acrobat so he can print
out receipts to PDF files and email them.
Action Item: Roger to draft fundraising appeal targeted
at QueerNet community.
Action Item: Roger to let forum email list know about
Majordomo2 API.
Action Item: CCCP R&D Director to create
failover strategy and implement it.
Action Item: Roger to set up OPG email address for Biella after
Biella emails forwarding email address to him.
Action Item: Biella to attend GraceNet meeting to
recruit women interns and volunteers for OPG.
Action Item: David W. to follow up with Paul about sending out an OPG fundraising appeal to the Flock list and other lists he may suggest.
Action Item: Biella to follow up with Praveen if there are lists where he may be able to send out a fundraising appeal.
Action Item: Roger to investigate Verio move and let Will
know how to gain secure access to physical site if OPG
continues colocating there.
Action Item: Roger to investigate Verio move and let David W.
know about conditions of physical site if OPG
continues colocating there so that CCCP can possibly
locate additional equipment there.
Action Item: Roger to set up secondary domains for all OPG registered domains which is a simple
solution that would list EveryDNS domains as the authoritative
name servers of the
OPG domains as needed instead of having queernet domain names
listed.
Action Item: Roger to work with volunteer David Scott to develop
easy-to-use front-end interfaces for OPG/QueerNet email list administration.
Action Item: Roger to write alert explaining why people should leave Yahoo and Topica based on list-owner postings, while warning that we have user interface concerns
about having lots of potential clients move over to OPG/QueerNet
if they expect a fully developed online community forum capability
at this time.
Action Item: Roger to do alert explaining AOL's hidden blocking of email from OPG/QN.
Board Meeting Agenda
1. Welcome
2. Approve Agenda
3. Board Responsibilities
4. Review Action Items
5. Financial Report
- Status
- Forecast
- Donor thank you notes
- 990 and 199 Filing
- Bank and brokerage account
- Fundraising strategy brainstorm
- Board fundraising commitments
6. Online Services
- Services: Email list hosting, Website hosting, Domain registrations, Colocation services
- Task Manager
- Online Community Forum
- Upgrades
- Downtime procedure
7. Research
- Overall: need to recruit volunteers/interns and prioritize projects
- OSPA
- School & Library
- Online oddities & atrocities museum
8. Outreach
- Website status
- Logo design, website design, business cards, letterhead, brochure, reply card
9. Action
- Action alert updates
- Legislative updates
10. Network
- Web and email list hosting excellent way to expand networking
- Networking brainstorm
- Application to NCAC
11. Media
- Media coverage
12. Office Space
- EFF
- LGBT Community Center
13. California Community Colocation Project Update
- Update by David Weekly
- Financial implications
- Policy implications
- Written agreement
- Other discussion
14. Human Resources
- Board, advisory board, and committee recruitment
- Volunteer recruitment (regular weekly project meetings)
- Intern recruitment
15. Vacation and travel schedules
16. Public Comment Period
17. Next meeting(s):
- 12 noon, Saturday, June 1, 2002
- 12 noon, Saturday, September 7, 2002
- 12 noon, Saturday, December 7, 2002
- 12 noon, Saturday, March 1, 2003
-end-
Board Meeting Minutes
Attending:
* Biella Coleman (Director)
* Will Doherty (Director and Executive Director)
* David Gudelunas (initial part of meeting)
* Roger Klorese (Director and Secretary)
* David Scott (interesting member of the public and volunteer)
* David Weekly (CCCP Director)
1. Welcome
2. Approve Agenda
Approved unanimously as amended.
3. Board Responsibilities
David Gudelunas announced he wants to leave the Board
and go to the Academic Advisory Board. Will expressed
thanks to David for his contributions and his
happiness that David will still remain on the
Academic Advisory Board. Roger expressed a concern
that he feels that a lot of what OPG is doing has
moved to the access areas, rather than the research areas.
The entire board expressed thanks to David.
Will clarified role of Legal Board members to do
oversight, legal, and fundraising functions. He
reminded the Board of the OPG Advisory Boards, such
as the Academic, Corporate, and Nonprofit Advisory
Boards. Roger stressed that the scope of major-level
interests should be reflected on the Board.
4. Review Action Items
From previous meeting:
Action Item: Roger will change billing for Verio and Earthlink accounts to Online Policy Group. [Will changed Verio billing
to OPG and Roger will switch Earthlink billing over to OPG.]
Action Item: Will to check if we can receive checks under the names QueerNet and CCCP at the bank and also through fictitious business names with the state. [Will checked with Union Bank and they said
there would have to be separate accounts and it wouldn't make sense
unless there were 100+ transactions per month on the accounts.
The California Secretary of State said that both QueerNet and
CCCP are currently available as fictitious business names.]
Action Item: Paul volunteered to send out an OPG fundraising appeal to the Flock list, and will suggest some other lists. [David W.
will follow up with Paul.]
Action Item: Biella suggested she could ask Praveen if there are lists where he may be able to send out a fundraising appeal.
[Biella will follow up with Praveen.]
Action Item: Roger to add $500 to OpenSRS account at beginning of January. [Roger had Will do this directly with the OPG credit card.
In order to solve naming issue for Online Policy Group domain
registration requests, we can edit associated HTML pages... we
need a volunteer for this and we can automate the domain
registration process.]
Action Item: Biella to set up a joint CCCP and OPG project meeting on the Task Manager. [CCCP R&D Director will work with OPG Task
Manager team to come up with a Task Manager for both organizations.]
Action Item: Biella to add Roger and Paul to project-forum list.
[Done]
Action Item: David W. will contact David Ulevitch to
see if he can provide info about Scoop for the project and will
contact Thai Tran who worked at Yahoo about the project.
[David U. has been helping with the Online Community Forum
project.]
Action Item: Will to go to Verio to get handprint done so he can enter cage when needed. [Roger explained that Verio is closing
a bunch of data centers, including the center OPG's servers
are in, so OPG will have to move its servers three blocks
down the street from 3rd and Harrison to 3rd and Townshend
and hopefully keep the same rate. Roger will let Will
know how to get access to cage if the move happens
as anticipated.]
Action Item: Roger to set up domain name servers ns1.onlinepolicy.net and ns2.onlinepolicy.net. [Roger working on two issues related to
this: What happens with host records if we try to give them the
same addresses? Does the whois database get confused? Roger will
set up secondary domains for all OPG registered domains which is
a simple
solution that would list EveryDNS domains as the authoritative
name servers of the
OPG domains as needed. We need a volunteer to work on domain
name registration interface like David Scott who volunteered
while attending
this board meeting.]
Action Item: Roger to construct home page for groups.onlinepolicy.net, the top-level serving Online Policy Group hosted lists. [Roger has constructed the page and has to turn
it into a template and put a script around it... a volunteer
with Apache experience for this would be nice.]
Action Item: Roger to do alert explaining why people should leave Yahoo and Topica. [Roger will cull list-owner postings together
to write this alert, although we have user interface concerns
about having lots of people move over to OPG/QueerNet.]
Action Item: Roger to do alert explaining AOL's hidden blocking of email from OPG/QN. [Roger sent Will a draft of this awhile ago
and will turn it into a more final document.]
Action Item: Will to check if in-kind equipment donations will negatively impact OPG's nonprofit status. [Will said that there
are no problems with equipment donations as far as he can tell.]
Action Item: Will to check what financial incentive corporations have to make cash or equipment donations to nonprofit organizations, or if it simply done because it is a way to help support the community and get good PR. [Will found out from California Franchise Tax Board
mentions that corporations can deduct up to 10% of contributions under
federal tax regulations and up to 5% of contributions under
federal tax regulations.]
Action Item: Will to update TOS based on Special Board Meeting
discussion and distribute to participants in anticipation
of further work on the policies. [Will handed out copy of draft
TOS and other companies' TOS including CCCP's. He mentioned
that OPG still legal liability for offering services without
having a TOS in place. Meeting 7:00pm on Monday, March 11.]
5. Financial Report
- Status
Action Item: Will to check on Josh's contribution to CCCP.
Action Item: Will to add forms.shtml page to site.
- Forecast
Will asked David W. if he thinks that CCCP folks will
donate enough to cover the services CCCP offers. David
W. answered that within about 3 months, he shouldn't
have to cover expenses for the project because others
will be donating enough to cover expenses.
- Donor thank you notes
Action Item: Will to get Acrobat so he can print
out receipts to PDF files and email them.
- 990 and 199 Filing
Have not been filed for the last fiscal year.
Will contacted organization that donates accounting
services to nonprofit organizations to get help.
- Bank and brokerage account
- Fundraising strategy brainstorm
Roger said we should do QueerNet-specific fundraising
and also have a more repetitive approach to ensure
donations. Will said we should do at least two major
fundraising appeals per year: one prior to end of
calendar year and the other when people are starting
to receive tax refunds.
Action Item: Roger to draft fundraising appeal targeted
at QueerNet community.
Will mentioned that Bears of
Francisco should provide a donation soon since OPG/QueerNet
is a beneficiary of their major annual event which happened
in February.
Will reported that EFF is trying out a grants agency
that costs $900 per year and that gets the rest of their
pay as a cut of grants they bring in. He suggested a wait-and-see
approach to see if they work well for EFF before OPG makes
the expenditure.
David suggested having a LAN Party with game servers
and you can have tournaments and file sharing while
charging people to get in. Much discussion ensued
about promoting the event, insurance, age requirements,
and the Board expressed general enthusiasm for the event.
Meeting to discuss the event over dinner at 8:00pm on
Monday, March 18.
- Board fundraising commitments
Action Item: Biella to ask for funds and volunteers at Linux User
Groups.
6. Online Services
- Services: Email list hosting, Website hosting, Domain registrations, Colocation services
Roger pointed out that underlying
services are available to make OPG services competitive
with other online service providers. Roger mentioned
we are getting 3-5 email list requests per week and
that we have a bit of a backlog of website hosting requests.
OPG has registered more than 50 domains.
David W. mentioned that it would be great for OPG's
domain registration services to work cooperatively
with EveryDNS so that people could get domains and
that
The ensim software donated to CCCP could permit
OPG/QueerNet/CCCP to set up an integrated chain
of services: DNS registration (OPG), DNS services
(EveryDNS.net), Virtual hosting for websites,
email and email lists (CCCP/OPG), Colocation
(CCCP), Monitoring (no organization yet), and Front End (CalTEG).
Discussed online communities concept (which would include
polls, file sharing, databases, email lists,
message boards, pictures, and calendar). Some discussion
of whether it makes sense to use proprietary software
like ensim if goal is to make CCCP solution plug-and-play
for other organizations who may not receive donations of ensim software.
Action Item: need a volunteer to work on easy-to-use front-end
interface for end users of OPG services.
Action Item: Roger to let forum email list know about
Majordomo2 API.
Action Item: Roger to investigate Verio situation
and then figure out with David W. whether OPG should
use it for CCCP activities.
- Task Manager
Narrowed down to a few possibilities with RT and
Bugzilla the most likely ones.
Design goal is for front-end services to feed
task requests automatically into task manager.
CCCP R&D Manager to work with OPG Task Manager
team to find a solution that works throughout OPG
and its projects.
- Online Community Forum
Will mentioned that Online Community Forum is
narrowed down to three possible platforms and
is prototyping. Volunteers needed.
- Upgrades
Majordomo2 upgrade is complete.
Roger feels that remaining BSD machines may have
to shift over to Linux due to upgrade cost of BSD.
- Downtime procedure
Will asked David W. and Roger to discuss how to
make sure that problems such as power outages
will impact OPG/QueerNet/CCCP services as
minimally as possible.
Cross-site hot failover (a few seconds of downtime)
is difficult because both boxes have to pretend
to have the same IP addresses if they are in two
different facilities. Same-site hot failover would
protect against server downtime, such as from
hardware failure, operator errors, or hacking
into the system. RAID disks could keep continuous
file synchronization. Cross-site cold failover has a
delay problem related to caching of DNS and
complexity of mirroring technique (could use rsync
for websites for example). BackupMX to protect
email that's in transit.
Action Item: CCCP R&D Director to create
failover strategy and implement it.
7. Research
- Overall: need to recruit volunteers/interns and prioritize projects
Biella went to a summer internship fair at Cal Berkeley
and got lots of potential interns.
Action Item: Biella and Will to meet about which projects
to push for the interns at 4:00pmn on Tuesday, March 5, then schedule interviews.
- OSPA
- School & Library
- Online oddities & atrocities museum
8. Outreach
- Website status
New look website is up and running. Form-based site updates
is in beta testing.
- Logo design, website design, business cards, letterhead, brochure, reply card
Everything but the reply card is in place.
Action Item: Roger to set up OPG email address for Biella after
Biella emails forwarding email address to him.
9. Action
- Action alert updates
We have been lax on action alerts.
- Legislative updates
10. Network
- Web and email list hosting excellent way to expand networking
- Networking brainstorm (Working Assets, ...)
- Application to NCAC
11. Media
- Media coverage
Just on CCCP and LGBT Community Center.
12. Office Space
- EFF
- LGBT Community Center
Moved first machine into the office.
13. California Community Colocation Project Update
- Update by David Weekly
Mentioned that 1 - 1.5 years from now CCCP would
likely split off into separate nonprofit organization.
Going well. Donation from ensim. Other hardware
donated. Purchased a computer for $800. The computers
will be up and running for virtual services starting
sometime in the next week or two.
Problem with original IP block duplication resolved.
box[1-10].communitycolo.net
Internal CCCP documents at communitycolo.net/internal
Mailing list has been active. Discussion about
organization. Set up directorships to divide up
responsibilities for running the facility including
Director of Network Operations, Director of Marketing (website
and PR), Director of Network Security (protect from hackers
within and outside the network), Director of R&D, Director
of Virtual Hosting, and Director of Finance. At least one
candidate for each position with nominations ending last week
and campaign period ending tonight. Voting period through
next Saturday so the directors will be in place next week
to assist David W. with the CCCP project.
Came up with network map earlier in the meeting that
lists the following:
- Fremont: CCCP at HE.net, 1xFast (DNS, monitoring), 128kbps@95%, over $1000/yr, cap@10mbps
- Fremont: CalTEG at HE.net, 512kbps, empty 2U, over $600mbps, Free!
- Palo Alto: CCCP at Via.net, 2xFast, 1xNetra, 1xBig,
128kbps@95%, over $200/mbps, cap @100mbps, $250/mo, 21U
- San Francisco: QueerNet at Verio, 2xBSD (DNS, shell),
1x Dell (VM1 for POP/IMAP, VM2 for Groups), 10mbps shared,
500kbps average, $400/mo., 42U (may change with move in
three weeks)
- San Francisco: QueerNet at SF LGBT Community Center: shared T1
- (Planned) San Francisco: $400/mo, 42U, $75/mbps with Cogent
or $240/mbps with Genuity
- (Planned) Seattle?
14. Human Resources
- Board, advisory board, and committee recruitment
David W. will like to have OPG board member from CCCP.
- Volunteer recruitment (regular weekly project meetings)
- Intern recruitment
Biella recruited at Cal Berkeley summer intern fair and
got lots of potential intern candidates for the summer.
Action Item: Biella to attend GraceNet meeting to
recruit women interns and volunteers for OPG.
15. Vacation and travel schedules
16. Public Comment Period
17. Next meeting(s):
- 12 noon, Saturday, June 1, 2002
- 12 noon, Saturday, September 7, 2002
- 12 noon, Saturday, December 7, 2002
- 12 noon, Saturday, March 1, 2003
-end-
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