Coordinator's report for March 2008

General News

A nice little start to the year and getting busier it would seem. It is great to see some more new faces about the place, you couldn't have come at a better time. :)

A couple of weeks ago, a community development worker from the Frankston Arts Centre dropped in to get 5 computers for a youth project he was running. It was great to find out that kids attending the program would pull the computers apart, rebuild them and then install Ubuntu.

We've given out the first of the computers for Asylum Seeker Resource Centre clients. So far we've only given out 5 computers, uptake has been quite slow.

The thin client network setup that has been operating at the Agg St Housing estate in Northcote is finally being put to rest. It has provided reliable services to residents for over three years. The biggest problem we experienced - spiders and cobwebs shorting out the power supply. Stand alone networked computers will be used instead. Unfortunately the site has dial up (slow when shared) but hopes to get broadband by the end of June. Many thanks to those folks who helped with the support and development of this network model and site.

The Cook Islands project is about to be prepared using the new distro, we'll get that ready over the coming weeks. Ps Kapao will come and do some training with us after Easter. We'll also start building with the new distro starting from this week (March 19th).

The database is coming along nicely big thanks to Jan and Wendy. I got to see screenshots of it the other day and it is looking great.

Once again Tony has been busy fixing things like sliding doors and keyboard rests. His next big project is to make holders for test CD's in the build room. Good work Tony. :)

Computers Out

January: 37 (1 Australian Poetry Centre, 1 Darebin replacement and 18 on loan to LCA08)

February: 32 (1 Existentialist Society, 5 to Frankston Arts Centre and 2 rebuilds)

March (TD): 22 (2 Darebin, 1 rebuild)

Year TD: 91

Donations

We haven't received a reasonable corporate donation in quite a while but we are still getting donations from individuals. Last week I found an AMD athlon 2.4 with an 80G HDD on our door step, we were lucky it was still there.

We recently found out that Moreland City Council are looking to donate computers to a community recycler. We have sent an email putting forward our organisation as an option.

User Support & Training

We have a few more people coming to our show me how days which is good to see. We've not had much training in March as we have not had the demand for it.

Training still continues out at Holmes St, Darebin. Matt suggested we use www.opendns.com for content filtering at the site, so far this is working well and is easy to use.

We had an issue with a couple of partially unsupported printers this past week. One of our clients got a printer that was unsupported and had to return it. We got one that did not work with our older distro, under pressure, we probably didn't install the right updates so could not get the scanning function going.

Volunteers

Welcome aboard to new volunteers, Matt and John. John is planning on popping in Fridays and some Saturdays while Matt will try and help from afar as well as once a month.

Work for the Dole

We currently have 11/12 participants on our project, but only 4-5 attend each week. This is quite a light turn out so we have not been able to achieve as many things as we'd like to. Lucky for us Lex, a long standing volunteer, also attends on WFD days. Our project has rolled over again, this makes it our 17th project!

Last Thing

Hope everyone has a nice Easter break. It has been fairly hectic at Computerbank the past few months so it will be good to have some time off. Enjoy!

Finance Overview

Non WFD Income

Jan: $4490 (+ $262.04 ING)

Feb: $6459.55 (+ $231.25 ING)

Mar: $3114.34 TD (to 17th March)

Bank Balances as at March 17th

ING: $44,255.43

Westpac: $1166.03

Total: $45421.46

Outstanding Invoices:

General Invoices: $5825.50