Minutes May 2006

Held on Tuesday 9th May, 2006 at

483 Victoria Street, West Melbourne.  Meeting opened at 6.15pm

Present

Chair: Kylie Davies

In Attendance: Jan Smith, John Simpson, Ed Chan, Owen Courtis, Tony Calenti.

Apologies: Vic Koci, Norm Atkins, Julien Goodwin, Rob Brittain.

1. Welcomes by chair – Kylie Davies
2. Confirmation of previous minutes. The previous March minutes were confirmed.

3. Matters Arising

3.1 E-waste. Committee decided to continue business with our current recyclers – Southern Cross Metal Recycling (includes pickup service) and Sims Metals (deliver to only) for metals (steel, aluminium, copper). We will use Extreme Surplus Recyclers for motherboards, CPUs, and hard drives. ACT Vic has done a plastics pickup using our only two wool bale bags. These will be returned on the next pickup, but in the meantime we need two more bags to store the plastic waste so it is ready for the next pickup.

3.2 ITShare laptop donation update from Kylie. We received 10 laptops, which have been processed and are in the system ready for recipients.

3.3 New phone system – Julien Goodwin to start looking at phone systems this Thursday. We need to clarify what we want the phone system to be able to do. The committee decided to give Julien approximately 6 weeks to work out what the phone system is capable of doing and to implement the system. After this time a technician will be hired to implement the system.

3.4 Kylie's Job Network Member progress report. She is still waiting for the paper work to come through from Centrelink.

3.5 Printers. Barry was to be notified re selecting the best priced and Linux compatible printer to sell to recipients, but this did not happen. Nonetheless, Barry suggests we keep on selling the Epson C45. JS said MSY has them for $59 in Gaffney St. Coburg.  Microtech in Victoria St sell them for $60. Jan said she would prefer to buy the printers at Microtech because they are much closer and will save time. We will continue to sell printers for $70.00 and include a USB cable.

3.6 Rental of car spot. Jan assessed that demand for car spots was not strong enough to make the proposition worthwhile at this time and therefore, the proposal will be dropped for now.

3.7 EscapeNet ISP offer of one month free Internet access for our clients Kylie to report on whether they would consider modifying their offer to a more reasonable continuing monthly rate. KD received no answer to her email and we will not pursue this any further.

3.8 Jan has reviewed ISP deals currently being promoted. The best deals for our recipients are TAD Aust Connect for disabled recipients ($5.00 per month plus a joining fee) and Netbay for other recipients (~ $9.00 per month). Kylie has seen them and said to publish them on the doc site. ~done

3.9 Contract job to sell laptops on Ebay. Has Kylie completed job description for this task. The job description is not complete and will require two more weeks.

4 Agenda

4.1 CVI Distro. John Simpson tried Ubuntu but it has issues that we do not want to be involved in resolving. Therefore, the current new distribution is in bug testing phase has been derived from Debian sources and should be ready for client implementation by early June. Alastair has developed a GUI program for setting up an Internet connection and it works well. He is working on a similar program for setting up a video card. In order to speed up the testing process the committee has decide to have a competition to see who can find the most bugs in the distribution. Testers will be required to do this at our office over the next two weeks. Details to be announced on the CVI list. John Simpson will decide who the winner is and a prize of $50.00 dollars will be awarded. A motion was passed as follows: To have a competition to find bugs in the distribution and to award $50.00 to the person who finds the most bugs. John Simpson to make the final decision and no correspondence to be entered into.

Proposed by John Simpson and seconded by Owen Courtis. Motion Carried (CU)

4.2 Code of Conduct. A code of conduct has been written. Comments and feedback will be obtained from members before proceeding further. The committee decided to add a further caveat to the code of conduct that was put in the form of a motion. The motion was to include the following statement in the code of conduct: “Members should not make unauthorised Public comments or engage in unauthorised Public promotions of CVI. They can only do these things if they have been approved by the CVI committee.”

Proposed by Jan Smith and seconded by Tony Calenti. Motion carried (CU).

4.3 Ed's missing computer. The computer was used in the Footscray Library project, and while we have the hard drive, we cannot find the system. This was Ed's own hardware. The committee passed the following motion:

  “CVI agrees to replace Ed's computer with one having equivalent hardware  specifications and in future CVI will not use equipment owned by volunteers in projects.” Proposed: Kylie Davies. Seconded: John Simpson. Motion Carried (CWD).

4.4 Request for a higher spec laptop computer (for KD). The laptop from Computerbank is the only computer KD has. The laptop she uses is a
PIII 650Mhz/256MB RAM/20g hdd. She uses the Computerbank laptop for Computerbank  work and some personal stuff too. She would like to get an upgrade to one of the  compaqs we recently received. If it were possible she would like to have more  than 256MB of memory, as the current computer she is using is sluggish with that  amount. The committee upheld Kylie Davies request for a laptop upgrade with memory of 512MB if possible. The motion was “that CVI upgrade Kylie Davies laptop computer”.  
 Proposed by Jan Smith. Seconded by John Simpson. Motion carried (CU).

4.5 EWB (Engineers Without Borders)/Connectivity for Refugees - Melbourne University Donation. We can not seem to reach an appropriate arrangement with EWB in relation  to this donation. It looks as though EWB will come and pick up a portion of the computers and do their own computer builds/support/recycling. After recent  discussions it has been agreed that the donation will be split 50/50. The committee  passed the following motion: “CVI will give EWB half the computers donated from  Melbourne University, terminate our relationship with EWB and remove their link  from our Website.” Proposed by Kylie Davies. Seconded by Jan Smith. Motion carried (CU).

4.6 Donation of Mac and flat screen. What to do? Sell on Ebay and use funds for phones, economical lighting, or other dedicated project as per Jan's suggestions. The following motion was passed by the committee: CVI will sell the imac and the flat screen monitor on Ebay and the funds will be set aside for special purposes. Proposed by Owen courtis and seconded by Jan Smith (CU).

4.7 Any news from the working party on e-waste/donation pickups

(Jan/Rob/KD). The draft donations/pickup document is to be read by
committee members and will be placed on the agenda for the next meeting.

4.8 Ebay usage documentation. Comments, extra help hints? CVI committee members can view the document and make appropriate changes or additions. For example, the starting price of items, selling hints etc.

5 Reports

5.1 State Coordinators report/WFD Report (KD)
5.2 Treasurers report (NA/KD) no report
5.3 Projects (RB) no report
5.4 User Support (JSimpson)

John noted that we have been getting Invalid system disk errors being reported. This is an easily fixed problem as it is due to a non-bootable floppy disk in the floppy drive. The solution is to remove the floppy disk before booting up the computer. Owen suggested that to avoid this problem recipient computers should have the floppy drive disabled from the start up devices. This will now be done in future builds. Another problem has been network cards. From now on NICs will be checked to make sure they are not causing problems. Owen has had problems logging into the CVI network via ISP. He expressed concern with the dropping out of the connection. John will discuss the problem with Julien and they may investigate other ISPs that might provide a static connection.

5.5 Donations report (RB) no report
5.6 Documentation and websites report (JSmith)
5.7 Internal systems report (JG) no report
5.8 Database report (OC)
5.9 Technical Coordinators report (JSimpson)

6. Other Business



7. On Hold

7.1 Awareness documentation, Business cards and new CVI logo (all)

7.2 DGR (Jan/Norm). We are looking for a missing document (response from the Federal Environment Minister)so it can be sent to our lawyers Clayton Utz. The document cannot be found and the search for it has ceased. We need to review and restart (revisit) the DGR issue with our advisor Simon Bowden. Jan has volunteered to take this up.

7.3 Surplus Shop/Ebay seller Policy Documents (Kylie). Some tips – starting to happen.

7.4 Tony to develop grievances procedure policy.

Meeting closed at 8.05pm.