October Cai-Vic Minutes 2002
Minutes of CAI Victorian Branch Meeting
Held at 92 Rosslyn Street on 23rd October 2002
Present were
Owen Courtis, Con Valdis, Kylie Davies, Tim McDonald, Grant Diffey,
Penni Diffey, Rob Britain, David Hatton, Vic Koci
Meeting opened at 6.45 pm.
Minutes of the previous meeting:
Kylie Davies moved that the minutes of the previous meeting of
CAI Victorian Branch as circulated via email be accepted.
Owen Courtis seconded.
Carried.
Actions arising:
- Answering machine modem.
Owen Courtis gave a brief summary, with the conclusion that
the proposal would be feasible. Depending on sound quality
desired, the cost could be as low as $30. Better sound
quality would also require high quality sound recordings.
Some discussion on details. Owen agreed to post more
details to the mailing list.
- Business Cards.
As there has been little feedback on the design, Penni and
Vic agreed to organise design in consultation with other
interested parties.
- Lease Renewal for Rosslyn Street.
So far, there has been no feedback from WB Simpson
regarding the CAI Vic offer. However, a contractor has
inspected the floor, possibly with a view to repairs. Kylie
agreed to contact the real estate agent again about lease
renewal terms.
- Roster.
Kylie to send to mailing list.
- Budgeting forcast.
Kylie spoke to figures circulated via email.
One correction was noted - further GST costs need to be
accounted for which results in a Feb 2003 projected bank
balance of approx $1700.
- WFTD Award Certificate.
Kylie reported that it does have the correct spelling!
State Co-Ordinators Report:
Kylie spoke to circulated report, and added an update on two
computers whose their ownership status had been queried and now
resolved.
Some discussion took place about accounting for computers whose
placement overseas had been facilitated by CAI Vic in our
summaries of computers placed with recipients. It was
suggested that these computers be counted in a special
category.
State Financial Report:
Kylie and Owen presented spreadsheet summary of expenditure and
income with respect to CAI Vic bank accounts.
WFTD Report:
(Rob and Kylie) - Generally good results from the WFTD programs.
Improvements in storage have resulted, but there has been some
consequent problems in locating parts quickly. Discussion took
place about the implementation of better storage access and
which people are most appropriate to supervise this.
The recent awards ceremony went off well.
Rob reported on a visit to HMR recyclers. He noted that CAI Vic
items taken by HMR has still to be processed by them.
Changes to monitor acceptance guidelines were suggested -
these will be firmed up and notified as required.
There was some discussion on checks on WFTD participants which
are yet to be carried out by Kangan - this matter is reagarded
as being under control.
Training Report.
Number of participants that attended training at CAI Vic.
September - 42
October (to 23/10/02) - 29
Updated manual to cover the new version of KDE 3 is almost ready.
Technical Report.
Grant reported that -
KDE 3 build had been implemented on training computers. For
new installs, can use new root floppy with existing rescue
and drivers floppies.
There are also new docs for connecting to the network.
Grant also undertook to organise a start on a central
database which will be accessable to applications run by
CAI Vic via a standard interface.
Some discussion took place about database requirements and web
based development.
Intranet Documents.
Con reported that -
Updates are required for new KDE 3 release, and are being
worked on.
Style guide examples from other groups are being considered
to assist in working up our own style guide.
Network Builds.
Grant reported that there were some problems with implementing
secure access file sharing and suggested that this needs to be
a centralised function. As a mechanism for this, Grant
suggested that standard X terminals could be used.
The advantages are that a supply of a standard configuration X
terminals could be built up and used in network builds which
have all the site-specific software on a server. Thus a broken
X terminal can be readily swapped for a fully functioning one
with minimal effort. The downside is that servers will need to
be well resourced.
Discussion took place on options for network construction.
Thanks were expressed to Tim McDonald for his efforts in
building network systems.
Volunteer Day.
It was suggested that participants in the next volunteer day
(November) build KDE3 based systems as part of their
activities. The meeting endorsed this suggestion.
Selling Equipment.
It was suggested that one way of selling surplus equipment was
to use ebay. The consensus of the meeting was that this was
worth a try.
Discussion also took place about setting priorities for
hardware sales and consequent use of resulting funds. Some
favoured a definite percentages set aside for internal hardware
purchases, others felt a more general assignment of spending
priorities would be better. The meeting generally felt that
this needed more consideration.
Christmas Shutdown.
It was agreed that CAI Vic close normal operations from Sunday
22nd December 2002 and reopen Wed 8th January 2003. Breakup
function Friday 20th Decmeber 2002.
For those who wish to work over the shutdown period note that
the CAI Vic internal network will be unavailable during the
second week of the shutdown due to maintenance.
Other Business.
Selling CDROM sets.
There was general agreement that low volume burning of
CDROM sets was acceptable at the present time. However, it
was also felt that we need to get advice about the legal
position if we are to expand this aspect of our activities.
Selling Linux installation services.
Discussion took place about the desirability of offering
this service and some of the problems we might encounter.
Questions posed included whether volunteers should get paid
for their services, and how to sort out potential
customers' systems for suitability to readily install Linux
for a fixed fee.
Suggestions were made that CAI Vic could offer payment to
volunteers but not make it compulsory, and that a good
check to see if computers are readily able to have Linux
installed would be to attempt to boot a CDROM based Linux
distribution, eg Knoppix.
If a particular computer failed to boot a CDROM based
linux, then we would need to negotiate a time based fee or
decline to install.
Consensus was reached that we should get definitive
opinions on any legal problems this activity would incur.
Concurrently, we need to refine the existing suggestions
into a set of practical procedures.
"Show Me How" Day.
"Show Me How" Day was suggested for recipients with
appropriate computing backgounds. The idea is for a mentor to
assist a recipient with a basic installation, and then progress
to the final configuration. The Mentors would tutor as
required.
This would be a one day session, possibly up to 5 hours, with
the recipients leaving early if they felt confident enough to
complete the install at home.
It was agreed that this was worth a try, and a date of Sat 7th
December 2002 was suggested.
Meeting closed at 10.10 pm.
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