Board of Directors Meeting Minutes
Tuesday, June 27, 2000

Present:

• Sharon Parker
• Krista Olmstead
• Leo Deveau
• Mark Rushton
• Doug McCann
• Viola Winstanley
• Joyline Makani
• David Murdoch
• Andrew Wright

Regrets:

• Grace Paterson
• Sylvana Buttigieg
• Kelly Marney

Agenda:

1. Call to order
2. Approval of last week's minutes
3. Financial Report
4. Re-Election of Bernie Hart
5. Executive Director's Report
6. Committee Reports
7. Strategic Planning
8. Home Page Debate
9. New Business
10. Next Meeting - July 18

Meeting called to order at 6:41 PM

Mark Rushton moved to approve last meeting's minutes. Doug McCann seconded. Motion carried.

Financial Report - Administration Account:

Revenue is similar to last year. Administrative fees are higher because an Executive Director was hired as well as secondary office and support staff. However, the organization is still breaking even.

Communications Report:

Media Relations has the survey finished and ready to go. James has made quick progress lining everything up. This will help us plan marketing strategies and develop marketing profiles for the future. Next we will develop a marketing plan, and assist with the web cam.

There is a potential for free advertising on a board at Scotia Square. We will be looking into this opportunity.

Executive Director's Report:

Since the last Board meeting, under the guidance of Krista Olmstead, we've hired a Marketing/Public Relations summer student. His name is James Carroll and he is undertaking the design and implementation of an online membership survey, which we hope will provide us a better understanding of our Chebucto members. This information will feed into a further task, namely the design of a marketing and public relations campaign in the fall.

The member survey will be initiated with a number of incentives to encourage our members to fill out the survey. A dynamic scripting tool will allow us to quickly assess responses and questions will be able to be modified for future survey applications. James will be reporting to Krista and myself concerning this project and other assigned tasks over the summer.

On-going meetings have been held to monitor the implementation process of the Urban CAP program. With regard to Chebucto, we're considering partnering with Dalhousie to provide a public access site in the School of Computer Science. More meetings are planned in the near future to determine how best to manage this.

Related to this are also continuing discussions on how Chebucto might partner on developing a community information portal in the HRM. Chebucto has been asked to sit in on some pending meetings concerning a recent proposal from the N.S. Government's Dept. of Municipal Affairs to establish a provincial portal of some sort.

Related to the community portal discussions, Chebucto has gone through a rather lengthy process of developing a new homepage, which is intended to provide easier access to current Chebucto online resources. However, there still seems to be differences of opinion about redirects from and to the new site, either for our text or PPP users, and off our IP sites. My understanding is that the Board Executive will be addressing this matter with our Systems Administrator in the near future.

As you know, there had been a process in motion to have a Strategy Planning session with the Board this past weekend, but it was felt due to our financial situation, to hold off on this till possibly the fall.

Speaking about finances, as the financial statement will indicate, we've been on a thin line over the last few weeks and this has given me pause and reflection about my future role at Chebucto. Although I do not consider the financial situation to be insurmountable, due to this and other challenging personal matters on the home front, I've decided to submit my resignation to Sharon as of the end of August (31st). My hope is that this will allow time for the Board to consider either future candidates for my position, or to redesign the tasks and responsibilities of the position beginning in the fall. I regret this decision, but feel it is in the best interests of Chebucto to begin with new energetic blood in the fall. I still hope to remain involved in Chebucto come the fall, albeit in some volunteer capacity.

I will be taking holidays on the following dates: July 3rd-7th; August 1st-7th; and August 14th-18th.

Strategic Planning session coming up. This will focus the board on the Committees goals for the upcoming year, and plan for the fall.

Volunteer Committee Report:

Nothing to report

External Relations:

Bernie is not present so Viola reported that she will touch base with him to get an update on progress and report to the board.

IP Committee

Featured IP - One of CCN's successful projects is the 'Featured Information Provider's program. The program showcases a selected Information Provider each month. It was suggested by Doug that the program be expanded to each of the major subject areas. While the Featured IP would continue on the CCN main page (high profile), each subject page (lower profile), could also highlight a selected IP. This expansion would provide the various IP Editors the opportunity to interact with their IP's. IP's would benefit from this additional service.

Features Editor

The IWK-Grace Telethon has just past. Word-on-the-Street, Tall Ships, Jazz and other festivals are coming. These events should be linked from CCN, so that CCN members would be able to locate information about them without having to search the 'net. For example, it was difficult to locate any information about the IWK Telethon on the net.

For the last provincial election a link banner was installed on the CCN page pointing to the CBC (results) and various political party pages.

IP, Editor Training

Leo has suggested (via e-mail) that besides IP Training, that CCN should provide editor training. The object is to provide the opportunity to bring IP Editors up to date.

IP PROCESS

A discussion about the IP Process was conducted. David provided a progress report on how the neighbourhood concept was being integrated into the database. The accounting module is ready to go. While IP editors and others will continue to have access to the IP data, only the office and other authorize persons will have read/write access to the accounting fields/records.

Policy Committee:

The change has been implemented to the User Agreement. There will be a letter sent to all members and users notifying them of the change. The privacy Policy is currently in review.

Technical Committee:

Web Cam: The Committee has acquired the computers to put on the roof of Fenwick Place and Andrew Wright is currently negotiating a deal on the camera. Andrew has arranged a meeting for Friday to ask permission to set up the camera on the roof of Fenwick Place. The camera costs will be between $1000 and $1500. Implementation date is proposed to be July 7th. The committee has set up a task list and assigned people to specific duties.

Johnathan Thibodeau is the new Tech support student hired for the summer. Giselle Corkam is the Co-op student. Both of these people will be setting up for seniors Expo (setting up phone lines, computers, etc., for both CCN and CAP.

Home Page Debate:

Due to the conflicts that have arisen from lack of communication and standard procedure for implementing new systems, it was decided that an assigned Web Master must be elected to handle all incoming requests for changes to Chebucto, and for delegating responsibilities. Sharon Parker nominated Doug McCann to be the new Webmaster. Joyline Makani seconded the motion. Motion carried.

New Business:

Andrew Wright voiced his objection to his personal treatment form David Potter, who is the Chair of the Editors Committee. Andrew reported that David has been disrespectful, abusive, extremely rude and unprofessional in his behavior toward Andrew. Andrew requested that the Executive Committee interfere on his behalf to get the abuse to discontinue, and voiced his desire to have a public apology from David Potter. The Executive Committee agreed to set up a meeting with David Potter and Chris Majka to see if there was a way to rectify the situation.

Meeting Adjourned: 8:15 pm