January 20 2004

Davis Community Network Board
Minutes of Directors Meeting
January 20, 2004
City of Davis Computer Lab

Attending: Tony Bernhard, Tsui Chang, Jim Frame,
Anne Hance, Steve McMahon, John Jones, Steve
McMahon, Richard Reid, Kimball Sargeant, Tom
Stanionis, Richard Yamagata (quorum = 8), Richard
Lowenberg, Executive Director.
Absent: Ronda Adams, Rick Guidara, Jan Meizel,
Robert Nickerson (on leave),

1. Call to Order: The meeting was called to order at
5:25 by Vice President Steve McMahon

2. Agenda approval: The agenda was approved by
consensus

3. Public comment: none

4. Minutes of previous meetings:The minutes of the
December 16, 2003 meeting were approved as
distributed.

5. INet Developments: Board President Kimball
Sargeant arrived and assumed the Chair as Richard
Lowenberg and Steve McMahon started to talk about
the progress toward the creation of an I-Net as part of
the Comcast/City of Davis Telecommunications
Franchise.
Comcast reps met recently with the I-Net subcommittee
of the Telecommunications Task Force. They showed
their I-Net plans with 35 primary nodes in a star
network and discussed costs and sharing of City assets.
Costs appear quite reasonable at this point. Comcast is
eager to get started on the re-build of the Davis System.
There will be some trenching but there will also be
some sharing of City conduit. It appears that the local
school district and the university will both want to
participate in the I-Net. The fact that Comcast is hoping
to cross the bypass by renting fiber usage from Charter
is interesting to us since it is likely to allow some high
speed connections with certain County entities such as
the Yolo County Office of Education.

6. Officer and Board Nominating Subcommittees
Report: Richard Lowenberg reported on the progress of
the two subcommittees.
Two new names are being considered for the Board.
The Officers nominating subcommittee has not yet met.

7. Fundraising discussion:
a) Anne drew the Board's attention to a "Celebrate
Davis!" Chamber of Commerce event to be held
Thursday, May 20 4:30 - 9:00 pm in Community Park.
Considerable interest was expressed in having a
presence at the event with the potential for new
handouts and a wireless set-up. Perhaps even a
'hotspot' for visitors to the event with their laptops or
hand-helds to use! A sub committee was created to
organize a DCN presence at the event: Richard
Lowenberg, Richard Yamagata and John Jones. They
will invite help from others outside the Board.
b) A request for a small grant has been submitted to the
local Soroptimists.
c) Richard Lowenberg has been creating text for
new/updated fundraising/PR/marketing materials.
Richard Reid will convert them into suitable formats.
d) Richard Lowenberg is preparing to identify sources
for direct solicitation. He is also preparing articles for
newspapers and an insert for the Chamber Newsletter.

8. Elections Office MOU update: The MOU is
finalized and a signed copy is ready to be returnd to the
County Clerk's Office. The MOU is effective as of
January 1, 2004 and will run for 6 months. At that point
the MOU will be for a 12 month July 1 - June 30 fiscal
year. The Funding will be $24,000 per year so a check
for $12,000 will be received sometime soon.
Identification of specific uses for the funds has already
begun with determination of what hardware is needed
to enable DCN to carry out its MOU responsibilities.

9. Committee reports, as needed:
a) Classes: Tony Bernhard suggested that many new
users of Wireless connections are running unsecured
systems without realizing it and would benefit from a
class in privacy/security.
Richard Lowenberg has a list of possible class topics
and will distribute the list via DCNews to ascertain
interests.
Tom Stanionis suggested that perhaps DCN subscribers
might be offered one free class per year.
Most classes will be free but some might be offered for
a small fee. Some Instructor honoraria should also be
available.
The Calendar class is being offered on Feb 12 to a
specific group (mostly school related) and will be
offered again later to others.
b) IPC: Anne Hance reported that the IPC has
authorized about 23 Simple Sites so far. 15 or 16 of
these have been set up and most have some content.
Some content builders are more productive than others.
c) Webteam: Steve McMahon reported that the Voter
Information Project is already underway with financial
reports online.

10. Executive Director's Report: Richard Lowenberg
reported that he handed out DCN information at the
DCN/DCTV Candidate Orientation last week.
Richard also introduced the new issue that has arisen as
a result of a DCN subscriber's request for reduced costs
for its disk storage space and virtual hosting. The
subscriber, who has explained that it might need to
move to another provider, uses about 250 MB of space
and is being charged a great deal more than some
competitor ISPs would charge. The Board agreed that
the Executive Committee should review DCN's pricing
system and adapt it appropriately. Tony Bernhard
commented that this should be done annually.

11. Announcements: none
12. Adjournment:6:50:45 p.m.

NEXT MEETING: February 17, 2004