******* Next meeting is tomorrow, Tuesday, Oct. 14 at 7 pm, Lycoming College Academice Center - Room B309. Program will be Jim Shaffer with a LINUX demonstration (LINUX is an operating system). *******
Williamsport Area Computer Club Meeting minutes / newsletter - September 1997
Kathy Kolb, President called the meeting to order, followed by an introduction of new guests. Last month's meeting minutes were revised for a name change from "Marilyn" to "Murial Hykes".
Willis Beaver gave the Treasurer's report for this month. We have 38 members at $423.00 minus Newspaper Ads and Speaker Gifts of $53.68 for a total of $369.32
No Newspaper Ads were run this month.
Committees:
Club Advertising / Awareness / Public Relations / Membership / Home Page: The club discussed issuing Business Cards or Brochures in conjunction with the monthly faxes to computer retailers. A motion was made by John Yarosz to produce club Business cards (up to $50.00 in cost) for distribution to help raise public awareness of the club. John will check with Staples and Lou will contact Bob Rice for price estimates. Design volunteers are requested to bring a 8.5 x 11 prototype of the card to the next meeting for consideration. Lou seconded the motion. Motion carried.
A request was made for Willis to include members email addresses and phone numbers in the membership list.
Our web site is getting an average of 11 visits per day. Kathy requested suggestions for a site redesign. Jim suggested an idea for a theme on the favorite links page. We are doing away the committee corner and possibly adding a support page.
Bylaws: Kathy reported that SCORE is for profit only and is unable to help us in our quest for official non-profit status.
Computer Swap Meet: No news reported.
Computer Recycling: (giving old computers new homes): CIL (Center for Independent Living) requested the 386 system that is available, but was not picked up. Two other requests have been made for needed systems. The Horizon House homeless shelter in Lock Haven and The Williamsport Christian School.
Bill Hitchens salvaged quite a bit of computer hardware from his place of work. We need a Chairperson to head up a committee for putting PC's together. Dan suggested that we donate the items to the PSU SCROUNGE Unit in State College with the exception of a few systems. Dan and Sharon voluteered to try to get several systems running from our parts boxes. More volunteers are welcome for this effort.
North Central PA computer networking / Freenet site: JVB Community Net (Market Square) Support Group meeting is planned for Oct 19 from 2-4 PM at the James V. Brown Library. People interested in helping county non-profit organizations build a web presence, contact Dan Yoas dyoas@jvbrown.edu or Kathy kkolb@kolbweb.com
Help: (offering help to computer users who need it) There was a request for Mac help from a visitor. Unfortunately, at present we have very few members using the Mac OS to provide this service. Our contact person for Mac help is Pete Grafius. We would like to create a local Mac support page on our site, but more involvement from Mac users is needed for this effort.
Local BBS / Computer Retailer news: Uplink announced the launch of a family friendly service: a web filtering system of predetermined sites deemed inappropriate for children via proxy servers. See http://www.csrlink.net for more info.
US Netway is providing ISP Service in our area for $12.50 / month. See http://www.usnetway.com/ for more info.
Several ISP's are offering 56K connections. Sunlink and CSR are utilizing the k-flex technology. Consumers must match 56k modems with the exact 56k technology used by their ISP. There are 2 competing systems. Make sure you know which kind your ISP supports before buying a 56k modem.
Other Concerns: Saturday Nov 8, Agape Fellowship invites WACC to host a table at "the Williamsport World's Fair" to show how the Internet is connecting the world-special missionary focus possible. Between 500-800 people are expected to attend. Electricity and a phone connection will be made available. The club made no decision…we will discuss it at the next meeting. Anyone interested, please let Kathy know.
There was some discussion about moving our meeting site to an location with better access for demonstrating software and Net surfing. A suggestion was made to possibly meet at the JVB Library. Dan will check on this. Benjie's is another possible option, but the room we would meet in (2nd floor) is not wheelchair accessible.
We will form a nominating committee at our next meeting for the upcoming Election of Officers in November.
Congratulations to member Wayne Palmer who was recently got married!
Programs:
In place of a program this month, we hosted a "Newbie's Nite" to field questions and concerns of those present. We held several interesting discussions as well. Topics such as storage devices and cookies were addressed.
Meeting Adjourned.
The program for our October 14 meeting will be Jim Shaffer presenting an "Introduction to Linux" Operating System demonstration. Other upcoming programs include an HTML Intro by Kathy, a Computer Upgrade Intro by Willis, and a presentation on "The Challenge of Computer Literacy in our Area" by David Hughes from the Fourth R, Computer Training Solutions.
Williamsport Area Computer Club contact info: home page: http://www.sunlink.net/wacc Sect. Sharon Souter - 321-0659 (voice) - disc@sunlink.net (email) Pres. Kathy Kolb - 326-7529 (voice) - kkolb@kolbweb.com (email)