From: sjackson@tic.com (Steve Jackson)
Subject: Not-Yet-Approved Minutes Of November Board Meeting
Originator: riddle@aahsa.tic.com
X-Submissions: eff-austin@tic.com
Organization: none
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 03:39:17 GMT

DRAFT MINUTES OF EFF-AUSTIN DIRECTORS' MEETING - NOVEMBER 13, 1992
        Unofficial, pending Board approval.
 
    Prepared by Steve Jackson.
    Held at the SJ Games office. Called to order at 7:30 pm, following
an executive session to discuss board appointments. Board members
present: John Quarterman (presiding), Smoot Carl-Mitchell, Steve
Jackson, Ed Cavazos. Observing: Dick Anderson, Dave Smith, Jon Lebkowsky,
Paco Xander Nathan.
        The minutes of the last meeting were approved with corrections.
 
REPORT ON EXECUTIVE SESSION
        Dick Anderson, Dave Smith and Jon Lebkowsky have already
accepted the invitation to be members of the Advisory Board.
        Paco Nathan had also been nominated to the Advisory Board.
Being present, he was asked if he accepted. He did. There was
much rejoicing.
        The Board agreed on several other Advisory Board nominations.
Ed Cavazos and Smoot Carl-Mitchell will contact them to officially
extend the invitations.
        The Board welcomes suggestions from all members for further
nominations.
 
OFFICERS' REPORTS
   PRESIDENT - Wanted to make it clear that he was not the default
individual responsible for everything not assigned to another board
member. Consensus was to make sure we don't decide to do anything
without assigning it to someone. Also, as our representative to
EFF-National, jsq will send the finished version of minutes to Cliff
Figallo each month.
   VP - Reported that the new Travis County Bar Association
committee on "Computers and the Law" is active and interested in us.
   SECRETARY - Called and talked to Matt Lawrence, who is alive and
well on the East Coast.
   TREASURER - We have a bank account with a current balance of $1331.24.
We need to write checks to Bantam for $809.60 for the books; to EFF-
National, for 36 shirts at $3.50 each ($126.00) and for memberships
we took on their behalf ($60.00), and to TIC for reimbursement for
refreshments at the MCC network meeting ($60.00). This will leave us 
with a small balance but with a significant salable asset (the books).
        Asked Board approval to write the needed checks. Passed unani-
mously. It was then moved, seconded, and passed unanimously that
"Resolved: That the Treasurer has the authority to write a check,
without separate Board authorization, for any legitimate debt
incurred pursuant to a specific decision of the Board."
        Asked Board approval to buy Quicken accounting software for
EFF-Austin checkbook. Passed.
 
CYBERTEX
   Still dormant, pending receipt of proposals from potential organizers.
 
COMMITTEE AND OTHER REPORTS
        Arts Committee: Jon Lebkowsky, chair. Jon has recruited a number
of committee members: Willard Uncaphur, Bob Anderson, Sandy Stone,
Marcos Novak, Vernon Reed, Dave Demaris, Paco Nathan. The first
proposed committee project is some sort of involvement with Robofest.
What they need most is administrative help, giving them time to build
robots. No vote was taken, but consensus of the Board was that this is
an interesting idea which should be explored further. Also: A panel
on the general theme of "does information really want to be free?" was
discussed. There was argument over the wording but consensus that
the idea would make a good event. (Post-meeting news: The Arts
Committee has established a mailing list, eff-austin-arts@tic.com.)
    BBS Committee: Dave Smith (chair), Donna McLaughlin, Loyd Blankenship.
(Earl Cooley is interested.)  Progress: We are now gated to FidoNet,
and a gate to WWIVnet is in progress. Dave has no written proposals
from any potential "flagship" sysops and currently favors distributing
files to several local boards without designating a flagship. Ed will
prepare an agreement document for such "affiliated" boards, referring
to the ASP system as a model. "Official EFF-Austin InfoSite"? Also:
John Foster, compiler of the RETSOF List (Austin's most complete BBS
list) is now working with the committee. Also: If we are ever to 
have our own BBS or net node, donation of equipment would be welcome.
        Education Committee: Dick Anderson (chair), Smoot. Will set up a
meeting with the vice-president of ACC, and discuss the PC-RTs that
might be available for free, as well as other subjects. Dick asked
the Board what model the committee was expected to follow in
offering education services. The answer: Rather than act, ourselves,
as teachers, we should try to be facilitators, finding teachers
in the electronic community and pairing them with those who wish
to learn.
        Infodisk Committee: Dave Smith (chair), Ed Cavazos. A second edition
will be prepared soon. Current plans are to do one every 4-6 months.
Suggestions for material to include in the new edition are welcome!
A copy of Version 1.0 has been sent to This!Group in San Francisco.
        Membership Committee: New committee. It was decided that the
VP should be ex-officio chair of this important group, which is
responsible for recruiting new members, for keeping records of
the ones we have, and for recommending membership benefits. Ed will
start by writing up detailed procedures.
    Network Committee: Smoot (chair), jsq. A new mailing list,
thesegroups@tic.com, will be set up for discussion of the creation
of new electronic-civil-liberties groups, EFF-affiliated and otherwise.
Also, the SparcBook appears to be debugged and will be available for
meetings. Also, a members-only mailing list will be set up for urgent
announcements, such as meetings. Ed Cavazos will handle this until
he leaves for Houston in May; all material proposed for this list
should go to Ed. Also, we need a guest moderator for austin.eff for
times when Prentiss Riddle is out of town. Also, jsq will send a
copy of the tic.com FAQ read.me file to Dave, to publish in WORD to
help people get started using this material. Also, jsq and smoot
are discussing implementing gopher, but don't know when they may
have time to actually do it.
    Newsletter Committee: Dave Smith. The second issue is out and
the third is under way. Dave was concerned about keeping to schedule
but was assured that no one saw a problem with his current performance.
    Police Liaison Committee - Dick Anderson (chair), Bruce Sterling, 
Smoot Carl-Mitchell. The Committee visited the local Secret Service office, gave them a copy of Bruce's book, and talked to them. Shortly
thereafter, the US Attorney defending the government against Steve
Jackson's lawsuit wrote to SJ's attorney to complain about the visit
on somewhat unclear grounds. The attorney wrote back to explain that
EFF-Austin was not a party to the suit, and that US citizens did not
have to get the permission of the US Attorney to visit the offices
of their government. More visits to local law enforcement organiza-
tions are planned, probably starting with the Austin chief of police.
        Publicity Committee: New committee formed. Chair: Paco Xander
Nathan. Members: jonl, SJ, Monica Stephens. Agreed that we need to set
up some sort of phone tree for meeting announcements. SJ will look
into getting a voice mail box.
        Liaison to Computers And The Law Committee of the Travis County
Bar Association: This is Ed, until May. We'll need to replace him
by then. 
        Volunteer Coordinator: Donna McLaughlin. Donna was not present.
Dick Anderson volunteered to call and talk to two possible candidates
for EFF-Austin librarian. It was noted that other positions for
which we need volunteers include literature delivery person,
phone tree organizer, and sysop. Several committees need help, too.
 
PROGRAM PLANNING
    Ad-hoc committees for each upcoming meeting:
        November Members' Meeting: Will be held at 2pm Nov. 14 at the
downtown library 4th-floor meeting room. Ed and Jon will organize.
SJ will prepare a handout with agenda and brief description of the
group and its current accomplishments. This will be an opportunity for
EFF-Austin members to hear personal reports from the officers and
committee chairs, to ask questions and to make comments. At 4pm we
will turn the floor over to Max Cray to moderate a discussion of the
various "freenet" type proposals circulating around Austin.
        After the meeting, SJ will re-cast and send out the incorporation
press release, which never went out, on the best stationary he can 
improvise.
        December Cyberdawg: Tracy LaQuey Parker will sign copies of her
new book, "The Internet Companion." (It's co-authored by Jeanne C. Ryer,
with a foreword by Al Gore.) Willard Uncaphur and Jon Lebkowsky are
organizing this. Will very probably be 2-5pm Dec. 13 at Europa Books.
    January Event: Ed Cavazos is organizing, not a panel, but a workshop
on legal issues affecting sysops. Mike Godwin has been invited to come
down and participate. The event will be publicized to the legal
community as well as Central Texas sysops. Probably Jan. 16-17. We
may want to publish a set of "Proceedings," or give disks as handouts,
or both. (Late-breaking news: Godwin will indeed be here.)
        February Cyberdawg: Dave Smith will organize this - if possible,
in conjunction with the GTC - maybe at High Time. Jon Lebkowsky is
our liaison with GTC. February 10-12?
        March Event: Still under discussion. Something in conjunction with
Robofest, perhaps?
 
   Dave Smith has started a "cookbook" for EFF-Austin meeting planners,
and will distribute it to the mailing list for comment.
 
        Not an EFF event, but interesting: Steven Levy will speak this
Thursday at UT, and will attend a reception afterwards at Europa.
Dave will get a report about this for WORD.
 
COMMUNICATION WITH MEMBERS
        Henceforth this category will be subsumed under committee
reports as appropriate - most likely Publicity or Newsletter.
        Something that came up last meeting and was not properly
reported in those minutes: jsq asks that Board and other EFF-Austin
members refrain from making public statements that can be taken
to represent EFF-Austin policy unless they have coordinated this
with the Board.
 
LOCAL ACTIVITY SINCE LAST MEETING
        We had over 100 attendees at Bruce Sterling's "Hacker Crackdown"
talk, despite poor weather and a last-minute cutback on publicity
(for fear of filling the room and turning people away). The talk went
very well. Furthermore, we sold several books and memberships. The
Board voted unanimously to commend Susan Cisco for an excellent job
in organizing the meeting.
        Cliff Figallo, the new director of EFF-National, attended the
Sterling talk, introduced Bruce, and met with EFF-Austin directors
the next day. Present for that meeting were Steve Jackson, Ed Cavazos,
and Jon Lebkowsky. Since we did not have a quorum of directors present,
no official actions were taken, but it was a friendly and productive
session nonetheless. He clearly favors the existence of local
chapters and wants to give them slack to deal with local issues
in their own way.
 
OLD BUSINESS
        Jon Lebkowsky has not yet talked to DIR, but will.
        Ed Cavazos recommends that we not worry about an "official"
presence at HoHoCon - no table, etc. However, he and Paco both
plan to attend, and will bring back a report.
        The Interactive University proposal was referred to the Education
Committee.
   John Henry Faulk Conference on the First Amendment: This event has
come and gone. Ed will contact the Center for American History and
bring back a recommendation about whether we should be involved
next year.
 
NEW BUSINESS
        Susan Cisco's suggestion about a regular ACTV show - contact
Alston Boyd at 472-2869 - was referred to the Publicity Committee.
        A request for information from the Association for Electronic 
Communication has been sitting on the agenda for about a year,
without action. Agreed that SJ should send the contact information
to EFF-National and let them deal with it.
        Fund-raising was discussed, and possible projects which might
require money, including Cybertex, an EFF-Austin BBS and/or 
Internet node, helping Robofest or other such things in return
for a share of the profits, and bringing in significant speakers.
Tactics for fund-raising were also discussed, including T-shirts (SJ
will ask the graphics people on his staff for design ideas), a benefit
dance or similar event, and charging for admission at speaker events.
The idea of hiring a professional fund-raiser to seek large corporate
or private donations was also aired. In the end, no action was taken.
The Board agreed to discuss this again when we specifically needed
more money.
 
COMMUNICATION WITH CAMBRIDGE
        SJ wrote a brief "what we've been doing" article for Rita, at
her request. He offered to continue to do so. It was decided that
this is a good idea, as long as each article is posted to
eff-austin-directors and a week allowed for comment.
        As reported above, Cliff Figallo seems to have a much more 
open attitude toward input from local chapters.
        John Quarterman reported on his visit to This!Group in
San Francisco, and recommended that we keep in touch with them.
 
CHARTER, BYLAWS, INCORPORATION
        SJ will ask Cliff Figallo for further clarification on the "non-
discrimination" clause in the Cambridge charter.
 
ON THE TABLE
        Institutional memberships.
        Fund-raising.
 
ADMINISTRIVIA AND ADJOURNMENT
        Roll was called. Matt Lawrence's absence was excused, since he
talked to SJ.
        The next meeting will be December 8 at 6:30 (executive session)
and 7:00 (open meeting), at SJ Games, with adjournment hopefully set
for 10:00 pm.
        The meeting was adjourned at 10:45.


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