Monthly Meeting Tues 2 nd October 2007

Monthly Meeting, Tuesday 2nd October 2007

Present:

Rich H, Jim F, Lu, Lloyd, Woodsy, Ben G, Matthew Edmonson, Matt T, Acesabe, Sean K, Pete F

Apologies for absence:

Sam R, Andy L, Jules

Minutes of last meeting

The minutes of the last meeting were approved nem con.

Matters Arising

1. Cowboys Event after party: This will take place at the Plough on 10th November. Please see Sean for tickets (free), but be sure to wear a wig to the event.
2. Unmet Needs Fund bid: Sean reported that a £10,000 funding bid had been submitted for a green computing scheme, in which disused computers are recycled by Byteback, with Byteback giving the customer a £20 voucher towards the cost of a refurbished £50 computer from Bristol Wireless. If the bid succeeds, Sean will be working for 1/2 day per week for 4 months on this project. Due to the larger than expected number of bids, a decision is not expected for some time.
3. Long-term planning: Sean and Rich have a meeting at Wednesday lunchtime at the Watershed with Open Spaces.
4. Flat screen monitors for the lab: Not purchased yet as we are still awaiting payment of outstanding invoice from WCC.

Reports

1. Finance report: As reported above we are awaiting funds from WCC, otherwise nothing to report.
2. Recycling project: Sam recently sent a report by email to the daily list providing an update on the project's progress. Sixty-five machines gone out since February, mostly through the Wireless Werburghs scheme. Sam would still like to increase the turnover of machines and would welcome any useful ideas.
3. Unmet Needs Fund: See Matters Arising above.
4. Substance (Manchester) feedback: Last week Rich took the LTSP laptop suite to Manchester for the Beyond Engagement conference organised by the Substance co-op. 300 delegates attended and the suite was well used. Rich wrote a news item on the event. Rich also mentioned that Substance were interested in switching to LTSP and offered our help with the install. The meeting felt that we need to promote LTSP more as one of our services. Finally, Pete F mentioned that Circamedia in Bristol are moving to Linux and possibly LTSP.
5. Social Source event: Sean reported that Julie Harris of Cosmic has £5,000 to spend on 5 IT-related events in the South West: of these one is a net:gain session, whilst another involves use of VLE. As Social Source has not been held since 2005, we will organise a South West version at WCC at the end of January, with £1,000 from Julie Harris' budget going to help with costs. Rich and Sean are to proceed with planning the event (action: Rich, Sean).
6. Vservers and access: This agenda item arose due to the conflict between the need to maintain a stable production environment for, amongst other things, our UFI work and the requirement for a cutting edge development environment. The solution to resolve these conflicting interests is to provide development vservers for those volunteers who need one, which they could then use as they see fit without affecting the stability of the production environment. Pete F suggested demand could be assessed by mailing the tech list and individuals involved in development work to test demand. Lloyd added that this matter had highlighted the need to revive regular tech meetings and suggested these be held the same day as the regular monthly management meetings, but in advance of them. It was decided that the members of the tech mailing list would draw up a policy regarding access to servers and development vservers (action - tech mailing list).

Proposal: That we co-opt Kevin O'Malley of Connecting Bristol onto our management committee.

Pete F gave the meeting the background to this proposal, which emerged from a meeting he had with Stephen Hilton of Connecting Bristol and Dylan from SWRDA re core funding for Bristol Wireless. Stephen has no specific budget but is happy to help and made the suggestion that we try and involve Kevin O'Malley, Connecting Bristol's Project Manager, and give him more insight into our work, building on the links we established during Bristol's unsuccessful Digital Challenge bid. As the meeting was somewhat sceptical of the value of co-option, Pete proposed amending his proposal to read as follows: "to invite Connecting Bristol to become a corporate member of Bristol Wireless and to invite Kevin O'Malley to attend our monthly meetings". This was seconded by Rich and approved by the meeting.

AOB

1. Student placements: Pete F recently met Nick Plant. He now has a budget available so could fund student placements with Bristol Wireless.
2. Christmas party: Woodsy mentioned the need to think about a Christmas party venue soon.
3. Mark wireless village: Rich reported he had been approached by his home village of Mark, Somerset regarding provision of a wireless network for the village.It has an active community association and the village hall could become a digital centre. Ruralnet are also involved. Rich will liaise and help work up a proposal (action - Rich).
4. Linux sysadmin training: Matthew reported that M6IT have written the first draft of their case study on Linux sysadmin training.

Date of next meeting: Tuesday 6th November 2007 at 6.30 pm