Monthly Meeting Tues 4 th November 2008

BRISTOL WIRELESS MONTHLY MEETING, TUESDAY 4TH NOVEMBER 2008

PRESENT: RichH, Woodsy, Acesabe, PeteF, SamR, Jules, SeanK, JohnP, MikeH, GuyW, Allen, SimwinjiZ

APOLOGIES FOR ABSENCE: JimF, MattL

MINUTES OF LAST MEETING:

Agreed nem con.

MATTERS ARISING

1. LTSP laptop insurance: Jules has yet to complete (action Jules).
2. Infrastructure - Twinnell and Dove St.: As regards Dove St., Rich stated that no date has been set for the re-roofing works yet and BCC and its contractors are investigating leaving our kit in situ and working around it.
3. Recycling project: No information has been received from Lu regarding advertising pricing.
4. Knowle West Web update: No updated copy of Cityspace's documentation was forwarded to the daily list.
5. Strategy Group: Woodsy has posted his notes on the meeting on the admin wiki. The next meeting will be held at Sean's on 10th November at 6.30 pm.
6. Website: Rich has contacted Christian who informed him that any update would involve a major update and lots of work. Christian has offered to attend a future meeting to discuss update options and the January meeting was suggested as suitable. Rich will liaise with Christian on dates (action - Rich). Mike stated that Psand is updating its servers to Apache2 and PHP5, although it is running a sandbox for sites using earlier versions. Mike is to request Psand to add BW to the sandbox as a temporary measure (action - Mike).

REPORTS

1. Financial report: Jules presented the profit and loss, balance sheet and project accounts for the year to date and we're solvent, despite making a loss on the year to date, mostly of funded project expenditure. A fundraising team needs to be formed as a matter of urgency. Outstanding debtors have been reduced to £2.7 K; Jules is still chasing these. The outstanding annual accounts have now been brought up to date so the adjourned AGM can be reconvened at the next monthly meeting; Woodsy will send round the notice of meeting (action - Woodsy). We have also received the bill from Malcolm for his work on the accounts. As regards projects, a final bill needs to be submitted to the funders, which Rich will undertake (action - Rich); all told the project returned a £400 overspend. Finally, Mike stated we required a monthly operating costs schedule to assist in future financial planning; Jules will provide this (action - Jules).
2. Formation of funding sub-group: Rich and others have been investigating fundraising and we've had some offers of assistance. Sean felt that funding ought to come within the remit of the Strategy Group; this was agreed and funding will be on the agenda of its next meeting.
3. Reuse project report: The reuse project has been going well, with 16 machines sold in the last 3 weeks. All sales are now being properly recorded in CiviCRM. In addition, Room 6 has now been converted into a tidy storeroom/workroom thanks to the efforts of Mat and Guy. As a means of gaining more revenue from the project it was proposed by Sean and seconded by Pete that after the original 3 months' warranty has expired, buyers are offered the option of a further 3 months' warranty for £25. This was unanimously agreed. Finally, Mike mentioned his earlier email to the daily list suggesting a simplified desktop for the machines featuring (like the eeePC) featuring icons for email, web browsing, office suite, etc.) and setting the default file format for oowriter to .rtf; Mike will recommend this to BW metapackage maintainer Ben (action - Mike).
4. Knowle West Web update: Mike updated the meeting on his recent work on the captive portal page, which has been redesigned and features the latest video stream from Knowle West Media Centre; however, the sponsor logos still need finalising. Mike is to visit Circle Interactive to investigate further development using Drupal's organic groups (action - Mike). As regards the LTSP suite installation, Acesabe is still awaiting a final installation specification (e.g. no. of clients, etc.); this is to be raised at the next KW meeting. As regards the infrastructure roll-out, Sean is liaising with Knowle West whilst Mike is liaising with Lloyd on the technical side. Overall, Mike lamented the lack of a written specification for the whole project (particularly for the hardware), which has exacerbated matters, although on the positive side, he has supplied Cityspace with the method statement and risk assessment required for the infrastructure installation. Finally, Rich and Lloyd will be spending 5 days next week with a cherry-picker doing the infrastructure installation.
5. Vining Walk: Rich informed the meeting that Rosie has moved elsewhere and the project has essentially stalled for the time being until alternative arrangements can be made.
6. Co-op South West Trade Fair, 1st December, Watershed: Woodsy and Rich will be attending this event with a selection of kit and literature.
7. Portland Sq. event, Opening the Doors to Autonomy, 29th November: Rich and Woodsy had been contacted by Ben Pearson with a view to our participation in the event. In addition to Rich and Woodsy, Acesabe and Mike expressed an interest in going along: all will liaise on what we should do, e.g. LTSP demonstration, installs, selling refurbished machines, giving away distros (action - Rich, Woodsy, Acesabe and Mike). Ben will be ringing tomorrow (Wednesday) to discuss matters further.
8. Voscur Funding Fair, Greenway Centre, Southmead, 19th November: Woodsy had forwarded details of this event to the daily list, with a view to attending. It was agreed that Jules and Woodsy would attend (NB: subsequently agreed that Jim would attend in Woodsy's stead as originally agreed by Strategy Group).
9. Knights News Challenge bid: Mike, Rich, Woodsy and Sam had been working up a bid for this $5 mn. p.a. fund to develop open source media projects. In the final stages, Lu and Jim were also involved in producing supporting documentation for the bid. Our bid, entailing partnering media centres with local communities to produce local multimedia content and presenting it via Drupal captive portals, finally went in at midnight GMT on Saturday. From the bid we have got a very attractive brochure (the supporting documentation, with artwork and layout produced by Eduardo Imaska) that can be used for other purposes, for which Mike suggested we investigate printing costs.
10. Linux Lounge: John informed the meeting of progress with his bus project (which looks very impressive from the pictures he produced). The interior is now fitted out as an IT facility (10 workstations, 2 control station) upstairs and a fully fitted kitchen downstairs. The bus can be used for mobile training and events, in addition to which he has approached local authorities to suggest its use as a command and control centre for emergencies. As regards network connectivity, a wifi antenna is to be installed on the roof, although other options will subsequently include ADSL and 3G. For power John is looking at plasma technology. The meeting was most interested and impressed in John's work and would like to arrange a visit to view the bus.
11. Events: Mike presented suggestions for events we may like to attend next year, comprising Hacktionlab (May, Wye valley), Sunrise (beginning June), Glastonbury (mid-June) and the Big Green Gathering (start of August), possibly with the Linux Loung bus. For Sunrise and BGG, Mike is suggesting running an open source stage; he's liaising with Amias re Sunrise. For the BGG/Glastonbury a Be The Media is also being proposed. Mike will add the relevant dates to the diary (action - Mike).
12. Network and network documentation: Mike has made some progress mapping and documenting the network, although this will be a lengthy process. The meeting expressed its gratitude to Mike for his work to date.

AOB

1. Christmas/Solstice/insert_festival_of_choice event: It was suggested that this be held at Werburghs as a fundraising event; as regards fundraising a geek quiz night with BBLUG, Underscore, Dorkbot and Chaostreff was suggested.
2. New volunteer: The meeting welcomed Simwinji Zeko as a new volunteer to the co-op.

Date and time of next meeting: Tuesday, 2nd December 2008 at 6.30 pm, Room 5, St Werburgh's Community Centre