Monthly Meeting Tues 9 th May 2006

MonthlyMeetings

PRESENT

• Matt T
• Woodsy
• Sean
• Jim
• Rich
• Lloyd
• Julien
• Andy
• Ben G
• Chris P
• Pete F
• Sam
• John

APOLOGIES

• Matt M-W
• Matt L
• May

MATTERS ARISING

AGM FINANCIAL REPORT

Draft report produced, but cannot be finalised without the official accounting year end date. It was agreed that we would have a full financial report, with commentary, on a monthly basis.

AGM FULL AUDIT

A pending lottery grant application requires a full audit. Julien has spoken to the accountant, who doesn't believe we need a full audit. It'll cost about £1,000 for a full audit, or about £500 otherwise. Sam will ascertain whether a full audit is necessary and let Julien know.

MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE CO-OPTEES

Ben G and Matt T have been voted onto the management committee. It was decided to restrict the number of members to 10.

BUSINESS WEST

We have received an invoice for £6,700 from Business West. This is an administrative error, which Sam will address.

BANNERMAN ROAD

We have £2,800 left. Three more people have come forward to be connected. They will be connected in the next 3 weeks by Lloyd and Sean. Vining Walk will then be revisited to see if they can be connected. We have decided not to do this again unless we can secure proper funding.

SUGAR / VTIGER

Someone has skinned Sugar for helpdesk usage and called it Vtiger. Sean has spoken to someone who provides custom skins for Sugar. He can meet our needs for about £200. Sam and Sean will discuss this before the next meeting and have a more solid knowledge of what we require to bring forward.

LEVEL 2 POPS

The Cube would like to be a POP (Level 1 and 2 links). Sean and Sam will arrange to get a backhaul connection to the backbone from there and a local node for Level 2 (client) connections. We have decided to prefer commercial premises to private. Each private property will be decided on as a case-by-case basis. Members will be preferred. Sam and Sean can connect, and have asked to connect as POPs. Matt T and Andy want to connect as soon as signal is good enough. It was decided that members can be connected directly to a backbone node, provided the signal strength is good enough.

REPORTS

• Manchester

The LTSP suite was successfully demonstrated. It was a good place for social networking. The National Computer Centre are interested in partnering us for some mutually beneficial work.

• Geneva

Rich flew out for a few days. They are quite keen to start a relationship with Bristol Wireless. They would like to get street-level access in Geneva. He's talking about hiring two members of staff from Bristol Wireless, and giving Bristol Wireless 15% of the equity. He has about £500,000 on the table and rather grand plans. Sean will place all documentation we have on the Admin wiki.

• Performance Improvement Exercise

We're 2/3rds of the way through the assessment. Early signs are interesting and promising.

FUNDING

• Refugee

Application for around £45,000 over a year submitted.

• Connecting Bristol

Bid has been submitted for £3m cash, plus £4m in kind. We are hopeful to make it to the round where £200,000 will be given to further our bids.

AOB

• VAT Registration : We have agreed to become VAT registered to avoid potential tax issues now our income is increasing.
• Video Jukebox : There is a web interface for uploading videos. A separate playlist allows users to add files to the list, which are multicasted in the order requested. It is still in development.

NEXT MEETING

Will be at 18:30 on 06 June 2006. St Werburgh's Community Centre is the venue.