TriJUG board mtg

Sorry for the late notice!

The TriJUG board of directors and a couple ex-board members will be 
meeting at the Morrisville Neomonde (http://www.neomonde.com) on Chapel 
Hill Rd at 5pm on Saturday.  A Google map of the restaurant is here:

 http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=10235+Chapel+Hill+Road+Morrisville,+NC+27560&ie=UTF8&z=15&om=1&iwloc=addr

Here is the agenda:
----------
We'll exchange hellos and otherwise get to know each other better and 
make any last minute adjustments to the agenda as needed. Then, 
proceeding in order:

Old business:

The TriJUG financial balance is very healthy, thanks to Nortel's hosting 
of meetings, and sponsorship of refreshments. But, apart from questions 
of cash flow (i.e. membership, attendance, and sponsorship revenue vs 
costs vis a vis possible changes in fees), we need to attend to our 
duties as a nonprofit corporation. To this end, the first meeting agenda 
item is:

1) Getting TriJUG's financial data into Quick Books format. The steps 
seem to be:
       a) Enter some details
       b) Have the TriJUG accountant confirm our process
       c) Get all relevant info into Quick Books
       d) Turn over the data to our accountant
       e) Get our tax filing into a regular routine
    Dennis and Pete will lead this effort, but volunteers welcome to 
help. TriJUG has some infrastructure problems that are interfering with 
our ability to function and taking away from critical board member time. 
To this end, the second agenda item:

New business:

1) Reworking the board email handling. The TriJUG ISP has gotten 
heartburn over black- listing caused by hacker subversion of TriJUG 
email that is handled by the trijug.org automatic forwarders. A solution 
needs to be found to preempt the ISP simply disabling the forwarders and 
crippling our ability to communicate. Lee needs help locating and 
implementing a solution. If this costs TriJUG some money it would likely 
be well worth it. It's possible a gmail-based solution that forwards 
post-(SPAM)filtered will work for us, or possibly pobox.com can provide 
a solution.


2) Outreach is an obvious priority for TriJUG and Robert Cameron and 
others have offered time and ideas. There was discussion of this at the 
October 17th mtg (notes sent to JUG email list and the relevant portion 
repeated below). Our board meeting should focus on implementing ideas 
we've already enumerated as well as coming up with new ones (in that 
order).

TriJUG Board Mtgs: looking forward

Brief, but reliable monthly board meetings are needed with even the 
simplest structure, such as sitting in the Nortel reception area for 
five minutes to go over issues and share info before going to set up the 
meeting room. This can build into a reliable feed of "minutes" onto the 
jug list (and web archives). But we need to establish a routine, stick 
with the core and refine it over time.

----- Repeat of  October 17 meeting  "minutes" comments with Harold's 
correction to item #9

TriJUG October 17, 2007 Meeting

Harold then solicited suggestions and ideas for how TriJUG can be improved.
Here is what the attendees suggested::

 1) Beer
 2) Low calorie light beer
 3) More email list activity. The discussion list  and list for trading 
job info can
     be found by visiting the TriJUG web site at trijug.org .
     There were coments about how quiet the list is. Someone asked if
     anybody had seemed to be unsubscribed from the email list lately?
     (Nobody thought they had)
 4) Use of the IRC channel was discussed and Phillip Rhodes to send out
     an explanation and invitation to IRC usage to the email list.
 5) Need more publicity and communication: broaden the means of folks
     find out about TriJUG.
 6) Also need more outreach to corporations with Java interests.
 7) Somebody suggested hooking up  with other local user groups such as
     Erlang, Ruby, TriLUG, etc. Cross-group gatherings could be done
     as "tech conferences" for discussion of a broad range of topics, not
     including Emacs vs vi. Since both TriJUG and TriLUG use their December
     meetings for "birds of a feather" type open discussion, it might be
     an excellent opportunity to meet together.
 8) Somebody requested flyers to be able to get them up on company and
     other bulletin boards. Flyers have been made in the past and Pete
     Soper volunteered to update the most recent info he and Chris Brown
     have and publish something online as PDF and as hard copies available
     at the "greeting table" at future meetings.
 9) Somebody suggested  giving members a discount on obtaining 
certifications.
    The how is open, but might include getting local sponsors or maybe the
    TriJUG could subsidize certification costs.  The costs might include
    courses or certification costs.