Vive Board Of Directors Meeting - Sept 12 15:00 MDT

The meeting started Sun Sep 12 2004, 14:21. It was held via IRC, in the #vivelecanada channel of irc.freenode.net. Attendees were: sthompson, jvanherk, Milton and Dr Caleb. Bob was unable to attend. (user sign on names used here, instead of IRC nicknames) First item on the agenda was whether new board members had read the Bylaws (in the Board of Directors section, not accessable to the public), and if they felt there were any additions to them. New Board Members: The new board members were Milton and Dr Caleb. Nick had resigned from the board, as was his wish when new board members were found. The bylaws are an important step to incorporating Vive le Canada. Incorporation: Methods were discussed to get Board members signatures on the incorporation documents, as currently the board is very diverse geographically. Four memebers of the board may be in Edmonotn over the coming Thanksgiving weekend, and that may be an opportunity for another Board meeting, and to get the incorporation papers signed. At least 3 members of the board will be there, and it was felt that this was enough members needed to sign the document. Other members can sign at a later date. Board Members: The next order of business was to elect President, Vice President, Treasurer and Secretary to the board. Jvanherk nominated Milton as Treasurer, seconded by Dr Caleb. Milton accepted. The position of interim VP was discussed, and jvanherk was reluctant to accept the position as he is out of the country right now. Jvanherk was nominated for VP by Milton, seconded by Sthompson and he accepted. Milton nominated Dr Caleb for Secretary , seconded by jvanherk, and was accepted by Dr Caleb. Bob Price was nominated member at large by sthompson, pending his acceptance. A call was put out for a couple more members at large, to help with other projects. It was discussed that Members at large were preferred, as task can be assigned or accepted depending on the persons abilities and desire to do a job. One regular member ov Vive in particular was nominated for Volunteer Co-ordinator, and two others for members at large. They will be contacted in the coming days. Finances: Financials were also discussed. Since the end of the federal election, bandwidth costs are down. Running Vive is of minimal costs, providing we don't exceed bandwidth restrictions of our hosting provider. Jvanherk has mostly been paying these out of pocket. There were some funds available left over from Video sales. All members voted in favour of using these funds to go towards Incorporating Vive le Canada. Most of the money in the account was from private donations. Other methods of generating revenue were discussed, including banner ads on all webpages. It's been Vive's policy not to do this, mainly we don't want to ally or give the impression that we ally ourselves with any corporation, which is why Vive runs only Open Source software. In addition, the revenue potential is very minimal. If a socially concious Canadian advertiser were to approach us, we might re-consider. For now, donations are the only way to go. Meeting Frequency and Attendence: It was decided that monthly board meeting will be held on the second Sunday of each month, via IRC if member are not in the same city. It was also discussed that the public would be invited to attend, but they would have to follow meeting procedure and be recognised by a member of the board before speaking. This could be enforced by Jvanherk, as he is the channel moderator on the IRC site. People could be kicked and banned for violations of this policy. Site changes: Dr Caleb brought foreward an idea that the site should promote more original content to it's readers. There are already several authors posting original content, but we have a vast readership, some of whom are 'inside' stories that all Canadains may be interested in, similar to Janis Schmidt's struggle against injustice for native peoples. We could also set up PayPal links so that the author could be compensated on a voluntary basis for their work, with a small percentage going to Vive for hosting. It was also discussed that a calendar event should be added to inform the readership of the board meeting schedule so they could attend. Meeting adjourned. Posted by Vive le Canada Secretary, Dr Caleb.