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Annual Meeting

Boone County Remc Meeting Room
Lebanon, Indiana 46052

April 14, 2003
12:00 P.M.

The Annual Meeting was convened on 04/14/02 at 12:00 pm. The meeting’s normal time in March had been postponed as the Boone County REMC meeting room site was unavailable. President John Wallace called the meeting to order and welcomed all to the proceedings.

Those attending: Jane Brandenburg, Terry McCain, Chad Martin, Linda White, John Wallace, Tom Garoffolo, Dave Truitt, Randy Parsons, and Bart Barnes.

State of the Network Report from John Wallace, President: (No written report) Our url is referenced frequently in several area newspapers. The number of our continues to climb which tells John that we are becoming a very recognized and valuable source of community information which is what we all are trying to accomplish. His goals, as the presiding officer are somewhat repetitious this year - acquire new members; and to continue to expand our banner graphics which help cover our bills.

Election of directors: John Wallace and Chad Martin, are Directors up for Re-Election this year as Directors. Tom Garoffolo moved and Jane Brandenburg seconded the motion for their re-election to the Board of Directors. Both were present at the time this item was discussed and indicated a willingness to stay on in this capacity. Those members present voted in favor of the proposed slate of the two individuals named by President Wallace by acclamation. There were no contested races.

System Administrator Report: Terry gave her annual report. The calendars being used on the site are producing great time savings - Linda said she saves at least 3 hours each month. So does the 4-H programming. Site Stats from Terry indicated the following: 73 site/home pages; 31 email lists with 4465 email ID subscribers (top email lists with subscribers are hmmpl at 830, 4-H with 633 ,and bccn listed 662). There are 11 calendars in place as of today. Specific BCCN stats = 3,546,328 “hits” in 2002 - this equates to 9,715 hits per day. There are 27.4 gigabytes of information transferred in 2002 with an average of 78 MB of information transferred per day. May 2002 was the busiest month and November the second busiest (due to elections in each). The busiest day of the week is Tuesday, then Monday, then Wednesday. 2 p.m. is the busiest hour of the day, followed closely by 1:00 pm & 3:00 pm. There were 50,828 BCCN home page requests. The 15 busiest directories: Lebanon H.S.. WEBO ; BCCN; Lebanon Public Library; Lebanon Community School System; Lebanon Middle School, BCCN Home Page; Boone Community Foundation; Election page; Thorntown Public Library, City of Lebanon, Administration, Lebanon Police Dept, Calendar and Zionsville Schools. There were 4194 searches of the general BCCN site, and 554 searches of the Area Plan Commission site. 402 Postcards were sent from the site. The $50 calendar program used by Terry has worked extremely well. She can merge several programs. Terry bought the program on her own and stated it would save her some time and was well worth the cost. Terry keeps a binder of the maintenance that she performs on the server, and all of the BCCN documentation is in that folder if it is needed in event of an emergency. Most of her work is done remotely. John asked that the gratitude of the board be passed to Ralph Walker and the School Board. This is a very valuable service that the schools allow BCCN to accomplish.

General Summary: John lauded the efforts of Terry McCain, our system administrator and the contributions she has made to our organization. A big Thank You also went out to Lilly for the recent grant moneys received to continue our work.

Treasurer Report: Unfortunately there has been some turnover in this position. Rebecca was not able to continue in this office John made the report in her absence and as a Ball State Grad said there is about $13,000.00 in the bank account. This is the general account. There may be some other funds available that should have been transferred per Terry. She is thinking about 18,000 for her memory. John indicated that there will be a full report issued from the Community Foundation. John thanked DFT again for doing the taxes.

No further business for the annual meeting. The annual meeting is now over with at 12:25 a.m.

The Monthly Board Meeting for April, 2003 is convened immediately thereafter.

April BCCN Board Meeting

Home Show Report: Randy Parsons worked a lot during the home show and was thanked for all his efforts. Lebanon Utilities set up a wide area network, and as a result the BCCN site was available for people to see at the home show. Chad Martin brought up discussion of some questions asked at the home show. Chad explained to many that we were a not for profit organization. There was a lot of promotion for this years show. Ads were placed in the Metro North newspaper. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway had some free games set up. Rotary has taken over the Friday night activities. We are now out of the sticky notes which were all passed out during the show. Rebecca was past the booth all three nights at the show. John said they gave out a lot of “stuff”. There are still some mugs that are available. The bookmarks and pencils are less expensive than the sticky notes and could also be put to good use. The show is difficult to schedule and next year there will not be problems for the year. ( Randy arrived for the meeting at this point and John restated his thanks for his able assistance during the show) Randy said about 60% of the people who stopped at the booth were always positive - they had not been to the site but were interested in learning more. If they had kids then they realized that this was the site where their kids went. There were not any “negatives” No suggestions were made either. With the laptop being present you were able to show people what the site was all about. A radio was hung at the site by the Utilities to allow the wireless network to operate. The signal was bouncing within the building due to all of the tin at the site. The radio/laptop really did help out quite a bit. The signal could be made better with time and some modifications. Terry indicated we could have printed out a hard copy of the Home Page for review. It appeared that the booth was selling something as people went by the booth. As such, people sort of walked away from the site. With a screen and the digital projector, we would be even better equipped to show what we do and that we are volunteers. The “look” of the booth was non-profit since the table skirt was missing. We are in a really good location in the main building and we don’t like to think about moving.

Church sites were brought up by Chad. The standard price is $60 per year for setting up a site. The maintenance for the page is free for now. There had been discussion earlier about the costs involved. One web page was established by the WEBO class for a church and then was out of date since it could not be accessed for updates. The church were embarrassed about this so they just had the site removed. Terry asked Chad to have the minister contact her and they would get the site set up again. The church can send updates to Terry for the site or could do those if they wish. There are many editors out there who could do the updates on the site. She compared this situation to the Health Department. Sometimes those folks call Terry and she helps them do the update but they also do most routine maintenance themselves. John said that the organizations we help realize that we are volunteers and when they ask for our help in doing updates, they are very understanding as far as time frame for the updates to occur.

John again mentioned that there is a good relation with the Boone County Clerk’s office. The success of the election coverage in May and November is indicative of this good relationship.

Treasurer’s Position: Linda White said she was willing to do this work w/ certain stipulations. Karen, her boss at Thorntown, has said it was OK but she cannot take to much of her library time to do this work. The “pony express” will re-direct the flow of mail to Thorntown to keep Linda informed. The position was filled by acclamation of the board.

Jane Brandenburg - New business. Jane plans on contacting the Boone County Tourism Board to remind them about BCCN. Jane will drop off several BCCN items (pens, pencils, mugs) with members of the Tourism Board.

Terry asked for reimbursement on the purchase of the CalendarScript program. Linda moved and Jane seconded for the reimbursement of the cost of the $50 program. The vote was unanimous. Terry described several features of the program: searching, importing, and listing by date or by grid. Tom G. thought that Roger N. may want to use for the Lebanon Parks Department. The schools could use it for athletic events. Kathy Fox uses it to list WEBO events, and even the school menus. The program allows multiple passwords and IDs for folks to maintain calendars. TPL has found it so useful that they have a calendar for Library events and another for just staff events.

The Regular Board meeting adjourned at 1:15 p.m.

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