AI Generated Transcript
Good evening, everyone, and welcome to our November BITS board meeting, where we have not as many things to talk about, but I’m sure we will fill the time.
We have some pretty exciting things to bring up, and you’ll hear all about that tonight.
So I think what we’ll do here is we will ask our wonderful Secretary Robin to call the roll.
Good evening, everyone.
President Jeff Bishop here.
Vice President Brad Snyder here.
Secretary Robin Frost.
I’m here and happy to be so.
Treasurer Diane Scalzi here.
Michael Babcock, I am here.
John McCann here.
David Edick right here.
And we would also like to welcome all of our members and friends who have chosen to be with us this evening and spend some time.
Each of you will be recognized individually by name in the written minutes of this meeting.
And with that, Mr.
President, the call of the roll is complete.
Thank you.
I’d like to handle both items three and five on the agenda sort of together.
This has to do with the adoption of our agenda.
The only thing that I have added from what was distributed to the membership is a note for the publications team to talk about the handbook and ask for board approval.
And I was kindly reminded about that by Rosanna.
So I added that little note to the the file that’s in our Dropbox folder.
It simply is just a note.
No, just one basically one line.
So with with that having been said, can I get someone to move both the adoption of our agenda as well as the consent agenda, which for those that do not know, this is I move.
I second.
All right.
Before we call for the vote, for those that don’t know, the consent agenda is all of the reports that are submitted into the packet, which means that committee members do not have to spend as much time at reviewing everything in their community reports unless they feel it necessary to do so.
So I just want to to make that clear.
Great.
All right.
All those in favor.
I I I.
Any opposed?
All right.
And we have minutes from October 9th produced by Robin.
And Robin, did you also want to?
I guess no, we’ll do that and we’ll deal with that in December for the annual meeting.
So I need someone to move.
I’ll move adoption of the minutes of the October meeting is circulated by.
All right.
All those in favor.
I I.
Any opposed?
Excellent.
Let’s see.
So we’re now going to move to Diane and company to talk about our accounts.
And is.
Is Taylor aren’t here as well.
She’s here.
OK, if you can make her a co-host for.
I did.
OK, great.
So she’ll be able to unmute.
OK, great.
Because she’ll talk about the audit report coming up here.
I am here.
OK, hold on one second, Taylor.
We’re going to we’re going to have Diane and Brad play the report.
But Diane, I’ll hand this over to you.
OK, well, so, you know, regarding because I know it came up last month regarding the investment we want to make with Fidelity.
I was able to get a local number where I could call and get an appointment to have someone help me fill out the application form because it’s horribly inaccessible.
And I tried calling that number and didn’t get an answer today.
So I will try again tomorrow.
And hopefully I’m going to have to get transportation all the way over to Troy, Michigan, to see them, apparently.
But, you know, it’ll be worth doing if we can get the thing done.
So, you know, I’ll keep everybody posted on that.
And that’s all I had other than, you know, playing the treasurer’s report.
I just wanted to call this out, unless the board has a serious objection to that.
If you’re going to take an Uber over there, I think that since if you’re strictly doing this just for bits, I think we should refund you the cost of that ride.
That could get.
That sounds like that’s going to be expensive.
It could.
I also can also check to see if paratransit will go over there.
But I just take it.
You’re going to probably have better luck just to, you know, yeah, an appointment and get over there and.
Yeah.
Yeah.
OK.
All right.
I mean, unless the board has an objection to that.
I’ll take it if everyone approves.
Yeah.
Let’s let’s get this done.
And, you know, we’re blind people.
We need to pay for transportation.
Yeah.
Yeah.
OK.
Very good.
Do it.
OK.
All right.
Well, there’s just use your just add your card and make it so.
Yeah.
OK.
OK.
Oh, and by the way, I this is sort of sort of directly related to the accounts.
It seems that Chase and I love just chasing each other.
And they don’t call them chase for nothing.
They do not.
They do not.
And so I spent another day at the bank.
Actually, two days.
I had to do it on third on Wednesday and Saturday.
So this was fun.
But I was an owner on the account, but I could not sign things.
So they would not let me have a debit card.
And we had to go through the whole process again of getting me on things.
But I am now in the possession of a BITS debit card, and I can actually log in and see the BITS account now.
And so all the world is is good.
But I’ll tell you, I think I think it was easier to purchase a house than it was than it was to deal with Chase Bank.
Well, pretty, pretty, pretty amazing.
Yeah.
Except for all the signing for a house.
I loved it when we did it once where it was all digital.
You just click things.
It was wonderful.
Anyway.
OK, so do we want Brad to play the report?
Yeah.
All right, here we go.
Bits Treasurer’s Report, October 1st, 31st, 2024.
Checking beginning balance eight thousand seven hundred and nine dollars credits proceeds from Terry Lynn fundraising.
Fifty five dollars and sixty five cents.
One regular member dues payment.
Twenty dollars.
Twenty twenty four.
A.C.B. convention proceeds one thousand one hundred and seventy one dollars.
Asterix one transfer from PayPal.
One hundred and eighty dollars and forty one cents.
Total credits one thousand four hundred and twenty seven dollars and six cents.
Debits Zoom monthly subscription slash increased meeting size to 500 participants minus fifty three dollars.
Paid memberships pro slash membership management minus two hundred and ninety nine dollars.
WordPress dot com web hosting minus one hundred and fifty dollars.
Total debits minus five hundred and two dollars.
Ending balance nine thousand six hundred and thirty four dollars and six cents.
PayPal beginning balance zero dollars credits.
Ten regular member dues payments.
Two hundred dollars.
One student member dues payments.
Ten dollars.
Total credits.
Two hundred and ten dollars.
Debits PayPal fees minus nine dollars and fifty nine cents.
Asterix two regular member dues refund minus twenty dollars.
Asterix three transfer to checking minus one hundred and eighty dollars and forty one cents.
Total debits minus two hundred and ten dollars.
Ending balance zero dollars and zero cents.
Savings account beginning balance thirty seven thousand one hundred and thirty dollars and forty cents.
Credits interest zero dollars and thirty one cents.
Total credits zero dollars and thirty one cents.
Debits no debits.
Total debits zero dollars and zero cents.
Ending balance thirty seven thousand one hundred and thirty dollars and seventy one cents.
Total for all accounts forty six thousand seven hundred and sixty four dollars and seventy seven cents.
Asterix one total receipts two thousand one hundred and fifty five dollars.
Less total debits.
Nine hundred and eighty four dollars equals total due to bits.
One thousand one hundred and seventy one dollars.
Asterix two.
For information on PayPal fees please visit HTTPS colon slash slash http://www.paypal.com slash US slash W.E.B.
A.P.P.S.
Slash M.P.P.
Slash PayPal hyphen fees.
Asterix three refund per member request based on board policy adopted on September 4th.
Twenty twenty four.
In executive session submitted for audit prepared by Diane Scalzi Bits treasurer November 5th twenty twenty four.
Excellent.
OK.
Diane, I will bring up something in executive session as well, having to do with financing.
OK.
And I know everyone, we’re not hiding something, but you’ll hear about it at the annual meeting, so don’t worry about that.
But it’s something, Diane, that you need to be aware of.
OK.
So just.
I’ll be there.
Remind me.
Just remind me.
OK.
And we do not need to vote on this because it’s going to go up for audit.
I just have one question.
There was a twenty dollar dues payment, I guess that came in by.
Oh, that was physical check.
Yeah.
OK.
I know the story behind it.
Fine.
Yeah.
And of course, all the dues payments, at least up to this point, and this will change, have just been PayPal, because frankly, it was check or PayPal as we only options.
This is going to get a little more complicated going forward.
But I think there will be benefits from broadening, you know, with Stripe, et cetera.
Yeah.
And we’re going to start getting automatic renewals next year because people are automatically putting their bits membership on renewal.
So that’s kind of interesting.
OK.
Taylor.
I am here.
Do you want to talk a little bit about your audit report or do you want to leave it as it stands from what was distributed?
Yeah, the only thing I will add to it is I talked to Larry and we’re going to be basically, I think, as it stands, he’s going to be helping with that part of that.
But I don’t want to say anything official because we have not had a extensive phone call about it.
It was just a brief call we had after one of our meetings on Sunday.
So that’s really all I have.
And then, like I said, right now, I’m ready to take on the internal audit.
Just to be clear, it’s not external.
It’s going to be internal with a group of people who are not on the baseboard.
Right.
So it’s just going to be kind of what they’ve done in the past.
And then I’ve also just taken some things like that.
So that’s kind of my report.
Very simple.
And if you need, you know, the whole thing, it’s in the package.
Yep.
OK.
Thank you, Taylor.
Any questions for Taylor?
Excellent.
I’ll move to my presidential report.
And I’ll try to move through this pretty quickly.
Let’s see.
So over the month of October, the IT team has worked.
And if you read the presidential report, you would have seen this.
But the IT committee with.
Larry Watkinson and Michael Dowie is now leading the team and a number of us assisting in that process rolled out a new membership system for the website.
And we’ll talk more about the upcoming changes that are coming later this year when we talk to the IT committee.
But it’s time for renewals, everyone.
So if you have not renewed your membership and you’re due for that, it’s, you know, it’s time to get that done.
If you need to check on status, then you can get a hold of us and we can assist in giving you that information.
As soon as John gets me the.
I think there were some some edits that needed to be done on this spreadsheet.
But once that’s done, I will be able to automate uploading of all that data.
So you will be able to log in to the best website, go to the account link and look and it will tell you exactly when your membership will expire.
So, you know, you can actually just determine this yourself.
Just use the magic link, log in and check your email for the link.
Invoke that link and you’ll get directly logged into the website.
The town hall event that we held on Sunday, having to do with the renewal process and the new membership tools that are available on the website is now on the front page.
Thank you, Michael Doeys of the BITS website.
We have had requests for people to download.
That file, as opposed to just playing it on the Web.
So we’ll add a download link and allow people to do that later in the week.
Really, the whole purpose of implementing paid memberships pro is to really lessen the burden on the treasurer and the membership chair so that we have one place for the you know, data that comprises our membership data.
We can then export that data and provide it to the national organization.
Very, very quick and easily.
So it makes it really, really nice not having to do a bunch of comparisons.
And we’re still having to do that just a little bit just to get the final data into the membership database.
But once that’s done, then that data should be able to be maintained on the website.
Diane and John will have the ability of going in and editing any of that data and changing expiration dates and any other information that’s required.
And John and Diane will give you training on that whenever you would like to have that done.
Take probably take less than an hour to do so.
No big deal.
The the business of bits is is coming up pretty quickly here in reference to things that are going to be happening.
We have constitutional amendment changes coming.
We have elections coming up.
We’ll hear more about that later in the meeting.
But you know, we’re really encouraging everyone to make sure that you’re planning for all of the meetings that are coming up, both presidential office hours at the end of November, our candidates forum on the eighth, our annual meeting on the 11th, and of course, our board meeting on December 4th.
Boy, then we’ll just all take a break and enjoy the holiday season after that.
Right.
So that’d be nice.
We have some pretty exciting announcements that we’ll make at the annual meeting, and I think it will be one that you won’t want to miss.
And again, make sure that you’re checking your log in for the best website, because that’s how you will vote.
And we will make sure that we have a sample ballot up there for people to play with, for people to practice.
Maybe we’ll do Disney characters or something.
I don’t know.
Michael and I will figure that out.
Figure out how we’re going to do that.
I mentioned the new chair and co-chair of the IT committee, and you’ll hear from from them tonight.
I’ll have them introduce themselves to the membership.
We really want to make sure that that if you want to get involved in the organization, then please do let us know if you’re interested in serving.
All the committees are looking for people to help and really assist in their work.
We’ve had a few people step up and offer to help with fundraising, which is pretty exciting.
So I’m getting that data to and and and I are meeting this weekend to sort of get her up to speed on fundraising.
We had a meeting with the chairs on Sunday having to do with communication, collaboration and fundraising.
And really, what we’re doing here is we’re really trying to facilitate change in the way that we are communicating with one another and making sure that we’re all picking up an oar where we can to assist each other better throughout the organization so that everyone feels supported and and valued in this organization.
So just a just a way of really trying to elevate communication and and really make sure that everyone is hearing from each other.
And we’re just putting some process around that.
And then I left our ask for prioritization.
We now have the ability of of doing customized templates on our membership database so that if you join from specific levels or you have an issue, we can customize that language that will automatically be sent with all kinds of information and whatever we want.
So I’m hoping that the membership committee can assist us in writing up what we want for those specific types of notifications as we, you know, take renewals or any other information that might be requested from our members themselves.
And there’s more on the on the agenda.
Other than that, I think we are good, except for the things that are under old and new business and committee chair reports, so any questions from the board?
All right.
We’re going to move to our committee reports, and we will start with communication as we usually do.
Rosanna, are you here?
I’m here.
Can you hear me?
Yep.
We’re going to take we’re going to we’re going to take you first.
And you haven’t asked for the board, so why don’t you go ahead?
Thank you.
Good evening, everybody, and welcome to November.
Publications has been a little quieter the last month, but nevertheless, we’ve still been getting work done.
Our Facebook page is still being updated by Maryam Murad.
She’s been able to get the events up on the Facebook page.
And the events also go up on Mastodon as well, thanks to Robin.
And I just would like to say that our Mastodon stats are 249 right now.
Yeah, it’s like we started in January.
I think it’s 60.
So, yeah, we’ve come a long way with Mastodon.
And apparently that’s and since we moved over to that new Mastodon server, we seem to have picked up a lot more people when we moved over to that new server.
So that was a really, really good thing.
The other thing, most of everything I wrote is in the packet.
There is we have submitted the handbook to the board, and we are looking for board approval for that from the board.
If it’s approved, it will go up on the website as a preliminary.
And I do use the word preliminary handbook because there are some changes that may need to be made after con and bylaws are adopted at the annual meeting.
Also, the handbook is a living document.
So because it’s a living document, it will from time to time have to be updated and, you know, and changed as necessary.
So publications also does reach out to other committees.
We’ve worked with the fundraising committee.
We’ve worked right now.
I’m doing some some work with Larry as well for the website so that publications get stuff up there that we need to get up there.
So communication is ongoing, which is great.
So at this point, Jeff, I would like to ask the board for their approval for the handbook, if that’s a possibility.
All right.
Board members, have you had a chance to review the handbook?
And does someone want to make a motion to approve it?
I’ll make a move and that it be approved with the qualification that is preliminary, you know, and there will be, of course, changes.
You know, as you’re as Roseanne, I say, it’s David.
I’ll second.
All right.
We have John and Robin.
Any discussion about this?
What?
What did we get it?
Yeah.
September.
Into the yeah, it was sent to the board list.
Yeah, it was sent out.
I sent it out right after the when we met in September.
When I sent it out.
So it had to be around September 10th.
Yeah.
And I forwarded to the board list.
OK, I probably read it then, but it’s yeah, I’m going to find it because I was looking for it sent from Rosanna, so I’ll look for it.
Yeah, I forwarded it to the board.
Yes.
Yeah, I’ll find it because I was looking for it yesterday.
We can we can we can always send it again.
Yeah, I know.
John was heavily involved.
And so we’re getting it in September.
Yeah, I sent it to Jeff in September, so it had to be and I forwarded it around the board meeting.
I got it to the board.
You know, if anyone have you guys have any questions, once you get it, Jeff can send it out again.
If you have any questions, certainly, you know, let me know.
Certainly email me or whatever.
You know, I can address them if need be.
But as John stated, it is preliminary at this point.
But at least it will get up there so that the membership can be familiar with it and those people who will be running for, you know, for this next election, they will be able to access the roles of each thing, each board seat in that handbook as well, so that you are familiar with what you are, the office that you are running for.
And that’s one of the primary reasons why we wanted to get it up there.
Cool.
For clarity, I do see it from Robin on September 15th.
Hey, very cool.
All right.
All those in favor.
All right.
I.
Any opposed?
All right.
Well, we’ll work with Larry and team and figure out where that’s going to go on the website and.
Probably where our other governing documents and other resources are going, and we’ll figure that out.
Well, I guess it should also go under publications as well.
Publications.
It should go under the publications area as well as, I guess, you know, government documents because it’s governing documents.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It’s OK.
Why don’t you coordinate with Larry Watkinson on that and figure out where you guys want it?
And then and then we can and then myself or Michael B or D or.
Whatever can be.
Yeah, no problem.
We’ll do OK.
I don’t think that long, honestly.
I would recommend under the publication documents and also a link to it wherever else it’s needed, front page, whatever.
Yeah.
OK.
All right.
Well, I think you’re on the list.
I think Larry will probably bring this up at some point there and we’ll we’ll venture it back and forth and figure it out.
OK.
All right.
Thank you very, very much.
Have a great night.
Yeah.
Thank you, Rosanna.
My pleasure.
David, since you have the mic, why don’t you go ahead and give your zoom report and then we’ll move over to Murph.
Well, virtually everything is there in the in the report.
But I will mention publicly that Jim O’Neill, Lynn Snyder and Laurie Miller are new hosts.
They’re in training still.
When they’re ready, they’ll be they’ll be there and we have more on the way.
If you’re interested in being a host, send me an email.
It’s my contact information is out there and.
There you go.
Thank you.
OK.
Any questions for David?
David, I have a question.
Yeah.
Go ahead.
And I don’t know if you have an answer.
And first of all, I appreciate your in-depth report, and it was really helpful.
Looks like if my numbers are correct, we have about three percent of our membership attending the BITS chat.
Do you have any ideas on how we can improve that and make it more desirable for other members to participate in?
I would agree with your assessment, and I’m not sure I’m open to ideas, though.
OK, thank you.
Just something to think about.
Yeah.
Yeah, we probably should be thinking a little bit about that and maybe come up with a plan, I would encourage you to talk with your zoom hosts and see if they’ve got some ideas and come back to us with a, you know, some strategic things that we can do to try to elevate that.
Maybe we, you know, plan some events as part of chat and put them in specific rooms and, you know, that kind of thing.
I don’t know.
Might be interesting to.
To at least explore it.
Right.
As mentioned, office is also it had been a attractor to the chat, but most people come in, we move them over if needed, or they go in the office room.
Yep.
Yep.
OK.
Thank you, David.
Merv, are you here?
You can hear me.
Yeah, we hear you.
OK, cool.
Before I begin, David, I’d be happy to talk to you privately about some email that I received regarding that question that was just asked.
OK, well, why don’t you bring it up here?
Unless it’s private.
Well, it’s it’s did.
Well, there are some people, some people come into the chats and leave because they there’s a lot of a lot of overwhelming voices all at the same time.
And they have they have written and said that they can’t get heard and that they were hoping for some some breakout rooms with some specific topics.
And they cannot get noticed, especially people who have mild hearing losses.
Got it.
Got it.
I’ve gotten more than one email about that.
That’s great.
I didn’t want that to look like a criticism.
I don’t know.
No, no, no, no, no.
I tend to get a lot of emails.
That’s constructive.
That’s constructive.
OK.
I tend to get a lot of emails because of, you know, email management.
People tend to write me, which is cool.
I like it.
That’s that’s that’s great.
I mean, I mean, that’s why we’re here to solve problems.
Right, guys.
So, yeah.
Oh, I’m very happy when I receive emails.
It makes me very happy.
I want to make that person perfectly clear.
Love that.
OK.
Yeah.
What is the mention to things, but I’ll do it whenever.
Go ahead.
Go ahead.
We will have special chats around Thanksgiving.
Watch for that.
And as a pro and Christmas and Christmas and as usual, we’ll pause chat during any open election or board meeting.
Yes, we always do that so that we’re not, you know, having any issues with.
You know, election process or anything of that nature.
OK.
All right.
Go ahead.
I have two I have two things that are not in the packet.
Number one, we are really simplifying the footers.
The two things that are going to go in there at this point are number one, the website we’ve been getting a lot of people that say, I don’t want to go to the website or I’ve never been to the website.
So we want to make sure that website link is there because the website is getting really awesome.
Number two, the fundraising.
We want to put the fundraising there.
So we want to keep the footers simple.
Number two.
We are are having a vice chair because I do a lot of front facing stuff.
The individual that has agreed to be the vice chair is very good at the web facing stuff.
And that is Jason Castingway.
We’re going to be the vice chair.
All right.
We work very well together.
That’s that everything else is in the packet.
That is amazing.
That delights me to no end is what that does.
Great.
Any questions for Merv?
And who’s going to do the changes to the footer?
Is that Jason?
Jason, Jason, I can do some, but Jason’s a master.
Yeah, I was going to say Jason does it fast.
Yep.
All right.
Excellent.
Um, let’s talk about I don’t think she’s here, so I’ll give highlights.
And I think this sort of kind of goes along with what’s coming up in November.
Anyway, I’ll talk about office for education, and then I’m going to hand things over to Brad, who can give the the presentation and convention reports.
I’ll give some just brief things here on education.
We have our office classes is going like gangbusters, and we still have very, very high attendance in that upwards of 180 to 200 people each week.
And lots and lots of people downloading, which reminds me I have to get this new recording up this week.
You know, people downloading the content from all of the folders that we have it distributed to so that people can gain access to that, as well as the new assignments that we’re giving out each week.
And we’re planning a major discussion with Microsoft coming up on.
Let’s see, that’s the ninth, I think.
Yeah, the ninth.
So we’re pretty excited about that.
So it’s going really, really, really well.
As part of that, we asked for volunteers to assist in testing the new version of Outlook that’s been released by Microsoft, which is a a desktop app that kind of looks like a Web page.
And we’re providing Microsoft significant feedback about the new Outlook client and getting them specific feedback so that we can ensure that it’s going to work really well for people when Windows Mail is replaced later this year.
So pretty exciting stuff.
I’m going to hand things over to Brad and he can go over presentations and then convention and then we’ll go from there.
Go ahead, Brad.
OK, thank you, Jeff.
And hello, everyone.
Presentations during November, in addition to our regular recurring presentations, Applebytes, MacBytes, Basics with Bits.
We had a presentation on the new Reminders app in iOS 18.
It got a refresh, shall we say, that was done by a BITS member, Sri Roy.
And Sri did a great job on that.
We had another presentation.
We were going to do Braille screen input in iOS 18.
That also got a refresh.
But our intended presenter, Maria Kristic, came down with a nasty cold.
She’s I’m laughing because she sent me a recording so I could hear how terrible she sounded.
Maria is great.
I work with her in another group as well.
So she’s she’s clever.
So anyway, we are working to get that rescheduled.
And I mentioned that with Maria.
Maria was concerned that there’s already so many presentations on Braille screen input, but I want to let her know.
And I will in person when I talk to her.
I’ve had a number of requests.
People think, no, we want BITS to do a presentation.
So Maria will be happy to hear that.
She was afraid it would be overkill for her to do one.
And I want to assure her it would it will not be overkill.
And let’s get that scheduled here in the next few weeks if we can.
So that was November coming up in I mean, that was October.
Excuse me.
I believe I did say in November we had so in November, November, we have again, our reoccurring presentations.
But on November 20th, back by popular demand, our very own Jeff Bishop is going to redo or represent his presentation on bits and pieces of family tech.
Often the blind person in the household tends to be the tech guru for family and friends.
And we are often called upon to help out with various issues.
Plus, during the holidays, people get gifts and they need to set them up.
And so we will be presenting our bits and pieces of family tech.
And that’s a Wednesday, November 20th.
And then speaking of setting up, I happen to know that during Herbie’s AppleBytes, he’s going to go over.
This was by request from one of our members.
And we we like to respond to these as quickly as we can.
Herbie’s going to do a presentation.
His AppleBytes, he’s going to talk about setting up and getting started with a new Apple watch.
So that’s what we have coming up here.
November.
Also, I’d like to say it’s not in the one note, right?
Oh, yeah.
Well, that’s going to be basics with bits.
Excuse me.
Yes.
And that will be on the 23rd.
Yes.
Are you going to do that in one session or two?
I don’t know.
It’s going to depend on how far we get.
Yeah.
And it’s pretty complicated.
So we’ll we’ll try to finish it in one.
But it’s probably going to take two.
Yeah, so we’ll start with part one.
And that’s kind of what Deborah and I are planning on, because there will probably only be one basics with bits during December.
And that will be your part two on one notes.
And we can make it we can make it.
Yeah.
December will be kind of skimpy on presentations because the holidays at the end of the month, the bits, election and other things.
We I do plan to do Mac bytes in December because that will be the night before the annual meeting.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves.
That is December.
I did want to say I have a team working on editing these presentations.
I haven’t had a chance to Larry and Michael.
I both had their hands full with all the stuff going on on the website.
So I haven’t reached out to Larry yet.
I had been communicating with Michael when he was the chair, but we have been getting caught up on our we actually be working on the backlog.
There’s a lot of stuff that Michael D. took off the old website and get that up there.
And he’s been working on transcripts and things.
But I’ve added Jamie Pauls is now helping us out with editing.
And Jamie has been around and doing editing for a long, long time.
And thank you, Jeff, for referring him to me.
He had a nice conversation and Jamie is working on it.
He likes doing that kind of thing.
And he did our membership, the town hall for all.
Yeah, he he got that edited within hours of when I submitted it to him because I told him that was a rush job.
So anyway, we are working on that.
I will get together with Larry and we’ll find out what his I know they got to get all this other stuff that’s much more.
It’s that takes forefront right now, getting the membership and the dues and all that stuff going.
But anyway, that is my presentations report.
Now, the convention report is even shorter because we’re on hiatus.
As you recall, there’s a meeting coming up, though.
Yeah, we got to talk about that.
She’s picked a night.
I can’t go.
So apparently everybody loves that night.
So we’ll have to see what we’re going to do.
But anyway, we are fixing to get started.
She’s got it set for end of December.
But I was going to say we if you remember last month, we we finally got our statement and I know there’s it in Diane’s.
We were in the black.
We got money from ACB and said I had to pay money.
And we get the money.
Yeah, so it was in Diane’s report.
All right.
I just forgot.
It was in there.
She got the check.
Apparently, OK, the electronic or whatever it called.
I just got a check.
Anyway, so she reported it.
So she’s received it.
We’ve received it.
She reported it.
So anyway, we’re done with Convention 2024.
And our eyes are focused ahead on 2025 here in Dallas, where I am down at the shiny reunion.
Hyatt, so we’ll get started working on that in January.
So, yeah, and we’re going to make that really easy, by the way.
But we’ll talk about that later.
Yeah, good.
But Brad, you and I should discuss it because.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
We’re doing something pretty huge at convention.
So, yes, I know we’ve kind of mentioned that a little bit.
But yeah, we’re looking forward to that.
Huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge.
But we’re giving it away.
We got to wait till the huge, huge, huge annual meeting.
Yes.
Yeah, I know.
We have a lot of ideas we’re working on.
I’m also working on co-chairs for both presentations and convention, so more to come on that.
Yeah, that was the that was the idea that came out of that Sunday meeting.
Right.
So I have co-chairs.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Which is yeah, the meeting is going to get the chairs meeting we had after the town hall.
Yeah.
And by the way, we’re looking for a co-treasurer to help sort of help Diane and just sort of at least be there to be of assistance.
So if someone’s interested in doing that, then, you know.
So, yeah.
OK.
Anything else from you, Brad?
That is it until there’s more to say, which is next month.
OK.
I believe Larry is back and he dropped off, but I believe he’s back.
So I’m going to hand things over to Larry and Michael to give us a report on all things related to IT.
Gentlemen, I would try to keep this.
There’s a lot going on, so I would try to if someone can make Larry a co-host.
He is.
OK, great.
Yeah.
Let’s try to keep this for him, though.
He’s come and gone.
Larry and Kathy.
Yes.
He’s come and gone a couple of times.
Yeah, I know.
He started his hand.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He’s there.
OK.
And Michael Dowie’s, too.
Yes, he’s also there.
There you go.
OK, Larry, go ahead.
Sorry about that.
We’ve lost Internet here three times this afternoon.
So that’s right.
I take people to fix it.
That’s right.
So very, very quickly, you have received the report.
I encourage any of you who have questions on details to reach out to me.
I do want to report that obviously I am in a month on the job here and immediately was asked to help with the project that we’re working on with membership.
In part of the agreement I made with Jeff Jeff in saying that I would do this is that one.
We would build this committee to be very transparent, not only for the board, but for the membership to.
I wanted to be supported by a vice chair who had the strengths and abilities to do the technical pieces that I can’t bring to the table on a consistent basis.
And Michael Joyce came forward in his vice chair of the committee.
And I want to very quickly just sort of say thank you to him and the team he’s working with for the improvements and all transparency.
I want to defer and allow Michael to have a moment of this time for the committee report to add anything that he would like to.
Thank you, Larry.
Michael.
Thank you, Jeff.
I just want to first say thank you to everybody that has worked on this project.
I think we had a huge undertaking and we did it.
We we built something great here with this membership web page.
Of course, everything that you build will have bugs and we’re going to work through those things.
So just bear with us and be patient as we get those things done.
It was mentioned today that we have that we wanted to add a download for the audio button on the town hall that has been added during the meeting.
So anybody that wants to listen to that can go and either listen on the website or download.
And the last thing I want to say is that it’s going to be an exciting time.
We’re working on building out several things on the website and we’re going to have audio content and nice images and all those things coming up very soon.
And I also want to advise the board that we need to work very closely with publications and communications and everybody else so that not only do we just throw things on the website, but it looked visually appealing for low vision in our in our sighted users as well.
So we need to keep that dialogue going and make sure that we just don’t throw things where we think it’s going to work well, but maybe not look as great.
So those are all things that we have to juggle and balance.
But I think we’re very we are a community that works together.
We’re a family.
So I think we’re going to do that.
And so everything else is in the report.
And thank you all for having me as vice chair of this committee.
Yeah, that’s great.
Anybody have any questions for?
And I’ll just round it out with with this.
And that is is that we asked the board and you gave approval for us to have two thousand dollars to do this project or about five hundred dollars.
But we anticipate about two thousand dollar budget into twenty twenty five.
And that’s really helping us.
And we’re buying some plugins that is available to us to help make this project work.
So back to you, Jeff, and thank you.
Yeah, and I suspect that at least the first year of this is going to be less than that two thousand.
But then subsequent years will probably get us closer to that number, because the both the hosting and the the plugins that we’re using, you are half off for the first year.
So that that stuff’s going to double subsequent years after that.
So anyone have any questions?
If you want to volunteer to help with any of the audio project, sign up with Senator President or send it to me.
We need volunteers.
We’re going to make this successful.
So we need your help.
There you go.
That’s great.
Thank you.
You bet.
And I just said she’s not going to be giving a full report tonight, but I thought we would at least make sure that everyone hears her voice.
She is the new chair of the fundraising committee.
And I just wanted her to just briefly introduce herself and she’ll come back with a report later at the next board meeting.
So, Anne.
All right.
Thank you, Jeff.
My name is Anne McKay-Bacon.
I live in Detroit, Michigan.
I can tell you a little bit of what I’ve been doing the last several years.
I’ve been a teacher, just retired.
Well, not really just probably retired in the last four years, but I’m still active in the state.
I work with teachers, training new teachers that are coming into the field and working with the tech team that’s with our Department of Education, low incident outreach program.
But in terms of ACB, I am the vice president of the Mittens phone chapter.
Diane is a member of that chapter.
I under that affiliation, I’ve been a nominations chair and I worked on the grant committee as a chair and we did fundraisers for the affiliate on the state level.
I’m on the scholarship committee.
And I’m a member of BITS and I’m on my way into being a part of the blind teachers since I am a teacher and I’m still teaching.
So that gives you a little bit of what I’m doing.
And my husband and I have a business information plus, and we work with.
And the low low vision and blind seniors, as well as he’s an artist, he does a lot of artwork.
Great.
That’s my experience.
That’s awesome, man.
Thank you.
And and and I are meeting this weekend to kind of get her up to speed and then she’ll work with her new committee and and, you know, start that process up.
And we’re going to make sure that we fully support her and her efforts in the committee throughout their work.
So thank you, Anne.
Diane, did you want to bring anything up from your report from the budget committee?
Yeah, I didn’t I wasn’t even able to check to make sure that it was in the packet.
It is.
OK, good.
Of course it is.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I just you know, I just wanted to just put in the report.
You know what I shared with the committee when, you know, when I was contacted about, you know, spending the money to to buy all this wonderful all these wonderful software licenses that will, you know, help us become a more efficient organization.
And I think well, I guess my question was because I don’t know that we’ve ever voted on accepting a budget for twenty twenty five yet.
And so do we you know, do we need to do that?
We probably do.
Do you have a do you have the proposed budget?
And if you do, I would what I would recommend is that you send it out to the board and have them review it.
We’ll vote on it in the December meeting.
OK.
All right.
Yeah, I could.
Yeah, I’ll just it was.
I know we reviewed it once, but, you know, it would be good.
This was in I thought it was in the packet.
I will look at if it’s not there, though, I will.
And where do you want me to send it to?
To the board list.
OK.
Yeah.
All right.
Thank you for that.
Thank you.
OK, great.
Any questions for Diane?
OK.
John, I’m going to hand things over to you to handle constitution bylaws and membership.
OK, constitution of bylaws is fairly simple.
I know that the draft proposed bylaws were sent out in the last board packet.
However, I raised the issue with Jeff that, you know, people aren’t going to really read it because they’re going to get it’s buried in with a bunch of other reports.
And I felt it should be sent out on its own.
And it was including the BITS members list, which is the list where it certainly should be circulated, because when we established that list, we made it clear to everyone who had their ears on that that list was going to be used sparingly, but it was going to be our vehicle for giving people all notices required to be given by the D.C. nonprofit statute to which we’re in for the you know, that sets.
And if they opt out, hey, we accept no responsibility for your failure to be notified.
The only thing and I know you wanted me to talk about it, Jeff, but I’m not sure how much there is to say at this point.
I know people with the new membership system coming online.
There was a thought that we should the draft constitution, as it is now, has memberships like a grace period of basically a quarter of a year out to March 31st.
There was a thinking that we should roll that back to February 15.
And I’m not opposed to that.
But, you know, I’ll have to revisit the Constitution and draft.
Well, the only reason I thought that we should do that is to give time for people to gather data to put into MMS or for meaning, meaning we should keep it at the 31st.
I’m inclined to keep it there, first of all, because we can’t add any new records after March 15.
And I mean, I don’t know what the ideal date is, but I do not.
I want to give people a reasonable amount of time, maybe, say, from November one to February one, and then you send that a notice.
We don’t hear from you by the 15th.
We’re kicking you off the rolls.
I don’t want to be sitting here on the 16th, kicking people off.
And then on the 20th of, you know, we got to we got to get a payment.
Yeah.
And then I’m putting people back on.
So, well, the cool thing is, is the system will do this automatically for us.
Well, yeah.
One one thing we have to check on is right now it’s it’s hard coded to be seven days after the expiration date, meaning that it would be January 6th.
And so we have to figure out how to change that.
And we but we have but we have two months to change that.
So we do have two months.
I know.
I mean, it’s just a matter of figuring that.
I think we have to add a hook for it.
So, yeah, Michael, if you could research it, that would be great.
I think I think the new membership system is going to be the tail that wags the dog.
But, you know, I mean, we were pretty much committed to it now, although I have some reservations and there’s lots of kinks that I have yet to discuss with you.
We at least got the notifications issue resolved for you.
So, in fact, you should be receiving stuff from Treasurer now.
Yeah, but now but but now it’s automatically sending to you.
So you won’t get any more forwards from.
Well, we’ll discuss that a bit further.
That’s all I have on constitution.
You want me to proceed to membership?
Yep.
Go ahead.
All right.
Let me just see something.
So I was afraid of this.
Let me go to another screen.
I don’t know that we need to go through all the numbers.
Well, I’m just going to.
Well, frankly, the numbers are already out of date.
OK, some people moved into twenty five since I wrote that report.
And since I gave you numbers, when you all had the opportunity to see the numbers, although those of you who are not on the board will not have seen them, I’ll bullet them.
Oh, they’re in the packet.
Oh, I never got that packet, by the way.
That’s another discussion.
All right.
It went to the it went to the BITS members list with the agenda.
All right.
Well, it’s somewhere.
Maybe if not, I’ll ask you to resend because.
All right.
I’ll send it to you.
Well, don’t do that unless I request it, because I hate to receive.
It’s just it’s been a flood.
It’s just been a zoo.
All right.
The point is that I mean, membership is huge.
Our certification list, OK, is nine twenty seven, of which now it’s under six hundred are expirations for twenty twenty four.
At this point, I really would like to urge the people who think they don’t expire until twenty until the end of twenty five or twenty six not do anything with the website.
I really think it would create less work all the way around if we just dealt with the twenty twenty four members.
Anyone who has a question, please send to me at John J.H. and at Jam site that net, you know, we are in the midst of uploading data in this at the other thing.
Jeff, you saw what I sent to the board and the different spreadsheets and God.
What did Dave Kingsbury did was was huge for the first time ever at the ACB board meeting held this past Saturday.
They actually owned a membership figure of seven thousand nine hundred sixty eight.
That’s what was said at the open board meeting on open mic.
And I thought it was an interesting stat that bits members comprise about eleven point six three percent of that.
That’s kind of frightening, which is.
Yeah, it is sort of frightening.
We and last thing I want to wrap up with, which was an event.
Something has just happened today.
We had two more best life members.
OK, we did.
Halek Ventus and Mary Ward.
Yeah.
So in your packet, you’ll see 56 life members.
Guess what?
It’s 58 now.
Yep.
And I’ve heard from others who are planning on doing that.
So this is this is exciting.
Yeah, this is so that’s that’s the membership report.
And as said in the report, I really appreciate all the hard work.
I mean, Diane and I were like in constant communication, straightening things out and big kudos to Diane.
Huge shout out to Dave Kingsbury and all that he taught me in this past.
His timing couldn’t have been better in terms of the classes.
And, you know, to the IT team that’s been working hard on the automagic world that we’re trying to establish for BITS memberships.
There you go.
Jeff and John.
Yeah.
Could could.
What I wonder if it would be better if they use the treasurer at BITS.
Oh, yeah.
Actually, OK, that’s that may be a good point.
If they use the treasurer at BITS.org, that way you would see my response.
I would see yours.
Yes.
That would be fine.
Yeah, that’s a good correction.
That’s right.
I appreciate that.
Because I really I’m just going to be straight up.
I want to discourage that there’s three hundred and twenty six people who are BITS life members, expirations in twenty six expirations in twenty five.
Optimally, I don’t want to have to deal with them.
Right, right, right, right, right.
Well, and we’ll make this pretty easy once.
I’ll work with you, John, and get the data and we’ll get that uploaded by Saturday.
It’s assuming I get the data from you.
All right.
OK.
Yeah.
All right.
Any other questions for John?
Excellent, John.
Good work.
OK, I do not believe that we need to worry about credentials reports at the moment, right, John?
No, no, not not at this point.
Like the list really should be established as of 30 days out from the meeting is when it should be established.
So that would be Veterans Day.
And the fact of the matter is we don’t need to care for purposes of a list.
We do not need to care about people who are going from twenty five to twenty six.
No, no, we do not.
It’s only twenty four.
You know, which pot theory doesn’t matter because twenty four or beyond, you know, and that is nine hundred twenty seven.
That’s what it is.
Viola, you had a question.
Hi, Jeff.
Actually, today I also became a life member.
So that’s how fast things are changing.
God bless you.
Yeah.
Congratulations.
I mean, congrats and all.
I didn’t say that just to be, you know, no, no, no, no.
You’re fine.
No, you’re great.
No, that’s fine.
Thank you.
You get recognized.
That’s great.
No, thank you so much for that.
That’s that’s good.
Yeah.
I mean, how did you find the process, by the way?
Oh, it was simple.
You know, I just asked somebody one question and then I had to go in and go to the home page and had to go a couple of places because the first the first page was just full of the town meeting.
But the link for the zero to account, right?
Yes.
I had to go and go home and then under account.
But it wasn’t on the first page.
I had to go.
Yeah, I saw the first page.
Yeah.
Yeah.
OK.
You know, Michael, I’m wondering if we can add another menu like we did for a gift to make that simpler, to be able to jump directly to read to.
We can talk about that later.
Yeah, we’ll need to discuss that, because again, adding more and more menus and things like that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
We’ll we’ll figure it out.
OK.
Just trying to get things quicker here.
OK.
Very good.
I’m going to move over to.
We were moving pretty quick tonight, people.
I’m going to move over to Debbie Hazleton.
Will they nominate a report?
Hi, how are you?
Hello.
I’m I’m well.
That is amazing.
Amazing that I’m well.
No, it’s just amazing you’re here.
I mean, after last month.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, nominating is quite exciting.
We are.
It’s a neat group.
I love this group.
And, you know, critical thinking, good ideas.
We’re really it’s we’re we’re all kind of stretching and growing.
And we’re asking good questions and and we’re interviewing.
We’re we’re just doing it.
We’re on it.
So.
The slate will be announced on the 15th.
I do have a couple of questions.
I don’t know if we are going to put up things on the website, if we’re going to if that’s going to be OK with somebody or the web team.
We can.
Yeah.
We can.
Yeah.
OK.
As long as you have the data to put up.
Yeah.
Well, they would supply them after they’ve been on the slate.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I’m going to let are we going to let other people who want to run but are not on the slate?
Are we going to have them wait until the annual meeting?
Yes.
Run from the floor so that they cannot be in the candidates forum either.
They can be in the candidates forum if they declare to you that they’re going to do that.
But we’re not going to take their write up because that’s OK.
That’s fine.
Yeah.
OK.
I think that’s now.
The other question is that because we’re going to have the candidates forum is going to be facilitated by Amanda Selm and next gen.
And Amanda has expressed the desire to have Sheila Young as a host.
But that’s fine.
Are we a community?
Is that no, that’s not a community event.
It’s not a community.
What is it to request?
It would just be a regular bits of it.
So then I don’t have to go set up a link and yeah, we’ll say.
OK, then I don’t have to go through.
No, I was agreeing with you.
I’m sorry.
I don’t have to go through, Cindy.
No, not at all.
No, no, no, no.
It’s not going to be.
Is it going to be streamed?
No, it will not.
No.
OK.
No, no.
Very good.
All right.
Well, that’s all my questions.
All right.
Anyone else have any questions for Debbie?
OK, this brings us to old business, and I just wanted to make sure I put this on the agenda.
The board voted to for the purchases of the I.T. work before the board meeting itself.
And I just wanted to make sure that we represent that in the minutes.
Robin.
Yes, sir.
Yeah, that would be great.
OK, because the board did a electronic vote over email, and we just need to make sure that that was accounted for in the in the in the minutes so that I could do it so that they could get everything in by by November 1st.
Yeah, yeah, because we wanted to be able to hit the ground running for renewals and all of that, you know.
OK, cool.
I don’t think that we need to.
John, we don’t need to actually vote here for that, right?
Since it’s already been handled electronically.
Yeah.
And just to reflect, it was unanimous, right?
Yes.
Yeah.
OK, fine.
And then we’re OK.
We don’t need a ratification vote in the case of unanimity under the code.
Good.
OK.
All right.
House council.
So I wanted to talk a little bit about and we don’t need to spend a lot of time on this here tonight, but the main thing that I believe in and Robin, you’re probably going to need to help me because my brain is a little bit mushy on this, but I believe we already approved a budget for some giveaways at the annual meeting.
Did we not?
Yes, I thought it was.
Was it $500?
Yes.
Dollars for blind girl designs stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So maybe we can take this offline so that we’re not disclosing what we’re giving away here.
But I’m wondering if we can come up with some.
I don’t know if we want to do a combination of things so that we kind of spread this around a bit.
As part of the annual meeting, especially if we have things that are going to go over more than one day for voting.
Which I’m hoping we sort of.
I wouldn’t suggest we spend a lot of time on it, but we’re going to have a brief executive session, so we don’t know if we can use that form.
Yeah, we can we can we can do that there.
OK.
If our hand, you know, about the pleasant surprises.
Yeah.
So why don’t we do that and then we’ll we’ll figure that out.
We do need to make sure.
Do we have the list, Brad?
Do you know if we have the list of attendees that were at?
Who who paid for tickets so that we can do the drawing?
Oh, I’ll see.
I’ll see if I need to get that from Janet Dickelman.
So let me look into that.
OK, because we need to do the drawing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we do.
You’re right.
Thank you for my.
Yeah.
So we need to do that, too.
OK.
I just wanted to make sure we had all that.
And then I’ll be working on the agenda for the for the annual meeting.
We’ve got some some pretty cool things that we’ll be able to talk about there.
So I’m pretty excited about that.
Any other items of old business that need to come before the board?
Jeff, we need to register for the annual meeting, as we’ve done in the past.
Oh, probably.
And you’ll be held in the past.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So can someone set up a registration link for Zoom for that?
Boy, David, thank you for that.
Geez, I don’t see what I’ll see.
A registration link link for Zoom.
Yeah, yeah.
I think I I could I think I could probably do that.
Oh, yeah, you have experience.
OK, well, why don’t Diane and David work together on this and figure that out?
And because of what my plan is to send this out on Monday to give third people 30 day notice of the annual meeting and provide a link to register for the.
Event, and we can even put that on the website and lock that down for people who log in.
So.
You know, log into the website and we can put that on the front page so we can do that.
Cool.
Thank you, David.
Wow.
That was.
Oh, and also, if you can do it to where people that are registered through 2024 and didn’t didn’t become a member after October.
Thirty first, so November 1st to be on.
Oh, yeah.
OK, I may need John’s help on getting that list, but sure.
OK.
Well, I wouldn’t I haven’t put in any new person from the AMS list.
I mean, anybody who is new, I don’t think I have.
I’ll make double sure of that.
OK, we’ll coordinate.
Yeah.
I don’t know that we have anybody like that right now, but we’ll.
No, I don’t.
I don’t think.
I think one or two people approached me about joining and I’m saying, well, because the membership thing is new and because I’m up to my elbows and getting the certification list set.
Yeah.
You know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
OK.
Very good.
Any other old business before we move on here?
And I’m going to make new business really simple, unless other people have things here.
I added two items, but I’m really tempting to wait until the new board is in place for this, but I want to announce them here.
There are there are two items that I that I would like us to start looking at, at least investigating.
The community does this, and I think this would be a great thing to be able to recognize members of bits who are doing great things as part of bits.
So so maybe a volunteer appreciation award of some kind and we can figure out what that is.
And but I’d like to wait until the new board is in place.
We don’t have to get this decided tonight.
And then we have talked about this for a while, and I think this one is going to probably require a bit more work to to figure out exactly what this is going to look like.
But I think we should start looking at a scholarship scholarship opportunities within bits, especially related to technology.
But it not but it could be extended.
But I think we need to develop a committee for that and figure out what what that means and how much we want to allocate funds for for that and what the qualifications would be.
These are just things that I I’m hoping that, you know, as the board expands, we’ll we’ll have more bandwidth to to put together a small committee and come back to with a proposal.
So does anyone have any feedback on these two items at the moment or we can table them until January when the new board meets?
But I just wanted to get them out there.
So they sound good.
Yeah.
We do need a worthwhile.
You know, you know, we’ve got we’ve got a lot of money that, you know, we we we should be putting some of it to good use.
Yep.
Yep.
I think this potentially I mean, you know, we had a scholarship and then ACB took it over, but it was not a hostile takeover.
It was the Kelly Cannon scholarship that was endowed by, you know, way back in the day, probably the 80s.
You know, I think it’s Pam and Dick and they had a child, Kelly, who died young and they endowed a scholarship.
I mean, I’m not saying that we have to, but we might want to be part of that pool that ACB administers.
It would, you know, would take a bit off of us.
Yeah, we have the money to devote to it.
I’m not I mean, we would be outsourcing the recruit, the vetting of the candidate.
But I don’t necessarily have a problem with that.
I don’t want to go to.
But I would probably want to have bits bits representation in it, though.
You know, I think you’re right.
Yeah, I think somebody on the scholarship committee.
Well, let’s talk about it.
I would I would like to to look at also grants for people to be able to fund.
You know, obviously we can’t find a six thousand dollar braille display.
Right.
I don’t think that’s feasible.
But or even a two thousand dollar braille display, for that matter.
But but if someone needs a.
I don’t know.
I mean, yeah, I don’t want to get too much into the weeds, but then you’re getting it.
I mean, I wouldn’t want to do that without having financial statements from the person and vetting, you know, I mean, I don’t think we have to have all this figured out tonight.
So, but no, but but but be thinking about it, guys.
And I’m going to bring this back in January when the new board meets.
And I’m going to ask for people to volunteer to be on a committee.
And let’s figure this one out.
OK, it’s time for member comments and questions.
Unless anyone else has any new business.
All right, it’s time for member comments and questions.
Jamaica.
OK, I have two two things that I that I would like to that I’d like a question and a comment.
Number one, the comment is that I would like to try to be on that on the if we do decide to do the scholarship committee.
I have done some I’ve done some scholarship with the with the state with the state of Georgia, and I think that would be a good place for me.
At this at this at this point to maybe to be to be to be with that commit to be with that committee.
If you decide that you want to do it.
Number two being my question is about the the Zoom link.
Will we will we be able to join the meeting with no problem when it’s when we when we register or.
How you’ll register and then you’ll be email the Zoom link.
OK, OK, OK.
Thank you very much.
You’re more than welcome to make.
It’s good to hear your voice.
Yeah.
Who’s next?
Pamela.
Pamela.
Good evening, everyone.
Hello.
Hi.
Yeah, I just wanted to make a comment with reference to the BITS chat.
There are those who was brought up a little earlier having to do with the the membership.
When last last year, when first we first had the moratorium and everybody, we had 45, 50 people per night at the beginning of last year.
But it has truly dwindled.
And I think part of that, I think the one person who who brought up to move that they don’t get noticed, I think part of that has to do with the fact that more than once, there’s an A and B conversation going on in there and they don’t take it to a breakout room.
I mean, we’ve talked before in these meetings about there being a limit as to how long a topic could go on, but no one pays attention to that.
And that’s why I don’t go anymore.
David, can you can you work on addressing this with her?
And yes, I can.
I do want to make mention that people do try to steer people to breakout rooms.
It doesn’t always work.
In fact, we might have three or four breakout rooms available beyond the office one, for example, and they hardly get used.
And so how do you you know, how do you lead someone to water?
I mean, how do you make them drink it?
You know, I see the problem.
I see the issue.
And we do try to recognize people, especially if they don’t feel they can break through the conversation if they raise their hand.
All the hosts have been observant to acknowledge the raise hand.
They they do acknowledge that that’s you you cannot break through that.
For instance, if it’s about Braille displays, it might go on for an hour about Braille displays.
It might go on quite a while.
But you get what I’m saying.
I mean, without meeting everybody, how do you suggest we do that?
Yeah, let’s take this offline and I’ll have David work the onus to try to work out any problem.
Not a great.
OK, thank you, folks.
We want to make sure that people are definitely welcome and want to participate.
OK, thank you much.
Thank you.
Who’s next?
Christie.
Hello.
So I have two questions.
Number one, how much is life membership?
Two hundred.
And number two, if I joined just before the class started, the Microsoft Office class started.
You’re good through twenty twenty five.
Oh, fantastic.
Thank you.
OK.
What’s Anna?
You can unmute yourself.
It’s the total girl.
Are you there?
OK, my fault.
Yes, I just wanted to mention that I did send out the fall bits bulletin that was sent out tonight.
I just wanted people to know it’s there.
I hope everyone enjoys reading it.
I thought it was really, really good.
And I want to thank Deborah Armstrong for the work that you put into it.
And just I have a question for Larry.
Larry, do you want me to send you a copy of the bulletin to you or to Michael Dice to get it up on the website?
Send it to Larry and then he can distribute it.
OK, cool.
OK, thanks.
Yeah, we have a few more hands.
Larry.
You can Larry, is it a it’s oh, sorry.
I’m fine.
It doesn’t matter.
Larry Watkinson.
So I wanted to address the zoom thing very quickly.
Jeff, you and I had a brief conversation over overall.
We have been conducting an asset listing of all of the electronic documents, basically assets of all our applications.
It’s my goal in the early part of twenty twenty five to work with like publications and communications group with David and others in Michael Dice and I with the website so that we can have some safeguards as to how our technology assets are managed.
My goal is not to take over the zoom committee or any committee at all, but it’s to work with them so that we can operate with reputation of good practices and professionalism.
And so one of the goals I have is to work with the zoom committee and others to develop some governance standards so that we all know and we can go to a website and know what our expectations is on how we use our assets and how we treat each other within those assets.
So I look forward to in twenty twenty five meeting with folks and having them help develop what they want for their committees so that membership knows what those expectations are.
And we put that on our website.
So that’s what I wanted to offer to the group tonight.
Great.
Thank you, Larry.
Yes.
Yes.
Hey, Nicola.
Oh, sorry.
One second.
Hold on one second.
In response to David, in response to what Larry was saying, if we have from the old website, the code of conduct policy, that would be good so that Larry can.
Actually, that needs to get on the website.
Yeah, I do.
Where is that?
What I’m trying to do is give these guys the brain room to resolve membership.
The next assignment I have from the president is to work with Michael Doyce and folks on some of the audio components.
Yeah, that’s the big download their audio.
That is his next assignment.
And then I can start moving on to other maintenance type issues.
The things, you know, it’s kind of like building a hamburger, you know, get by with a basic hamburger.
But you want cheese, do you want lettuce and you want to make and bacon and bacon?
And so it’s there.
But we first got to buy it.
We first got to make sure we have a hamburger and make sure we have the bun to put the hamburger in.
Exactly.
Bacon.
Yum, yum.
But I just saying that we can start with that document.
Thank you, David.
Great.
Who’s next?
But I am.
Good luck.
Hello.
Yesterday would have been my dad’s hundred and 14th birthday.
So in honor of him, I was trying to renew my membership, but I made the mistake of putting in that I was a lifetime membership and it wouldn’t let me put anything else in.
So I would like to make a request that you adjust the website so that people who are lifetime membership members can still pay the twenty five dollars membership fee.
Thank you.
Yeah, that’s a great point.
And what we’re going to do is we’re actually going to allow you to just do a donation so that you can actually, you know, since you already have a life membership, then you can just make an additional donation to the organization.
So, oh, we actually already have that in place.
We just need to get that level exposed to the to to the page.
So I’ll I’ll get that done tonight.
OK.
Thank you so much.
You’re more than welcome.
Any other hands?
No, sir.
Now there will be now that I said there is, of course, not.
OK, well, we’ll give it a few seconds here and see if there are any other people.
Meanwhile, we will be moving into executive session.
John McCann has a few items to discuss with us and shouldn’t take too long so that we can all go and enjoy our dinner.
Our next board meeting will be on December 4th.
Twelve four.
Twenty four.
Yeah.
Like that.
Well, for twenty four.
I like that.
And then, of course, we’ll have other things coming up later that week.
And on the eighth and on the 11th.
And then we’re all going to collapse and not do anything.
As far as activity for a while so that people enjoy their holidays.
OK.
Any other hands?
Oh, sir.
All right.
I need a motion to move into executive session.
She second.
Jeff, I will move you over to host.
Make make Brad the host.
Oh, OK.
Oh, come on.
Reclaimed it.
There’s a lot.
I just reclaimed it.
Well, just.
Are you reclaimed it?
I just hit the button and claimed it.
OK, you’re good.
All right.
OK.
You’re going to reclaim it.
OK.
I already did.
I just hit the button.
OK, well, I will see you guys later.
I’m magically done.
All right.
Bye.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you.