BITS Board Meeting for August 7, 2024

AI Generated Transcript

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Its elected officials support its staff.

Welcome everyone to the August 2024 BITS board meeting.

My name is Brad Snyder.

Vice President Jeff isn’t able to be with us tonight, so I’ve been asked to run the meeting in his place, so we’ll see how that goes.

So with that, I am officially calling this board meeting to order.

And let me ask the Secretary Robin Frost to commence with the roll call.

Yes, sir.

Good evening, everyone.

President Jeff Bishop, as Vice President indicated, has an excused absence.

Vice President Brad Snyder?

Present.

Secretary Robin Frost, I am here and happy to be so.

Treasurer Diane Scalzi?

Here.

Michael Babcock?

I am present.

John McCann?

Here.

David Edick?

Present.

And we would also like to welcome all of our members and friends who have chosen to visit and spend time with us this evening, and let those members who have joined via Zoom know that you will be recognized individually by name in the written minutes of this meeting.

And with that, Mr.

Vice President, the call of the roll is complete.

Thank you, Robin.

Appreciate it.

Well done, as always.

Thank you, sir.

Okay, next item is the adoption of the agenda.

Jeff circulated an agenda for tonight’s meeting.

I’ll move its adoption.

Okay, thank you very much.

We have a second?

Second.

All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

All right, agenda has been adopted.

The next item is the June board meeting minutes that were circulated by our Secretary Robin.

I assume everyone’s had a chance to review them.

We have a motion to adopt.

I heard a second.

I’ll second.

Okay, John has made a motion.

I’ll second.

Okay, do we have any comments or questions?

I hear none.

Or did I hear one, John?

No, no.

No questions.

Okay, okay.

So all in favor of adopting the minutes, please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

No opposed.

So we’re good on that.

Thank you, Robin and board.

Now this I’m confused.

What is approval consent agenda?

That’s the packet that chairs the board.

Oh, the packet that Jeff has.

So we need to approve the packet?

Okay.

Do we have a motion to approve the packet?

I’ll make a motion.

Okay.

Is that Michael?

And do we have a second?

David.

That was David.

David and then?

Diane.

Yeah, I can second.

Okay, David and then Diane.

Okay, any comments, questions?

Or if we hear none, we’ll take a vote.

Hearing none, all in favor of accepting the consent agenda, say aye.

Aye.

Okay, well, so far this has been easy.

Yeah.

Let’s see what’s next.

The treasurer’s report.

Diane.

Okay.

Do we have that on audio?

Yes, we do.

Or do you stay and want to get it?

Yeah.

And you’re actually going to get a bonus treasurer’s report tonight because we did not meet in July.

So we will hear the June report first, followed by the July report before Brad plays those recordings though.

I want to mention first of all that we had two new BITS Life members in July.

They are Joyce Feinberg and Paul Edwards.

So I would like everyone to welcome them to BITS.

We had a lot of members during the months of June and July, and we’re still getting some in August.

Braden included that in his membership committee report.

So I hope you’ll all have a chance to read that.

I know that he did say there were 26 new members though, and that was, I think, quite something.

I’m hoping that the Amazon return that Brad and I did will be in the August report.

I haven’t had a chance to look to see if the money has already been deposited, but I wound up having to call Amazon.

It was a Innogear microphone desk arm that I had returned.

They told me to allow 30 days to receive anything, but I actually gave it close to 60.

When I hadn’t heard, I called them.

It turned out that Brad had returned it to his local UPS store, and they received it, but somehow it got lost in transit on the way back to the Amazon warehouse.

So Amazon never got it, but when I wondered where it was, the phone rep that I talked to immediately authorized a refund and sent it out to us.

So I will be looking for that for the August report.

So go ahead.

First up is June.

So we’ll play June, and then we’ll pause for a second, and then we’ll see if there’s anything anybody has to say about that, and then we’ll move on to July.

So here’s June.

Here we go.

Bits Treasurer’s Report, June 1st, 30th, 2024.

Checking.

Beginning balance $4,900, $56.34.

Credits.

Transfer from PayPal, $57.33.

Total credits, $57.33.

Debits.

Zoom monthly subscription/increased meeting size to 500 participants, minus $53.

Amazon.com purchased items for ACB Summer Auction, minus $388.67.

Asterisk 1.

Amazon.com microphone cables for convention drawing, minus $24.88.

Asterisk 2.

Total debits, minus $466.55.

Ending balance $4,547.12.

PayPal.

Beginning balance $0.

Credits. 12 regular member dues payments, $240.

One donation to Bits, $10.

Total credits, $250.

Debits.

PayPal fees, minus $10.88.

Asterisk 3.

Transfer to checking, minus $57.33.

Total debits, minus $68.21.

Ending balance $181.79.

Savings account.

Beginning balance $37,129.18.

Credits.

Interest, $0.28.

Total credits, $0.28.

Debits.

No debits.

Total debits, $0.00.

Ending balance $37,129.46.

Total for all accounts, $41,858.37.

Asterisk 1.

Items include Zoom H4 recorder, $191.99.

Mic cables, $12.99.

Two dynamic microphone recording and podcasting packs, $69.99 each.

SanDisk.

Memory card, $19.99.

Estimated tax, $23.72.

Total, $388.67.

Asterisk 2.

Replaced microphone arm purchased by mistake for Bits Convention drawing.

Still awaiting refund for microphone arm.

Asterisk 3.

For information on PayPal fees, visit https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/paypal-fees.

Submitted for audit.

Prepared by Diane Scalzi, Bits Treasurer, July 2nd, 2024.

Does anyone have any questions?

Yeah, go ahead.

I do have one quick comment or question.

I imagine this was actually billed at $388.67, meaning we just, to avoid any confusion, we should maybe take the word estimated out of the tax, because that was actual tax, was it not?

Unless it’s not correct.

That wasn’t how they showed it on the order.

I don’t know, is there somewhere else besides the order?

No, they do that, because you always get that when the order is processed.

And then, I don’t know if you get, because I look at that, I do Amazon all the time, and they always tell you estimated tax.

But they’re leaving some fudge room, but after the order is due, and after the money is paid and the transaction is completed.

Correct, you know how much you paid in taxes.

You know how much you paid, so maybe I’ll just take estimated out there.

Even though, yeah, I understand that the order would say that, because they fudge.

They always do that.

Once it’s a completed transaction.

When your total hasn’t changed, that estimated is no longer an estimate.

You know, I order stuff all the time, and it always says estimate, then there’s a total.

And then that total is what my card is charged, so it’s no estimate anymore.

So I’ll have to check the order then against what the debit card was charged, and I’ll see if they’re both the same.

And if they are, I think we can remove it.

Yeah, I don’t know what would make it change.

Do I have to file an amended treasurer’s report then for that?

Do I have to file the treasurer’s report?

Just take the word, you know, just take.

You don’t really put these, or do you put these up before they’re actually approved?

Well, they’re not approved, they’re submitted for audit.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So.

Well, I don’t want, I mean, a detailed audit.

I think you could just leave it in, because that’s how it’s stated when you place the order, that’s what it says.

And then we’ll see one day when we audit that the account was charged the same as what they said the amount would be when you place the order.

I don’t, you know.

And if it’s not, then you can go looking at why it’s different.

But I don’t know.

John brings up a good point, but.

I’ll keep it that way for now.

I don’t want to be a ridiculous stippler.

It’s just that I heard estimates, and I know that they say that, but.

I had a comment.

And I know we’ll hear it again when we do the July.

The Zoom payment, forgive me, what was it?

$54 and something?

53 something, yeah.

53.

We’re paying monthly.

I believe if we change to paying annually, we will pay, we’ll get 12 months for the cost of 10.

Because we used to pay annually.

But what we did is we changed to, we upped our limit from 100 to 500.

And we took advantage of, I think it was a four month.

Yes, it was.

And we got a discount for four months.

But once that four months was over, we should have gone back to an annual.

We couldn’t take advantage of the four months at 50% off if we were on the annual.

So we went monthly for four months.

But we should go back to annual, and it will save us whatever two times 53 and change is.

Because we’re paying that 12 times a year.

And I believe if we go to annual, we’ll pay 530 something instead of 600 and something.

Does that make sense?

Will they, I wonder if they will let us do that since we got the.

That’s already over.

That 50% off was over several months ago.

We should have done this several months ago.

Yeah, and they’ll credit any prorated amount.

I don’t know whether this is the first or second single month billing of 53.

Oh no, it’s been several months.

It’s been like four.

I think it’s been like.

Yeah, well, I said something to Diane about it, but it never got brought up at the board meeting.

And that’s what it needs to be.

Let’s make this easy then.

I’ll make a motion that we commit to our current limit.

What is it, 500?

Yeah, for a year.

For another year.

For a year.

Yeah, for, you know, commit for a yearly.

And I think you could do that.

I’ll take it out August of ’25.

I think you could do that on the website, Diane, if you go to our.

Yeah, I’ll go in there.

I think you just check a box that says switch me to billing me annually.

I’ll second that if I can.

I don’t know.

Can I second?

Now, who is that?

I don’t believe that’s in the ground.

Usually, chairs don’t second, but.

I don’t think I can do it.

Somebody else do it.

I’ll second it, but I wanted to also.

David will second.

Okay.

Yeah, I’ll second my motion to go a year for the 500.

Okay.

And then David had something he wanted to.

David seconds it.

He had something else to say?

So, if we’re paying annually, I’m just going to use an estimate.

If we pay in January, like I do, they’re going to only charge you for the remaining time this year.

So, from now through the next anniversary date of the annual plan.

I think it’s the anniversary date is when you switch to annual, because I used to pay annual and I want to say mine began in the summer sometime.

It wasn’t January.

It’s whenever you switch to annual, isn’t it?

True, but if I.

I think so.

True, it is, but I have the webinar for my Zoom account and I pay at the end of January.

And when I switched to annual, it gave me like half the year.

Okay.

And for whatever.

Well, we’ll see what they do.

And.

Either way, we’ll be on the annual.

That should save us.

Yes.

And if I can’t, you know, since I can’t get it back from them, you know, we’ve overpaid, I am willing to.

No, no, no.

Don’t worry about that.

No, there’s nothing.

We’ll just begin.

Whenever you go to the website and check the box, that’s when our annual begins.

Yeah, don’t worry about it.

And it may not begin until the next billing.

If we’ve already paid in August, you know, it may not kick in until the next time they bill us.

We haven’t paid August yet.

Okay.

Well, if you go look at it.

Maybe they’ll roll with it.

Tomorrow.

I mean, but the point is, you know, pounce on it and don’t worry about what the month we pay.

We’ll just get on the annual thing.

Anyway, that’s okay.

I should have said something about that a couple months ago.

But anyway, are we ready?

We’ll move on to July.

Wait.

Okay.

Sorry.

We moved and seconded.

Do we need to vote or is it?

Yeah, we should vote.

Yes, you are correct.

Thank you for catching that.

All in favor of switching the zoom to an annual plan.

Play I.

I.

All right.

Motion passes.

Okay, thank you, Robin.

Are we ready for me to play July?

Here we go.

Bits Treasurer’s Report July 1 through July 31, 2024.

Checking beginning balance $4,547.12 credits transfer from PayPal $838.70 convention raffle ticket sales $80 total credits $918.70.

Debits zoom monthly subscription slash increased meeting size to 500 participants minus $53 total debits minus $53 ending balance $5,412.82 PayPal beginning balance $181.79 credits eight regular member dues payments $160 to bits life member due payments $400 for international member dues payments $80 one student member dues payment $10 one ACB life member dues payment $15 one partial dues payment $15 total credits $680 debit PayPal fees minus $23.09 asterisk three transfer to checking minus $838.70 total debits minus $861.79 ending balance $0 savings account beginning balance $37,129.46 credits interest $0.33 total credits $0.33 debits no debits total debits $0.00 ending balance $37,129.79 total for all accounts $42,542.61 asterisk one for information on PayPal fees please visit https colon slash slash http://www.paypal.com slash us slash web apps slash MPP slash PayPal hyphen fees submitted for audit prepared by Diane Scalzi bits treasure August 3 2024.

I’ll go in and correct that footnote number footnote number that should have been number one you know to match the description of the footnote so I will go in and change that.

And any comments questions on the July report.

Hey here none.

It’s submitted for audit we don’t approve or otherwise do anything else with it.

Thank you Diane.

Anything else Diane.

No I can’t think of anything.

I did see where you got us signed up for the small business thing.

They approved it and it’s and it’s in my account.

Now I wonder if anyone else would be able to use that.

I believe it’s tied to your IRA account.

Okay.

So as long as you’re a treasurer you get to you know so I’m going to business purposes.

It’s a it’s a half hour.

What is it.

It’s a half hour.

It’s 150.

It’s 150 minutes.

Yes.

A month.

But if you can every time you call it’s up to 30 minutes.

Yes.

That’s what she told us about and in our fundraising meeting the other day.

So even though you were going to use it for the fidelity to fill out help you fill out the fidelity form which is a fundraising thing.

That’s a what is that a treasury thing.

Yes.

So that’s a treasury sense that your treasury thing.

Can you give us an update or is that happening.

Yes that’s what I was going.

Okay.

Give you an update on like how I’m using it.

Well you have the on the situation with fidelity I think is what we’re asking.

Yeah.

Oh yes yes.

Oh absolutely.

I’m going to have to see.

I’m going to try and call them tomorrow and see how far I can get on the form.

The form is like 15 pages long.

Oh my God.

You know I’m going to see how how far I can get and I hope I can get it done in like 100 with 150 minutes.

Okay.

Yeah.

Well in my experience with Ira you know sometimes I find you know it they can fill it out and ask you what you want.

You know.

Okay.

What do you put in this spot.

You know if you get all your information.

Yes.

And sometimes it’s hard if you don’t already know what they want.

But I would suggest you go as far as you can and if you’re 30 minutes is over you ask them how long you have to wait before you can call back and then continue where you left off with somebody.

Right.

And I’m sure you’ll once you get once you get started using it you’ll get the hang of it and you’ll move along pretty quick I’m sure.

Okay yeah and I’m going to I’m going to look through the first few pages of it and see what I need and make sure I have it handy you know when I call them.

So yeah.

You may not have to fill out every blank or every space.

It’s just a long form and I’m sure you’ll figure it out and get through it.

Thank you very much.

You’re welcome.

All right.

Anything else for the treasurer report portion of the meeting.

We have.

Yes.

Okay this is Cindy.

Okay.

I don’t know after now that you’re finished with until you’re doing your vice president’s report you do have a hand up.

I don’t know if you want to wait until you’re finished with all the committee.

We’re waiting for.

Who’s got the hand up.

It’s Elizabeth.

We’re just going to wait if it’s okay until we move through this and then we’ll take hands and that way we don’t.

Well I figured.

But I thank you for letting me know Cindy and I hope that’s okay with you Elizabeth.

We’ll just wait and be sure and we’ll take Elizabeth first when we get to him.

So thank you Cindy.

Okay.

Vice president’s report.

Thank you Jeff.

In lieu of the president’s report we have the vice president’s report and I have a little outline from Jeff.

Okay.

So let’s see what we can do with this.

It says outcome of convention.

Well I would kind of like to defer this until I have submitted a convention planning committee report.

But let me just say that the convention from a BITS point of view was a big success.

We did a number of presentations.

They were all well received.

We had the BITS reception and Jacksonville.

That was a much bigger deal.

It was very well attended.

Again I’ll get to all that in my report.

But let’s just say that convention went very well as a convention planning committee chair.

I learned a lot.

Not that I didn’t have a pretty good grip on what I was doing from the beginning.

But again you always learn something no matter what.

So anyway we’ll talk about that more when I get to my convention planning committee report.

D is the upcoming constitutional planning and the annual meeting.

Well the annual meeting we know will be in December on the second Wednesday of December.

The constitutional meeting, I’m going to have to defer to John on that.

I do know we’re still trying to decide if we’re going to do that in September or October.

John do you have anything you can add?

I think at this point mid-October looks like where we’re going to come in.

I didn’t submit an official report because I wouldn’t say anything beyond what I’m going to say now which is a sentence or two.

I’ve confirmed that all the people who need to be on the bylaws list are on the bylaws list.

By tonight or tomorrow morning I will send out the existing constitution with some preliminary thoughts.

I don’t think it’s going to be as massive an undertaking.

You know we really have a pretty good constitution.

But it definitely needs the kind of tweaks that would warrant.

My hope is to at the end of September, at the latest at the end of September, which would really be six or seven weeks, we should be able to get out a draft to the board.

And the board can look at it for a week or two.

And then we have the meeting and circulate it.

What we do is we probably have a membership meeting so that we don’t get bogged down.

I hope the members will, not slavishly, but defer to what the committee comes up with rather than trying to wordsmith it with 100 or 150 people.

That generally doesn’t work very well.

But I think I don’t see any problems with the schedule as it’s evolving in my mind.

And to the people who are on that committee, I think we need to meet this coming week at least with some preliminary hash out.

And be thinking of at least every two weeks with some robust exchanges on the bylaws list so that our conversations are focused.

Thank you, John.

May I ask a question?

Yes, go ahead.

John, I think you said, are you going to be changing our document from constitution and bylaws to just bylaws?

Yeah, the modern sensibilities doesn’t have it bifurcated in that way.

Constitution and bylaws.

And if you have a bylaw, it only requires 50 percent.

It might as well be a policy or just a general motion.

So yeah, while being called bylaws.

So we will bring in some stuff from the current bylaws.

But wherever possible, I want to avoid being super prescriptive.

You know, I think we’ll just say some generic things about committees by way of example, you know, the really important ones and then say that the board has a latitude to establish such as such other committees as it seems necessary for the conduct of business.

That way you don’t tie yourself up in knots or well, a perfect example of the overly prescriptive mode that that a lot of ACB affiliates is in is highlighted in the very thing that you brought up, Dan, which we’ll discuss later.

The three point two point two on extending memberships.

I’ll talk about that in my membership committee report unless people really want me to talk about it now.

We don’t membership.

OK, that’d be my son.

And then we also have an item, I believe, of the same pretty much the same thing under new business.

I think anyway, it might be it might be under new business where where the yeah, it’s something it’s something down there where we’re thinking it is.

Yeah, basically, we have great minds thinking alike there because I know myself, Diane and I don’t know who else thought of the exact same item for the agenda.

So we’ll talk about that when we get to business.

OK, thank you, John.

Yeah, OK.

The next item on Jeff’s list for me is educational opportunities.

Let me just say to that, I know we finished pretty much I think we finished the Python class.

I think there’s one session that they’re still working on that has to do with something with VS code.

I was not in the class, so I can’t say for sure, but I know there’s one last session they’re still trying to get finished up.

But I know the Python class was a big success.

They had what 80 something people start and very few people dropped out.

They had all pretty strong numbers from beginning to end.

Moving forward, I believe, and Debbie Armstrong may be able to comment further on this and her education committee segment where David Kingsbury, I believe, is going to be doing I don’t know if he’s got others with him, a Microsoft Office session beginning in the fall, if that’s correct.

I don’t know if those plans are set in cement yet.

And then I believe there’s some plans.

I don’t know if it’s for the fall or it’s in the I think it’s in the spring.

I saw Debbie’s board something to do with introductory HTML and CSS as a background for getting into perhaps I think it’s WordPress.

So we have got lots of things planned on the horizon for education opportunities for BITS members.

So that’ll be done similar to the Python class, I believe, every Monday evening for a two hour class session, if I’m not mistaken.

So that’s some exciting stuff in the works for us all.

Let’s see.

What is this?

Okay, prioritization from committee D.

Okay, let’s see.

Then there’s says massive backlog of content.

What is that, Michael?

Is that for the website?

I think it’s editing audio.

Editing audio.

Yes.

For the website, I believe so.

I think that’s what that is.

So I know they’re working on that.

And they welcome letter.

We’ve been talking about that for a while.

Perhaps that’s a membership committee thing.

I’m not sure.

Yeah, I guess so.

Yeah, we’re going to have to do it, John.

Come on.

I know.

I’m like, wow, is this a new list?

Or is this a recycled list?

I know.

This is stuff we punted because of the nearness of convention and other.

I know.

And then we do have a membership drive, I believe that we will, because I’ve heard that phrase tossed around.

I thought we’re constantly in a membership drive.

And with that said, you’ve already mentioned we had, what’d you say, 27?

We had a big surge.

Well, actually, yeah, I can amend and say it is 27 because we had somebody from the Netherlands today.

Yeah.

Oh, today.

Okay.

Oh, no.

Yeah, I try and look at those.

We had somebody from Estonia the other day.

That’s right.

Yeah, we had somebody from Estonia.

And the tricky thing is that the AMS isn’t really set up to take these, you know, a lot of these countries.

Foreign address.

Yeah.

Well, I can ask a quick question, Diane.

I’m not sure if the person from the Netherlands paid.

Did you say PayPal?

You know, I haven’t looked today.

Okay.

I saw a PayPal thing today.

There was a PayPal thing today, but I didn’t look to see who it was.

I didn’t look to see who it was from.

No.

Well, I will confirm, but it’s entirely possible we’ve gone from 26 to 27.

I mean, they keep on dribbling in, which is exciting.

It really got, I noticed, it really got started once our virtual convention presentations.

Oh, you’re right.

Yes.

Address more, which has to do with also with our new business item we’ll get to.

But yeah, I noticed once the virtual convention started and our presentations were underway and we picked up new members, like in a way, and it continued through the in-person convention.

And it’s still going now because we’re seeing.

It’s still going now.

Very exciting.

So yeah, we are constantly in a membership drive, it seems.

So just by doing what we normally do is attracting attention and making new members, attracting new membership to BITS, which is very exciting.

Okay, so let’s see.

The next we have.

Committee report.

Yeah, community welcoming letter along with resources, tips and tricks.

So okay, all kinds of things that will be part of the membership letter.

The membership committee will take on this work.

Yeah, we just covered that.

Okay.

Website fundraising and publications key infrastructure.

Is that for membership drive?

Okay, now let’s see.

I don’t know.

Anyhow, I know the website is up and it’s still.

Is it still being implemented, Michael?

What do we?

I imagine perhaps Michael will talk about that in his IT and infrastructure.

So let’s defer that till then.

Okay, we’ll hear much more on this.

Yeah, we’ll hear much more on this efforts in this meeting.

So I think that’s the.

Okay, that’s the end of my little vice president’s report.

Thank you for putting that together for me, Jeff.

Okay, committee reports.

You have the communications.

Okay, so let’s go.

Email management committee.

Merv, are you here?

And I know all of these committee chairs have all submitted reports that are in the packet.

So we don’t really need to read the report.

But if you have any comments or brief summary or anything you’d like to say regarding your report, that’s why I’m calling on you.

Merv is here.

Okay, he’s here.

Hello, Merv.

Hi, everything is in the package.

So all I can say is that if you have any email related questions, please do not hesitate to reach out and read the packet.

Awesome.

Thank you, Merv.

Let’s see.

Publications committee, Rosanna.

First of all, I just want to say good evening to everybody.

And I hope everyone is enjoying their summertime.

Brad, I think what Jeff was referring to in that report was the meeting that we had with Jeff or the fundraising going forward.

I don’t know exactly what — we are working on getting the message out there as far as fundraising goes.

And I think that’s what he was pointing to.

But I’m not 100% sure what he wanted us to talk about there.

It wasn’t specific enough.

As far as publications goes, I just want to say that publications committee has been working really hard at doing a number of different things.

Because we kind of touch on a myriad of areas, I’m kind of in a number of different places at any given time.

I do want to mention that our stats for Mastodon are now up to 149 as of yesterday, unless Robin got one more today.

Actually — You did?

Sorry, I didn’t want to interrupt.

I can wait until you’re done if you want.

No, no, go ahead.

I just would say a few things.

Firstly, thank you so much to the Dragon’s Cave administration for being so warm and welcoming and accommodating to us as we have changed instances.

And the welcome has been just incredible.

In the first 24 hours, we were on the new server.

We gained 14 new wonderful people who have chosen to follow us.

So we are now up to 155.

Wow, really?

Awesome.

Okay.

Cool.

That’s just from yesterday, guys.

So Mastodon is doing extremely well.

Thank you, Robin.

And thank you for all your great work.

Another thing I just want to mention, again, everything is in the packet.

But one of the most important things here is that the BITS Bulletin is due to come out at the end of August.

We had a spring bulletin that came out.

And our editor, Deborah Armstrong, is going to be looking for articles from you guys because the membership — the BITS Bulletin really belongs to the membership.

We only get it out for you.

So it is up to the membership to give us articles and information that they would like to see in that bulletin that can help reach out to other people in the BITS family.

All right?

So if you have an article or you have something you want to share that you feel that other people could learn from or grow from, please send that to Publications.

And the website for that is newsletter@bits-acb.org.

Newsletter@bits-acb.org.

Okay?

And then our editor will go ahead and, you know, look at it and let you know what’s going to happen with it.

But it will come out at the end of August.

That is our goal.

As you know, Publications is divided into two parts.

We have the social media side and we have the handbook side.

Okay?

Social media side really is comprised of the social media aspects of Facebook, Mastodon.

Right now our two main channels and Mary Anne Murad has been doing a great job at updating our Facebook.

Robin is doing a fantastic job with Mastodon.

And Herbie Allen is also a part of that as well.

So there, you know, there’s a lot of good stuff out there.

The other thing I just want to mention as far as the handbook goes, all right, handbook committee has met in July, in June and July, in spite of the convention we met.

The handbook committee will be meeting again this Saturday as well.

We have gone through the role of the officers.

We’ve completed that.

We are currently working on the role of the chairs right now and committees.

And we’ve begun to look at the membership side of this handbook.

And that will be the last piece that will be added to the handbook, which does not exist as of yet.

So that’s where we are in terms of the handbook.

We will probably right now as a goal, try to get a draft of the handbook to the board.

Probably my guess would be October, because a lot of what we’re doing also touches on what’s going on in Constitution and bylaws, because the handbook is based on what is in our Constitution.

So that committee has to work on their part first until we can actually put the rest, you know, the last of the pieces together into the handbook.

So you know, as I said, I’m kind of have, I’m like an octopus.

I have feet in different areas that I have to pull together.

My last piece is the logo and fundraising, which Renee will probably talk about in her report.

The logo is now up on the website.

And thanks to a joint effort with fundraising committee, the logo has been done and is completed and now can be used for any documents that BITS needs to get out or publication information.

The fundraising, we worked with them on the blind girl designs.

And we worked with them on the Terry Lynn fundraiser, which is up and running as well right now.

So I do encourage people to go to both websites.

Both of them are available.

And the website address is in the packet that Jeff sent out.

So that’s all I have for now.

I think Robin has a piece that she wanted to add to this report.

Robin, are you there?

Yes, I am.

Go ahead.

I just thought the membership and the fellow board members and other chairs would be gratified to just hear a short little story of something that happened this morning on Mastodon.

We got to participate in our first action alert.

We issued an action alert because a website, or rather an app that many people depend upon to get essentials like groceries, suddenly stopped working.

And in very short order, people manned the decks and came to the forefront and started submitting trouble reports to this company.

And I’m happy to say that hopefully, at least in some part to our involvement, within two hours, it was corrected.

Obviously, advocacy doesn’t always work with such instancy and immediacy, but it was really gratifying to watch.

So if our friends on Mastodon enjoyed that and found benefit in it, we will try to do more of that in the future.

And please tell us what you are liking, what you’re not liking, how we can best serve you.

We’re there not only to promote BITS, but to serve you as best we can.

Thank you.

Thank you, Robin.

And that is the publications report.

Thank you very much.

Great.

Thank you, Rosanna and Robin.

All right.

Next, Zoom management.

David Edick.

Go ahead, David.

Well, everything’s in the report.

It was brief, but I did want to mention that we had a great convention week.

I opened up on Sunday during general session and streamed the convention there.

We had a chat about topics and we’ve had a few people join us from Florida as well.

We had a chat around that after it.

And then we opened up early at the same time as the BITS mixer was going on in Florida so that people could attend at a different time earlier.

And then we also watched the banquet, listened to the banquet in the Zoom room.

So everybody had a good experience.

And I hope you’ll join us next time.

All right.

Thank you, David.

Sounds like great stuff.

Okay.

Moving on.

We have presentation and outreach.

And right at the top is convention planning committee.

That is me.

So as I’ve already mentioned, I submitted a pretty extensive convention planning committee report on the convention.

It’s in the packet.

You can review that.

And I said we, as everyone knows, we had the three, we had a total of six sessions plus Jeff participated in another panel discussion with the education committee, technology in the workplace with Peter Altschul and his group.

But we did the AI sessions.

Let me tell you, these were a tremendous hit.

We were, they were well attended with lots of questions.

We did a first one was on what was it ethical and responsibility of corporate corporations and AI.

We probably had 30, 40 people in each one of these.

Then the next day we did AI platforms.

And we had an app demonstration.

Again, big attendance, lots of questions.

So much so that I’ve got in the present in the, in the presentations committee report, we’re working on a follow up to that.

I know people are on summer vacation.

I know Jeff’s working on getting together with the individuals who were on the panel and a lot of the same people on the panels for both days.

So anyway, probably we’ll once summer’s wrapped up and people are back in their regular routine and in September, we’ll probably have that follow up.

Because I believe, you know, there were just so many questions we couldn’t get to everybody.

Each presentation is 75 minutes long and you have presentation and questions and what do you do when you’ve still got a dozen hands at the end, you’ve got to go, you know.

So I know they’re working on that.

So and Brian Hartchen did a presentation on AI in the workplace and with JAWS.

And that was a tremendous success, overwhelming.

Brian then put out a few days later on his website, his recorded presentation.

You know, Brian, Brian’s very good at doing a presentation.

He records these things.

They’re done very professionally.

And then he played his recording and then he took questions.

So his recording of that, I would suggest going to his main page, hartchen.com, I believe.

And you should be able to consult. – Hartchenconsultancy.com, I believe. – Is it?

I always type in Hartchen and yeah, Hartchen consultancy.

And you’ll find it.

And it’s about, I don’t know, 30, 45 minutes.

And he did questions.

Anyway, it was so well received.

He’s doing one of his sessions, training sessions on AI.

Believe he’s got a two-parter.

He’s going to do four sessions in the fall.

And I think he’s got part two planned for February.

You can find out more about that on his website.

And I want to reach out to him and see if maybe he’ll come and do a little presentation and talk about AI and maybe if nothing else, maybe talk about what he’s going to talk about.

This is an area that seems to have everyone’s attention for better or for worse.

There’s pluses and minuses to AI and Brian does a good job of addressing all of that.

So we did that.

In addition, we also had three other technology sessions.

They were all in the afternoon.

They were also well attended.

IBug did a presentation on working smarter, not harder with some productivity apps that are stock on the iPhone.

Michael Babcock did a presentation on website implementation and maintenance.

That was very well done.

And I believe a lot of people felt it was a great primer to WordPress.

That was very well attended to.

And then of course, Computers for the Blind was a big hit.

Marty does a great job at interviewing.

He interviewed Marcy Doody and Brian Carver from Computers for the Blind.

And you know, there were lots of questions on that one.

So that was very well attended.

So that leaves us the BITS reception.

We’d never done one of these things before.

This was uncharted territory.

And it turned out to be a hugely attended event.

I don’t know how it happened that Janet Dickelman put us in the largest meeting room at the hotel.

I don’t think we needed quite that much space.

But we certainly had a lot more people attend than I thought.

We sold 48 tickets in advance. 42 people actually showed up and redeemed their ticket.

Your ticket was purchased during registration.

It got you a drink coupon and a raffle ticket.

By the way, I didn’t put this in my report.

Our raffle winner was, was it Jeanette Lee?

She was there.

And say it again.

>> Jeanine.

>> Jeanine Lee.

>> Jeanine.

>> And is that L-E-A, I believe, is how I read it.

>> Yeah, I guess it is.

>> Yeah.

Okay.

So she won the H4 Essential Podcasting Bundle that we’ve talked about.

We also donated the same thing to the ACB Summer Auction.

And I believe some guy named Jeff Bishop bid on that and won that at the auction.

We keep it close to home, you know?

What can I say?

So anyway, and I worked with ACB Media during the convention.

And we used those H4E recorders to record sessions that were not out on Zoom.

And so I got familiar with working with those.

Those are pretty nifty little devices.

Well, they’re not that little, but yeah, they’re very neat little devices.

So congratulations to Jeanine and who I guess Jeff for winning the bundle in the auction.

So anyway, while we were at the — we were in a room.

We had a bunch of tables.

Jeff’s wife, Carrie, is sighted.

And she estimated we had about seven tables and each table seated 10 people.

She said most of the tables, all the chairs were filled with people sitting around chatting and stuff.

So that’s close to 70 people.

And we probably had just lots of people standing around in various parts of the room chatting.

So, you know, she estimated we had over 70 people in the room at one point.

And then people were coming and going throughout the event as well.

So Carrie Bishop estimated we probably had close to 100 people throughout the course of the event that were in the room at one point or another.

And I was overwhelmed by that.

We did not turn anyone away who didn’t have a ticket.

You just didn’t get — you had to buy your own raffle tickets, which were sold.

We had, you know, a check-in table and special thanks to Cindy Labon, Ann Bacon, and of course, Jamaica Miller.

These ladies manned the door.

We had a table there, or should I say ladied the door.

We had a check-in table where you could redeem your ticket, get your drink coupon, your raffle ticket.

And then we sold more raffle tickets, as was mentioned in the Treasurer’s Report.

We sold $80 worth of raffle tickets at the door to people who wanted to purchase extras or didn’t buy a ticket and wanted to purchase some.

So I would have liked to see us sell more of those.

But, you know, it was a great crowd.

I’m still waiting.

I talked to Janet Dickleman yesterday.

We will get an invoice from ACB.

I believe in my report I totaled up — I estimated, since I don’t have a bill.

You know, we sold 48 tickets at $15 apiece.

ACB gets $3 for every ticket we sold.

And that left us with whatever the amount I put in the report was.

And I didn’t include in the report on the convention registration form was a place where you could donate $10 to BITS.

And those who chose to check that box and donate that $10 will be included in a drawing that we will do, like we’ve done in the past several years during our annual meeting for — I don’t know, what have we done before, Amazon gift cards, I think.

So — and then I listed our expenses.

We had a cash bar and bartender, so that cost us $165 for the bartender and the bar.

Of course, people had to buy their own drinks.

People who were given a drink coupon turned their drink coupon into the bartender.

We will have to pay.

And I don’t know how much we’ll pay.

I know if you bought a drink, I think a beer was outrageous.

It was $10.

I think a glass of wine was $11.

And perhaps a mixed drink was $12.

I don’t know how they’re going to bill us for those, but we’ll get a bill for every drink coupon that was turned into the bartender.

So I’m still waiting on all that.

My initial reaction is we didn’t charge enough for those tickets.

And if we do this again, we’ll have to reevaluate what we charged.

Janet told me that a lot of groups will charge a ticket price, and they also add an admin fee on top of it.

So I don’t know what difference it makes if you call it a $15 plus a $5 admin fee, or if you just charge $20.

It’s still $20.

But that probably would have been better if we had charged $20.

But the purpose of the event was not to make money.

It was to increase exposure of bits to those.

If there’s anyone on the planet yet who hasn’t heard of bits, we were trying to make sure we covered all that.

But we had good attendance, I think, and it all helped get the word out about bits.

So that’s enough said about the convention.

Presentation.

In my report, I list our presentations that we did during June and July.

It’s a lot of the Applebytes, MacBytes.

We do Basics with Bits two Saturdays a month.

We continue to have really good participation.

The last one we did on July 27th, we had like 40 people there.

On July, when you think people might be on vacation or doing other things, but we had 40 people in the room.

And we had good attendance and good questions.

I know Debbie will talk about that more.

We’ve got another one coming up this coming Saturday.

And it escapes me what, oh, she’s going to talk about accessing ACB Media Podcast on the different ways to access that on the media website and podcasting clients and things of that nature.

So and I know she’s got some other things planned for the next couple of months.

I listed what’s coming up for August.

Obviously, we have Applebytes next Tuesday.

We have Aira will be doing a presentation on what’s going on.

They’ve got a lot of new stuff going on in the Aira app.

And I believe they’re going to focus on some of the AI features in the Aira app.

We’re going to have, of course, Janine Stanley and Everett Bacon will be doing that presentation for us.

Of course, I think we decided that we’re going to do that one on ACB Community.

That’s another good one to open it up and more community exposure for BITS.

That’ll be next Wednesday at eight o’clock p.m.

Eastern in the ACB community.

No, in the Zoom BITS community Zoom room, our public public Zoom room has been renamed to the community Zoom room, just like our private one’s been renamed to the members only Zoom room.

Of course, basics with BITS on the 10th, and then I guess the 24th will be doing Applebytes.

And I think that’s the 28th.

We are in the works, as I already mentioned, Jeff is working on a panel discussion, follow up to the AI presentations during convention.

And I’ve already talked with Jeff Baser from Vespero.

Like last year, he did a presentation for us as soon as the new JAWS/Fusion suite was in public beta, which comes out usually early September because they do the public, the final release in October.

And he’ll do a presentation on what’s new in the new JAWS/Fusion 2025.

And as soon as it’s released, then we’ll nail down a date for that.

But last year, we did it on September 20th.

So my guess is it will be sometime around that third week of September if history repeats itself.

And there’s a couple other things I’m working on, but they’re not to the point that I can even say anything because they might or might not happen.

So that’s my presentations report.

So it’s convention and presentations.

>> My education committee, speaking of Debbie Armstrong.

Are you there, Debbie?

>> She is not here.

>> She is not here.

>> No, sir, she is not.

>> We will move along then.

Technical infrastructure, we have IT infrastructure committee.

Michael?

>> I think that’s me.

>> I think that is you.

>> I guess you probably want me to talk about something for a minute.

>> Most of this stuff was not going to — I’ll do a brief rundown of everything that we’ve done real quick.

But more details are included in the packet that you should have in your email.

If you’re not a member in here from ACB community, you can go to joinbits.org to become a member.

And then I’m sure we can send you the packet then as well.

So as of today, all members have access to the website.

If you have not gotten into your account, please reach out, it-admin@bits-acb.org.

And we are — I’ll get to that in a moment.

All members also — well, I guess I should preface this.

All members as of Monday evening should now have access to their extended remote incident manager or RIM access.

If for some reason you only show a 30-minute — if for some reason you only show 30 minutes free in your RIM account, please first check to verify that the email address you are registered with BITS and your RIM email address match.

If you don’t know what email address we used for your BITS account and/or you need anything updated, again, feel free to reach out.

We’ll be glad to help you out.

Some of the future plans.

We — and I think this might have been what Jeff was talking about, but I’m not sure exactly.

But we are in the process of taking all of the archived content that was on the previous website and bringing that into the current website for members only.

This is going to consist of us building out a form for our team to add the content to the website.

And then honestly, I’m going to cheat and use a CSV file to quickly import all of that data to the website so we don’t have to do a lot.

But we need to get that form built out, and we’re in the process of working on that as well.

This will also allow us to delegate access to the form to specific committee members or committees, depending on how we end up structuring that.

So the publications, for example, doesn’t have to email the IT infrastructure team in order to make updates to the webpage.

They’ll be able to log into their account, and specifically publications members might have access to update certain parts of the website.

So I’m super excited to get that implemented.

Also, I want to thank Michael Doyes for his assistance with making a transcript of all of the past content, and that’s going to get bulk added to the website as we add it as well.

A delegate voting participation.

This was pretty cool, and I got a lot of feedback on this.

And our members successfully participated in casting their opinions on who our affiliate should cast our 25 delegate votes for.

And members were able to log into their homepage, access their account, and then pick from radio buttons on who they’d like to or how they’d like the BITS affiliate to vote.

There were a total of 228 votes that were cast.

So we really appreciate, and that’s over all three ballots, we really appreciate each of your participations.

Future plans.

Number one future plan is a password reset process, because, well, you know, we all forget our passwords if we’re not using a password manager.

So we’re going to get a link on the homepage so members can just click that link, reset their password, and hopefully be able to self-serve that.

Also, got some feedback from some new members that says, “Hey, having a login form on your signup form doesn’t make any sense because I don’t have a login right now.”

So we’re going to remove that login form from the membership registration form to eliminate any sort of confusion.

We’re also going to create a section that will be a placeholder for right now until we get the final approval with Constitution and Bylaws so members can download that information and have access to all of that once it’s approved.

And then we’re also going to work together with the publication/PR committee and fundraising committee to build a support BITS page that will give you all of the opportunities you can go and do what you’re already doing, but support BITS while you’re doing it.

Member support.

This is something that I don’t have full details to.

But going through convention and me checking emails and Jeff checking emails and Jeff forwarding me emails and me putting in the incorrect email in the mailing list, because that happened too, made me realize that it would be nice if we had a consistent and easy way for members to reach out, especially those who might need some additional assistance when using technology.

And I think there’s some good opportunity with this as well in the near future, and I’d be open to talking more about that.

Maybe not tonight, but in the not too distant future.

I think at some point we need to create a BITS phone number so members can pick up the phone, call someone, get a member of the IT team for right now on that phone and say, hey, I need my password reset.

Can you help me with that?

And then we can be able to do that.

I’d like to see this eventually roll out to, and again, I don’t have all the details, but wouldn’t it be cool if you were a BITS member and you could pick up the phone and call someone and that someone’s able to answer your tech questions for you and then be able to use that knowledge.

So don’t know all those details, but I think that’d be a fun adventure.

That’s why I threw that in there.

Lastly, contact options.

We were asked to add a contact us form to the website, which is getting added with a way to contact the BITS board specifically.

And then probably we’ll have a drop down or check boxes for people to be able to pick other committees that they might be interested in reaching out to.

That’s my report.

And thanks, Brad. – All right.

Thank you, Michael.

Moving along, we have budget and finance.

And we’ll start out with the A’s, that would be auditing and Taylor Orange.

Taylor, are you there? – Audit committee, it’s actually been pretty active this few months.

So a couple of things.

The report that is sent out earlier is only part of the report.

So in about six central today, there was a lot more updates that I just didn’t have enough time to send out to the list.

So I finally got a hold of Brad’s accountant with Brad’s help to be able to sort out this.

And basically his or her recommendation, I don’t know, you know, Brad’s accountant, basically they suggested that we don’t need an audit technically.

Like we don’t need one of those huge audits.

They said, you know, as long as you go through the like the treasurer’s report to make sure there’s no fraud and things like that, you don’t need a massive audit.

Now, that being said, if we are going to get corporate grants in the future, which has been talked about to a certain degree with Jeff and other people, then what would happen is if we’re going to get a grant like that, the grant itself would say what kind of audit they’re requiring.

And at that point, we can inquire about the actual full audit.

Now, that is good news.

So I also, thanks to the BITS mixture that y’all been talking about, I met a couple of new BITS members, and one of them happens to be a retired CPA who just, actually they’re not retired, my mistake.

They are a CPA who is newly blind, and they are interested in helping me with some audit stuff.

So they are actually from Jacksonville, and they decided to check out BITS kind of on a whim.

So I just saw them at a table, and, you know, I was talking to them, and so that was really cool.

But what John recommended is kind of do what Maria did before, which is, you know, where you do the audit just to make sure that there’s no fraud or things like that.

But me, myself, I don’t have that kind of full financial accounting training because I didn’t go to school for this stuff.

And so, you know, like I only have basic stuff, and I don’t have all the like recognition stuff.

So that’s kind of my thoughts on that.

So that’s kind of my basic report.

But yeah, those are kind of some things that are happening in the audit committee.

>> All right, thank you, Taylor.

Budget, Diane.

Jeff sent in the packet the budget that Peggy Carpenter and Renee Zelikson and I worked on.

And at our last budget meeting, Michael Babcock also came in and gave us a couple, you know, a couple of figures, and as of the one of note is that apparently we are not doing business with godaddy.com anymore.

So he’s using a site called Namecheap.

Is that right, Michael?

Namecheap for our– >> That is correct, Diane. >> –for our domain names.

And– oh, I should have had the paperwork in front of me.

And, you know, our web hosting is going to be done– is that DreamHost?

>> Yes, that’s DreamHost.

>> Yeah.

So those are a couple of big changes.

There are still a couple of blank spaces where we don’t have amounts filled in that we did pay for in the past, and those are for web backup and web security.

So I don’t know what you all had planned to do for that.

But, you know, if we can get figures on those things, then we would be ready to put a 2025 budget out for the board to vote on.

If we’re not going to need those things at all, then, you know, should I just take them off the report?

>> Yeah, I thought at that meeting we had decided to take them off that report, but I may have misunderstood that.

>> Okay.

>> I don’t remember, and it wasn’t in the minutes that we received and posted to our budget group.

So– >> Yeah, you should have everything you need for the website portion of the budget.

I’m not sure about the rest of it, but you should be good to go with that.

>> Okay.

All right.

Yeah, that was the only thing that we were really missing.

And I will just remove those and we can, you know, then we can vote on it as it appears on what I sent out in the packet, which I forgot to look for and opened up.

So I think we have it pretty done.

>> I have a question, David.

>> Okay.

Yeah, okay.

>> I don’t know who we paid and what we paid for in the past for those services, and it might be a good idea to leave them there in case we decide to do something with that.

>> For web security and web backup?

>> For the backup and/or a security package or solution that we were using before.

>> I would have to pull out the annual treasurer’s report, but I thought it was–I thought we were doing it through godaddy.com.

>> Yep, it was through godaddy.

I don’t have those figures.

And I get what David’s saying, because it would be better to have a little bit extra budgeted in case something did come into play and we did need something like that.

So appreciate you bringing that up.

But yes, it was godaddy.com, Diane, and we can probably find those numbers as well.

If you want, I can email you and we can get that set up.

>> Yeah, I’ll go into the treasurer’s report and see what I can find there.

But yeah, if you want to email me something, then we will put those figures in there and then it’ll be ready.

It’ll be ready for us to vote on.

We definitely are–based on what we have–of course, we’re really grasping at straws for a lot of the figures we have on there because we haven’t had the experience.

For example, we really wonder how much dues we’re really going to get in 2025.

Are we going to get everybody back that took advantage of the moratorium?

I’m thinking probably not.

So we didn’t know some of the figures to put in there, but we are operating at a surplus based on the figures we came up with.

So I don’t know.

I guess I’ll submit that again.

I’ll put those figures in and submit it for September.

And then we can vote on it.

>> Diane, in my experience with other organizations, any fundraiser you plan on doing in the future, whether that be collecting membership dues or a special fundraiser, you really don’t know.

So you just have to do an estimate.

>> Yeah.

>> And then you can do things later.

>> Yeah, well, that’s what we’re figuring, that as we do it, we’ll get some experience that we can use in the future.

So, yeah, that’s what we did.

>> All right.

Thank you, Diane.

>> Yeah.

>> Let’s move to fundraising.

Renee.

>> Well, thank you.

I first would like to thank my committee, Marty Sobo and Karen Hughes and Marcy Doody.

They have the connections to know how to get the T-shirts and the logo done.

And I really, really so appreciate all of their efforts on behalf of For Bits.

What we want to do is on the website, we want to establish a page, a link on the page that would lead to a store, for lack of a better name right now.

I’m sure we can come up with a clever name for it, but a way for people to purchase items on the Bips website.

And we also plan to have these at the convention and also periodically send out announcements to other lists, announcing the items that we have for sale.

As far as other items, besides the candy store with Terry Lynn and the web T-shirts from the Girl Design, I have an idea of maybe offering, looking into a coffee fundraising website, as I know that there are a lot of coffee drinkers.

But any suggestions would be welcome.

And so we will meet probably sometime in September to finalize and further develop what we will need to do.

OK.

I have a question when you’re done.

Yeah.

So far, because not a lot of items were brought to the convention, my understanding is we were able to sell maybe three T-shirts.

And the Terry Lynn candy site has just been established and gone up.

And I have purchased something, and Diane has purchased something.

So OK, I’ll take a question.

Yeah, I wondered how– like, if you establish that web page, I’m assuming that the Blind Girl Designs– if we put a link to Blind Girl Designs from our website, that it will go to their web page, and that’s where the purchasing would actually be done.

And the same thing with TerryLynn.com.

Yes, that would be the best thing to do.

Yes.

And now, we did at our meeting that we had with Jeff last week– and I put $500 in the budget for us to purchase stuff from Blind Girl Designs to maybe give away as door prizes, or at least that was my impression of what we had voted on.

So maybe I should confirm that that’s my understanding of what we were going to do with– It is, but I don’t know.

I didn’t want to get a question as to when we were going to give away door prizes and how that was going to be done until maybe we spoke with Jeff again.

But yes, that is correct.

That is a great idea to involve– I believe the plan for the door prizes is at the membership meeting in December.

Okay.

Well, we didn’t finalize anything, and I didn’t want to speak too soon.

So I was going to wait on that.

But okay, yes, that is correct.

I think that’s what we talked about.

Yeah.

It’s on the new business portion of the meeting here.

Okay.

And besides the t-shirts, I’d like to see maybe giving away one of those wonderful tote bags that have a zipper on it.

I’m sure people could use that.

So yeah, I’m sorry if that got out of turn, but yeah, that is correct.

Okay, thank you.

And that’s all I have to say.

Okay.

Thank you, Renee.

Two things for Renee.

Okay.

One, I think Michael was talking about a page that would link to other ways to support BITS that will help.

And the other thing I was going to mention is Jim O’Neill mentioned Mods Coffee and Tea.

It might be worth looking at them to see if in the chat and on the discussion list.

It might be worth looking at them and seeing if they offer a fundraising option.

So there’s my thoughts.

Very good.

Okay.

Thank you.

We’ll look into that.

Mods Coffee and Tea.

All right.

Let’s move along.

Membership.

John, you’re up.

Well, I think I pretty much gave it.

By the way, upon doing the research, the person from the Netherlands has not remitted dues.

We have a form, but we are up to 27 because a past member has just within the hour or, you know, maybe two hours since this meeting has come in.

So the nice thing about that, it will just be a matter of going through that person’s record because she was a member last year and updating it accordingly.

And so we’re 27 members, six were either renewals or extensions.

I guess that now that turns to seven because this person is in that category.

Five people I need to follow up with.

Well, now it’s six.

See how these things change?

We’re up to six now who like I have the emails that say, well, is there a problem in remitting dues?

How can we help?

I don’t want to get into this now.

It’s getting a little late, but and we have new business, but I think we are going to have to visit the idea of whether PayPal is our only option.

And that was, again, something that we talked about and decided to punch for reasons that were understandable.

But now that the pressure of convention is off, I think we need to take another look at it.

We’ve been doing very, very well with PayPal.

I think it will be the much preferred option for most people, but maybe it shouldn’t be the only one.

Okay.

And then next is Constitution and bylaws.

Also, John.

Okay.

As I said before, I’m going to I want to convene a meeting this next week.

I think we should meet no less than biweekly with liberal use of the bylaws list to share ideas.

And I also want the board to send to me at John at Jam site that net.

Oh, I guess we’re broadcasting live.

Maybe I should have done that.

But this is a board meeting, so you need to know how to get in touch with me.

I want the board to come to me sooner than later with ideas or thoughts.

I mean, David, I know some of your thoughts and but and we’ll talk about this in the in under new business, but amending that set that section about people come in first time.

It’s members coming in after July one.

I mean, that’s already on the radar screen for something to modify.

My only thought I might as well say it here, even if we drop to half a membership in the in the vicinity of 400 people, that really puts us sort of in the same league as GD guide dog users, GDUI.

And I think if you have a 400, 450 person organization, maybe we’d even get more than that.

But maybe not.

You know, I think once the freebie ends, I think there’ll be a not insignificant number of people who say, well, thanks.

You know, it was a nice free ride.

But if you have an organization with 400, 450 people, I think you need a larger board.

So my thought would be that we would instead of one director being elected every, you know, every year on a three year cycle, I should probably be too.

But that’s just a summary of what I’m thinking about.

If I could return for a second, just to put this on, I guess, your plate, Michael.

You know, with the membership committee, I think it’s never too soon.

I wouldn’t want to wait past September to talk about maybe retooling the membership form that’s available on joinvix.org.

So that’s pretty much an internal matter.

But if you could maybe have that on your radar screen, because I think, you know, I’d like to simplify it.

First of all, I think we should have at the very top, if you don’t believe your data has changed since last year, check this box and submit your dues.

We will be communicating about that, John, because you and I are on the same page.

Sounds good.

And I might as well just say it here, too.

I think we were overly ambitious in asking for all that committee stuff, because we were never really able to do follow up with it this year.

I think that should be a supplemental form.

Let’s just get the basic form that’s more closely aligned with the AMS and then worry about solicitation of interest maybe later.

That’s my thought.

But it’s just my thought.

Well, a lot, you know, we didn’t know.

None of us, I don’t think that we’re, you know, in a position to make committee decisions made.

You know, we’re given access to see what people would put.

But I don’t know if I would have wanted to go through all of that anyway.

Would you have wanted to go through 625?

No, no.

I mean, none of us saw the tsunami that that was that we got hit with.

I mean, we were the victims of our own success.

I mean, it’s great.

I think back on it and I think how the heck did we even and it wasn’t without Minnesota’s help, believe me, because it was a lot.

But it was it was a labor of love.

And look what we’ve netted from it.

I mean.

OK, thank you, John.

Credentials, also, Diane.

I think John is probably more involved with that, you know, because we both are are teaming up to keep track of everybody and who’s certified and who needs to be certified and, you know, all that sort of stuff.

I don’t really think there’s much to report.

Do you, John?

No, no, no.

You know, we’re in constant sync and we’ll be so.

And there are provisions in the D.C. code that says, you know, what needs to be done and how you compile a list.

And that’s where AMS is really our friend.

I think we’ve got that well in hand.

OK, and then I think it’s last and not least fall and the annual meeting will be here before we know it, December.

So let’s check in with nominating committee.

And I believe we have a new chair, Debbie Hazleton.

I didn’t know I was going to be reporting, but I know I was included in the packet.

And I’m excited to be taking the nominations nominating committee this this year.

And I have spoken with one person about joining.

I have another person in mind.

If if anyone is really wanting to be a part of that, you can reach out to me and we will I will be in touch with Jeff on this and you will be considered.

I know Jeff has been saying all along that it would be important to get this together and start working on it in October.

So I look forward to those of us working on it, coming up with really good questions and to an exciting time to listen to those who are running.

I need to get clear on on who is let’s see, we have one board position, right?

And then our officers might have to if that goes through.

Yeah, that does.

But what about officers?

All officers.

We have all officers and one board or two board positions to serve.

At least one board.

Yeah.

All right.

Got to cook up some really good questions.

So OK, it’ll be fun.

I really think the candidates forums have been very successful and I can’t say enough about the good work of Marie Nelson.

And I’m sorry that she chose to step down.

I was looking forward to working with her, but I know that Marie did great work.

And so those are some shoes to fill, big shoes to attempt to fill.

So thank you, Marie.

And I’m happy to have the opportunity to work with you all.

Thank you.

Thank you, Board Debbie and thank you, Marie.

Sorry to see you go as Marie.

Me too.

You did a wonderful, wonderful job when called upon kind of late in the process, but we appreciate it.

So thank you.

Let’s move along because the clock keeps moving on us.

I got old business and then there’s nothing under this category.

Does anybody get any old business that’s not on the agenda that needs to be?

If not, we’ll move to new business because we got several things here.

And the first one is alignment.

What is alignment of renewal date?

Which is the matter that that Diane and I have discussed.

I think I can put this to bed pretty quickly.

In the normal circumstance, I’d be the last person to say, well, you know, just nod and a wink and just look the other way with your constitution.

But I have retirement resources north of half a mil that says that the that this group that BITS is going to adopt a constitution and bylaw amendment to get rid of this unfairness.

First of all, when we said July one, I don’t think we’d ever had meetings or portions there of occurring before July one.

What I’m going to suggest is that that once AM closes this year, it was May 24th, just to put a date to it.

But once AMS closes so that ACB can honor its record dates requirement, anybody who comes in after that date, even though they can’t vote in, even though they can’t vote at the ACB convention, our record date is November one.

In other words, if you don’t pay by October 31, then you cannot vote.

So we have about five weeks, you know, from November one to whatever the second Wednesday of December is.

We are on totally different schedules.

So I think it would be fair to say that anyone coming after coming in first time members coming in after the date when AMS closes so that ACB can honor its record date requirement.

If they’re a first time member, you would get extended out to the New Year’s Eve of the following year.

So if there’s no objection to that, I’m just going to make note in the records of those individuals.

It doesn’t become a crisis unless or until people refuse to go along with that constitutional amendment.

I don’t think that we can or should put ourselves on record as having a motion that currently goes against the Constitution.

We’ll just operate on good faith here that we’re going to pass that part of the constitutional changes, that portion, and everything should be good.

But I think everyone is on board.

It’s ridiculous to say, you know, if you came in on June 30th, but July 1st, you’re good.

Just to clarify, our current Constitution says that if you are a new, never been a member of Bits Before person and you join on or after July 1 of any given year, people would say you’re only paying for six months.

But we have said for brand new members, we voted a year or two ago to extend that out for new members only, brand new members, to not the end of the current year, but the end of the following year.

So in this case, that would be December 31st, 2025.

What we were started to look at was due to the attention we received pretty much beginning around the virtual, beginning of the virtual convention, we started getting new members.

And we said, you know, why don’t we extend this courtesy of the, you know, they’ve paid dues during June, and we had a lot of them that started coming in.

Why don’t we grant them the same courtesy that we’re giving people who join on or after July 1, correct, John?

I would also add that when we did this, I believe it was back in July or August of 2021.

I think so, that’s correct.

But it was back in 2021 when we picked up a lot of members, and this was, or possibly 20, but maybe 21.

Again, we had COVID going on, people were like flocking to our standards, we were doing a lot of calls.

And that change was done before it got enshrined in a constitutional thing.

So I think we can just consider that that’s going to be the case without making a decision, because the decision, the ratifying decision, or the implementing decision, will come when the Constitution is adopted, the new constitutional provisions, and we’ll definitely address paragraph 3.2.2.

And actually, what made the whole thing even worse, to me, was that they defined a new member as someone who was not on the prior year’s membership roster.

Right.

And I don’t know that that was ever intended.

I think we can go back five years or something like that, because you could jimmy the system like that, just, “Oh, just join every other year and just be out six months.”

You could game, you try to prevent gaming of the system.

I think we’re all on the same page here, so…

We are going to, I don’t know if we’re going to vote or what are we going to do.

Anyone that joined, I think we, I know what I mentioned to Jeff was, anybody who joined this move it from July 1 to June 1, even though the real influx started late in the month, but let’s just move the goalposts to June 1 and say, if you joined in any time in June, you get the same courtesy that we were extending for July 1 and beyond.

But why don’t we be safe and say when AMS closes?

We didn’t have that situation.

All right.

You know, we can talk about that.

I don’t want to necessarily get into the nitty gritty beyond the point, but I see where you’re going with that.

We’d only be talking about another week.

When AMS closes, it becomes a nightmare to track.

Well, that’s fine.

I understand what you’re saying.

I hadn’t thought about that.

So do we need a motion?

No, I think we just, you know…

Think we should just do it?

Can we just do it?

Just going to unofficially do it, wink and a nod?

Yeah, I think…

Say it’s done?

I think just if we’re doing it in the spirit of the law, not the letter of the law, we’re doing exactly what…

I think it’s all about the…

It’s only fair.

It’s all about being safe, respectful, and welcoming to our new members.

Mostly welcoming.

Seriously, I think that is a good move.

There’s nobody harmed by it, I don’t think.

If I move then, I would say in contemplation of what we believe to be a non-controversial constitutional change in the next two months, let’s say three months to be safe, we will grant a membership to anyone coming in after the date at which AMS, the affiliate, ACB’s affiliate membership management system is shut down to honor ACB’s record date requirement for the convention.

Sounds good to me.

Do we have a second?

I’ll second it.

Okay, how about a vote?

Everyone in favor say aye.

Aye.

No, any opposed?

Okay, Robin, you got all that?

Yes.

Thank you.

You need that wording, Robin, let me know.

Yeah, we’ll work on that wording.

Okay, perfect.

That was easy.

Let’s see, what’s next?

No, here it is.

There’s a bunch of Dianes quoting the Constitution here.

That’s all.

Yeah, that was all part of that that we just did.

I know, I know.

I’m just arrowing down to see what- But I just wanted to make my case in as big a way as I could.

That’s why I put all of that in there.

When you did, I got to say it was not- Okay, here is the next item.

This is what we talked about, I think, at the fundraising the other day.

We’re looking to authorize $500 from the general fund for purchase of giveaways at the upcoming, it says business meeting, but yes, that’s the annual meeting.

I think we’re talking about door prizes and drawings, and I’m not sure exactly what we were, I think we talked about some t-shirts, the tote bags, maybe Amazon gift card.

I don’t know, but we set an amount of $500 to be authorized out of our general fund for purchase of giveaway prizes during the annual meeting in December.

Does that make sense?

I do have a question, though, or a point to raise.

Would it be correct to say that the average price of these things is about 30 bucks, the totes or the t-shirts?

Yes.

I’m not sure what’s a t-shirt cost.

I heard a tote bag was more than that, but- A tote bag was 35, but that’s counterbalanced maybe by shirts that are 25.

I mean, once you get over- I’m not sure.

All right.

Where I’m going with this is, I mean, let’s assume it’s 30, okay?

It’s like 16, 17.

Are we going to give away that many door prizes?

Hey, it might be- Well, but we’ve also, in the past, we’ve also given away, I think, Amazon gift cards.

But didn’t we give that away to people who, we had a drawing, people who checked that box during registration and were doing money- Yeah, I think we gave away two Amazon gift cards.

I don’t know if we’re talking about that, because I know we’ve done that before.

It says upcoming business for the annual meeting is what- Yeah, it’s at the annual meeting, but we’re authorizing door prizes or giveaways that we’re going to do during the annual meeting.

And we did do 200 at the other annual meeting.

That’s what we did, and that’s for, you were entered into that drawing if during the convention registration you checked that box where you donated $10 to Bits.

And if you did that, your name was entered in that drawing.

So that’s that drawing.

This may be a separate issue, so we need some clarification on this.

Perhaps we might table this one until next month.

We still, I think, have time if we wait, put this off until September for clarification reasons.

I think we would still have plenty of time to get this taken care of by the second Wednesday in December is when the annual meeting is.

So what do you guys think?

I’m fine with that.

Like I say off the top of my head, 500 seems a little generous.

I mean, give away maybe five to 10 at the max.

I don’t know.

Brad, this is Rosanna.

Can I- Yes, Rosanna.

Okay.

What Jeff was alluding to here was the giveaway for $500 was not for one prize.

It was for- Many prizes.

Right.

At any other given time.

What he was trying to get at was to try to give encouragement and add some, I can’t think of the word now, some fun, if you want to call it, fun to some of the board meetings and whatever with being able to have a giveaway.

And I think what we were talking about at that meeting was that that would help to precipitate people to be engaged more in the fundraising projects.

That’s what that was kind of all about.

And just an FYI too, Diane was correct earlier.

She was correct about the $500.

That was what we were asking for.

But again, it was not for a whole one time thing.

The other thing is that Jeff had wanted us to reach out to different lists and what have you to get information out.

And Karen Hughes and myself have already started to work on that project.

And Karen has put together some information that she has already sent to me and I’m working on getting that out.

And some of it will go out to the membership list as well.

That’s what Jeff wanted.

Okay.

So I hope that helps a little.

Thank you.

I hope that clarifies some of it.

I’m not understanding, but lists, reaching out to lists, what lists?

Putting information on email lists.

Yeah, on email lists.

But he’s talking about getting it out on other lists like ACB, like dots and dashes, and community lists and stuff like that.

I have already sent one out to dots and dashes, so it should be coming up on the next one.

Oh, you mean announcing it?

Yes.

Announcing it on merchandise?

Exactly.

Announcing fundraising.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Well, again, do we want to just table this approval of $500?

Yeah.

I know Jeff is here, and he can perhaps clarify what he’s thinking about.

Yeah, absolutely.

And we have time, as you said.

We got time.

I think September gives us plenty of time.

We’ll table this one.

Oh, yeah, I think so.

For the annual meeting, yeah.

For sure.

Yeah, yeah.

We got plenty of time.

So we’ll let that one go.

Let’s see what’s next on this list.

He’s talking about a volunteer appreciation award.

Is that a separate one, or is that?

It says C.

He says, “Can the membership committee eventually ponder?”

Think about this and bring back a proposal on a BITS volunteer appreciation award.

So I don’t know.

Again, I can give some background on this.

Yeah, John.

He’s just asking the membership committee to- Another thing for the agenda.

Yeah.

Something else for you to do, John.

Once I get off this call, I’m going to amend the record for the person who came in two hours ago.

Exactly.

There you go.

Do you want a little bit of background on this?

Okay, so you can do that while you’re pondering the membership appreciation award.

Yeah, so we’re just going to get background on it.

Awesome.

I don’t know.

You’ll have to talk to Jeff.

So I was just asking if you guys want a little bit of background of information on this coming up.

Yes, please.

Go ahead.

So there was a …

I think it was Saturday night.

We had a member raise her hand and ask, similar to what ACB community does to recognize the volunteers that are doing great work.

She was asking if there’s any way we can recognize the volunteers of our members that are helping the organization- We’re all volunteers.

We do.

Yeah.

I’m passing the message on.

Right.

And so she asked that.

Jeff said we can add it to the agenda.

I propose that we can probably talk about this in September in more detail to get some more information.

Yes, that was in the president’s office hours.

That’s right.

I remember that.

There you go.

Thank you.

I knew it was- Yes.

It wasn’t Saturday.

That would have been chat.

No.

Yeah.

It was a little over a week and a half ago at president’s office hours on the last Sunday in July.

Yep.

I remember that.

And actually, I think that person had their hand up earlier, if I’m not mistaken.

Anyhow, let’s move along.

Let’s see what else we got here.

So John, you can ponder that, right?

Yeah.

Let’s see.

And bring back a proposal.

We’ll ponder.

We will ponder.

I’m eventually pondering.

Yeah.

We will.

Okay.

Mr.

Vice President?

Are you asleep?

Yes, ma’am.

I just wanted to let everyone know.

In the past 45 minutes, we are now up to 157 lovely people on Mastodon.

Three away from 160.

We only allow lovely people on Mastodon.

We do.

So imagine how many we’d have if we’d lower that bar and just allow it.

Well, that’s good to know.

Thank you.

You’re welcome.

Very good.

Yeah.

I wonder if I might have to- All right.

Now, we have…

That’s all of our new business.

Anybody else?

Anything?

I’m going to go back to the other member comments.

I know Elizabeth is probably…

Her arm is very tired.

Her hand has been up all this time.

And I thank her for her patience.

So we’ll- She left.

Elizabeth is gone.

Oh, man.

It’s all right.

I’ll find her.

Okay.

You have hands up.

We’ll take hands if we will.

Let me see.

Yeah, she’s going to come.

Does that take us back to the other members?

I’m going to go back to the other members.

Does that take us back to the agenda item of setting up a board contact or a board thing?

That wasn’t on new business.

Okay.

We had talked about it.

Well, we’ll put it on September’s business.

John, were you talking about like a contact the board form?

Yeah.

That was in my website report.

We covered that briefly that we’re adding a contact the board and then the potential of adding committee chairs to that form if people wanted to reach out to committees directly as well.

Okay.

Great.

Thanks for refreshing my mind on that.

No worries.

I would.

Yeah.

All right, Cindy, let’s do hands.

I’ve made it so people don’t have to get a prompt to unmute.

So just call on hands.

Miss Jamaica, you’re up.

Jamaica.

Thank you for your help at the convention.

I really enjoyed doing that.

And if I’m able to return to another convention, I hope I can help again.

But the other thing, the thing that I need to talk with is, um, Michael Babcock, when you get a chance to, if you could give me a call, please.

I have a question of a couple of questions about rim.

And so I sent you an email this past weekend, but I don’t know if you got it.

So yes, ma’am, I will give you a call tomorrow.

Okay, thank you.

Jamaica, how’s your ankle?

Yeah, well, it’s it’s it’s still sprained.

And I’m still starting physical therapy.

And just next Wednesday, I start physical therapy.

Can I just say Jamaica did a great job speaking on behalf of her chapter during discussion of resolutions and bylaws and such.

Awesome.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you, Jamaica.

Yep.

Who’s next?

I’m gonna tell you, it was I had a fabulous time working with Anne, French Jamaica at the table when we greeted everybody.

And to let you know, one person donated $5.

All he wanted to do was pet my dog.

That’s your dog.

All right.

Yeah, you told me about that.

He didn’t want to tickle.

So, Redmond’s a good money catcher.

Okay, Pam, you’re up.

Hi, everyone.

I have a suggestion for I believe this would come under publications, but maybe not.

I’m just wondering if we could find a way to either get a brochure or a business card of sorts out to the various state affiliates with our logo on it, our joinbits.org website, that sort of thing that would allow people to link to the store and or the various committee chairs, that sort of thing.

Because some of these people are not a part of this group.

And if we can get the word out to some of the state affiliates, see if I can talk, affiliates that were out there and this is what we do and this is how we get it done, that I’m just thinking that we’re going to keep people that we might have gotten through the convention or through the freebies.

Pam, can I answer your question?

Yes, ma’am.

Okay, that’s one of the reasons why, well, first of all, the cards and there would be money involved with that situation.

So it’s something that publications would have to look into.

But one of the reasons why we are reaching out to the lists, such as dots and dashes, communication, conversation list, the president’s list, leadership list, we are reaching out to all of those for exactly that reason.

Because these are people that may not necessarily be a BITS member, but people who can take advantage of what we have to offer.

So that’s one of the reasons why we are engaging down that road.

Your idea about the cards and stuff, it’s kind of interesting, but again, it would be, you know, that’s a money issue and that’s something that would have to be proposed to the Budget Committee.

This group is not broke.

No, but we can’t make that decision.

We would have to bring that to the board or to the Budget Committee and let them know that we are, you know, making this request.

The Publications Committee cannot, you know, decide that we want to spend XYZ dollars.

No, no, no, I understand that, but it just seems like some, any, because you might get a member who might have a blind family member who could take advantage and that person may not have as much contact with that blind family member, but would be able to pass that information on to them.

Yeah, it’s something that, you know, I will bring back to publications and I will just say that word of mouth is really your best friend.

You know, get out there and, you know, let somebody know, “Hey, I tried this.

Would you like to buy some?

I can give you a website to go to.”

Recommendation and word of mouth is probably the best way to get this stuff out there.

I’ll also give y’all another suggestion.

With the various classes that this is offering, Bookshare will give a person a Bookshare membership.

Yeah, and I think, Jeff, we already had that when we did the Python class, and I believe that’s an ongoing thing for our education.

It is.

Yeah, we’re already on the Bookshare thing.

Anyway, thank you, Pam.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

We will put that on the list.

I appreciate your suggestion.

Who’s next, Cindy?

Hi, it’s Lori from Indiana.

Hello, Lori.

I just, I thought I saw on the new business there was a topic of to discuss allowing personal information like contact in the chat, the Zoom chat.

Yeah, you know, you’re right.

I did see that.

Yes, that is on there.

Did I skip it?

Yeah, I did see that.

Thank you.

I don’t know why I didn’t catch that when I went through the list.

Yes, there was an item.

Thank you, Lori.

Let’s talk about that real quick among the board.

There was an item about allowing members in chat to give out their numbers.

I don’t know, David, did you want to have any comment on that?

Well, so far, we just have been going by community guidelines and not allowing that at this point.

But if they go in a breakout room, well, you know, I think that’s a good idea.

It doesn’t slow down everything and it does allow people to give that out.

At least that’s what we’ve been doing.

Some people feel that that’s too limiting and they can be responsible for their own information.

I’m concerned sometimes about what happens if somebody feels uncomfortable, but they don’t want to confront the person where they don’t feel comfortable.

So that’s my concern.

I agree with you, David.

I think since we’re under the banner of ACB National, we should stick to their guidelines.

It’s just my opinion.

Well, there are some guidelines that we’re not following, especially in chat.

I understand that.

But in terms of people’s personal information.

Well, like I said, if they go in a breakout room, which we do.

Right.

And that’s fine because it’s not in the main chat.

That’s what I’m saying.

I think I agree with your current strategy.

Just to clarify.

My thought is it’s not on community.

It’s not being recorded.

It’s not being podcasted.

It’s only with heard by whoever is in the room at the time.

And if somebody chooses, if they’re comfortable with giving out their phone number, I don’t know what the harm is, but I’m going to defer to the group.

It’s a different thing when it’s on community.

Those are recorded.

They’re on, often they’re podcast, often they’re on Clubhouse.

They’re things that are streamed, tend to be podcasted and then replayed over and over again.

And plus they’re archived.

But our situation is none of that.

So I would be in favor of saying it’s up to the individual, but I’m going to defer to the group on what you guys think.

There’s nothing wrong with being safer than necessary has never harmed anyone.

So there’s nothing wrong with the status quo.

We do have breakout rooms for that reason, but other people are in the breakout rooms at the time.

Well, we could try it out by giving the option to the person and see how that goes.

And we can default to one or the other and say, “Hey, if you really don’t feel comfortable with it or you’d rather give it out in private, then go ahead and go to the breakout room.”

Yeah, we can send you to a breakout room.

You can do it there.

Or if you, you know, do we want to, do we have a, is a policy written down someplace that we need to change?

I don’t think so yet.

We’ve just been not doing it because it’s better safe than sorry.

Right.

There’s a couple of hands up.

They may have comments on this.

Yeah.

Let’s see what other people think.

You have four hands up.

All righty.

I knew there’d be a hot topic, so let’s go to hands.

Was that it, Lori?

Was that, did you have anything else or you just wanted us to bring that up?

And I appreciate you bringing that up.

I read that earlier today.

I don’t know how I missed it.

Yeah.

I’m not in favor or not in favor.

I just thought it was on there.

No, I appreciate you bringing it up.

I did see that earlier when I reviewed the new business.

So thank you very much.

Somehow we missed that.

And moving to the list.

I saw that too, and I was going on memory as well.

Yeah.

Okay.

Who’s, what’s our next hand?

Renee.

Yes.

Just a suggestion on that.

On the BITS website, if, if, if someone is comfortable doing so, maybe under the membership page, if someone wants, if there is a, I guess a contact database, let’s say somebody has a question or whatever, and as a contact database, and we say, well, my name and number is on the contact database on the BITS membership webpage.

If people are comfortable, those who want to can put their name and email and a phone number because the membership has to have a password to get into the data to the, to the website.

And they can look up a person there.

I mean, I would certainly be comfortable with that.

It’s just a suggestion.

What was that comment?

Did someone else, did someone say something to what I said?

See now my, my chapter, the MIT and phone chapter has had a data, you know, a listing like that ever since I’ve been a member.

And again, we password protect it.

So you have to be a member in good standing to have access to it.

My radio clubs have always had, you know, listings like that.

Of course, those were in print.

So I personally, you know, have, have always thought that was a good idea.

So all right.

Well, that was, that’s my suggestion.

Okay.

Thank you, Renee.

Who’s our next hand?

All right.

You have five hands up now.

All right.

Okay.

Marie Nelson, go ahead.

Marie.

We are all adults here.

The chat is a personal, friendly thing.

And I think each person should be able to decide if they feel comfortable giving out their phone number and or their email address.

Because in the past, I’ve done both.

It’s never caused me a problem.

I don’t expect it to.

And I think it should be an adult decision.

All right.

Thank you, Marie.

Hello.

How are you doing?

I’m doing great.

Doing great.

Good.

This is my first BITS meeting, official BITS meeting as a member.

Welcome then.

Mine too.

Thank you.

So as far as when we do BITS chats, in which I plan to be active myself.

Yes.

Great.

So as Marie said, it should be an individual decision whether or not I feel comfortable giving out my information, my phone and my email.

And I really enjoy helping people.

So I wouldn’t have any issues with that as long as, I mean, we know that it’s not recorded.

We are in break rooms.

So definitely, I would feel safe.

I think that having access to a members list on the BITS website would be good.

I’m in part of the same chapter as Diane is.

And that password protected, having a password protected membership page really works well.

And I think keeps the membership information fairly well protected.

So that would be my suggestion.

Okay.

Thank you.

Marsha.

I will make this short and sweet.

And I would like to second, well, third, what Diane said.

I’m a very proud member of the Michigan Mittens phone chapter.

I have used the numbers in the database to get a hold of a few people.

It works great.

There’s no abuse.

And I say, let’s just go ahead, maybe do that as well.

And as Marie said, we’re all adults.

If we choose to give out our phone number or whatever, it’s not being recorded, whatever.

Why not?

And thanks.

And that’s something that you could put on the membership application if we decided to do it.

You know, ask people yes or no if they want their information to be published in that way.

Thank you, Diane.

You just answered my question.

Yeah, I think we do have something on there that retains, refers to that membership database thing on the website.

But what we’re talking about is, do we want people to be able to just give out their phone number during chat?

It’s informal.

But anyway, okay.

Thank you, Marsha.

Who is our next?

Pamela again.

All right.

Yeah.

This is just me real short and sweet.

Okay.

If someone doesn’t feel comfortable or doesn’t understand how to access a breakout room, there’s WhatsApp rooms.

The WhatsApp rooms, the Discord is still there for someone to be able to do a private message with them if the person knows how to use those avenues.

Right.

Yeah.

Well, that’s a little bit beyond what we’re talking about.

We just want to know what people think about if somebody wants to give out their phone number in chat.

Thank you, Pam.

All right.

Have a safe one, guys.

Thank you.

So what we’re trying to do- I think that’s it, dear heart.

Now somebody will probably raise their hand.

Somebody will.

That’s usually what happens.

Go ahead.

Excuse me, Mr.

Vice President.

This is Janelle Edwards, and I was unmuted.

I was unmuted, but then she put my hand down, Cindy.

I lost you.

No worries, Cindy.

That’s all right.

It’s okay.

You’re unmuted now.

Go ahead.

I’m sorry.

It’s okay.

Go ahead.

>> Right.

But my opinion is that, well, basically, I guess agreeing with most others, that the password-protected list of members with their information should be only include the people who check on some future membership form that they want it to be released.

And then as far as the chat, to allow the adults to give out their own information, but be very strict about not letting them give out other people’s information.

>> Oh, yes.

>> Oh, yeah.

>> Yeah.

>> Very good.

Thank you.

>> Thank you.

>> Okay.

>> Okay.

Anybody else?

>> No.

Everybody fell asleep.

>> Last call.

Because we have been here a while.

We’ve been here more than two hours.

>> Last round, everybody.

>> All right.

>> We got a hand.

>> Oh, sorry.

>> Of course we do.

Real quick.

>> That’s Jamaica.

>> I just wanted to say that for me, it’s either got to be through email or through trying to go into a breakout room for my information.

>> Okay.

>> I just feel a lot better with that.

>> Again, it’s up to the individual.

Thank you, Jamaica.

But there’s one more quick thing I did want to say.

>> Okay.

>> I don’t know how to go to a breakout room.

So, it’s best if maybe if I need to go to a breakout room, can I get assigned to the room?

>> Yes.

>> Yes.

>> Okay.

Thank you.

>> Yeah.

Come into chat, and I know David or the chat host can help you out with that.

>> Okay.

Thank you.

>> Okay.

Oh, I don’t know that we made any decision on this or not.

Again, I feel it’s up to the individual, but I don’t want to be the one who makes the decision.

It’s not up to me.

It’s up to the group.

That was a good discussion.

I will let kind of David and his team decide how they want to proceed, because I don’t think we have a policy written down anyway.

>> I think I’m going to make Jamaica our last hand.

Let’s wrap this up.

Our next board meeting will be September 4th, Wednesday.

We will be back, same bat time, same bat channel.

And we’ll do it again.

Jeff will be back, I hope.

He had a STEM conference at the university where he works, and he needed to be there for that.

So, he will be listening to this recording.

The sooner we end the meeting, the sooner he’ll get the recording.

With that, Robin, you want to note the time, and we’ll say I’ll make a motion that the meeting is adjourned.

>> So, move.

>> Move.

Do we have a second?

>> I’ll second.

>> Okay.

I don’t know that we need a vote.

We’re just going to adjourn.

I would like to thank Cindy for being our Zoom host, and Bell has been quietly in the background connecting us to Clubhouse and streaming us on Media 6.

And I would like to congratulate Bell on her recent election to the Board of Publications.

I know she’s going to do a great job for the ACB.

So, thank you, Bell, for your service in advance.

And with that, Cindy, if you’ll take us out of here.

We’ll see everybody next month.