AI Generated Transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING] The opinions expressed on the ACB Media Network are those of the respective program contributors and cannot be assumed to serve as endorsements of products or views of the American Council of the Blind, its elected officials, or its staff.
Well, good evening, everyone, and welcome to Blind Information Technology Specialists, or BITS.
We won’t have to repeat that over and over.
Our September board meeting.
And just wanted to welcome everyone who’s listening on ACB Media, who’s listening on Clubhouse, or wherever you might be listening, in your car, wherever you might be.
So welcome, everybody.
We have a lot to get to tonight.
We have a pretty packed agenda.
The agenda was sent out to the entire membership.
There is one slight correction.
And that is the– see, this is why we have people who are smarter than me.
And this is why we have other leaders, because they set me straight.
And I love them for that.
And Robin is a saint, so thank you, Robin.
I neglected to change the date of the next meeting, which is in October.
And so we are not meeting yet again on the same day as today.
So that’s the only correction that we had to make.
The only other problem we had with sending it out today was– apparently, I don’t know what’s going on, but apparently my screen reader did not copy over the headings.
So you didn’t get the nice headings like you normally get.
So I’ll troubleshoot that tomorrow.
It’s one of those things.
So without further ado, I will call on our Secretary Robin to do the roll call.
Good evening, everyone.
President Jeff Bishop?
Here.
Vice President Brad Snyder?
Here.
Secretary Robin Frost, I’m here and happy to be so.
Treasurer Diane Scalzi?
She was here.
Michael Babcock?
I am here.
John McCann?
I know he’s here.
David Eadic?
Zoom is being Zoomy or something.
We would also like to welcome all of our friends and members who have chosen to be with us this evening.
And for those members who have chosen to join us via the Zoom platform, you will be recognized individually by name in the written minutes of this meeting.
And with that, Mr.
President, the call of the roll is complete.
Thank you, Madam Secretary.
As you acknowledged, I am here.
But for some reason, I had become muted again.
I understand.
Not a problem, John.
We got you.
Good.
I know Diane.
I heard her name, so I’m sure she’s here.
Maybe it’s a mute thing, yeah.
Maybe it’s a mute thing, yeah.
And in fact, due to Diane requiring to leave a bit early, we may move some things around just a little bit.
Diane, can you unmute for us?
There you are.
Diane, I’m going to move you before Robin real quick here, just so that you can get to whatever you need to get to tonight, if that would help you.
Would that be helpful to you?
I’m on my way home right now.
So– Would you rather wait, then?
Yeah.
I think I could wait.
I think I’ll be home by then.
That’s fine.
All right.
I would like to kill two birds with one stone and do the adoption of our agenda that we’re working off of tonight, as well as the consent agenda.
Can I get someone to move adoption?
I will move that both be accepted.
I second.
OK, great.
Robin, John moves, and Robin seconds.
Any discussion?
OK, all those in favor?
Aye.
Aye.
Any opposed?
All right, very good.
OK, and adoption of our August meeting minutes, which were fabulous.
And I want to sincerely apologize to everyone.
I’ll talk a little bit about that in my president report.
But there was a really great reason why I was missing, and you’ll learn more about that later tonight.
So, OK.
I’ll move adoption of the August minutes.
I’ll second it.
OK, John and David, any discussion?
Very good.
All those in favor?
Aye.
Aye.
Any opposed?
Excellent.
All right.
I think we’re going to wait on Diane since she’s traveling in her car.
So I will go ahead and give a brief presidential report.
I wrote up a report at the bottom of the agenda.
And so for those of you who have read it, I will not repeat everything I wrote there.
I will just say that we’re in an interesting time right now in that thanks to the tremendous work of the board in the August meeting, anybody who signs up now gets moved forward to 2025, to the end of 2025.
So I would encourage everyone, if you have not renewed, that you really consider that.
That will help us profusely in spreading that out throughout the rest of the year as opposed to cramming it all in in November and December.
So we know that there has been a pretty substantial influx of people doing that due to the office course.
And that’s kept many of us very, very, very, very busy.
So I would just ask all of you to think about that.
And if you have not renewed for 2025, some of you are already in 2025 or 2026 or 2027 due to you making multiple payments.
And if you have questions about that, you can definitely reach out to John McCann and we can assist– the leadership team can assist you in determining what your status is.
We’ll also probably send out an automated email to those of you who are going to need to renew at some point.
And we’ll figure out how we’re going to do that.
So we’ve had– I won’t steal John’s thunder, but we’ve had quite a number of new people join the affiliate over the last, say, two to three weeks due to our office course.
As of, I don’t know, an hour ago, I think we have 380 people signed up for our office course, which is making the education team really think about exactly how we’re going to accomplish that.
And we think we have a pretty reasonable way that we’re going to do that.
We’re pretty excited about what that brings to BITS and what it brings to the people who will be participating in that course.
The response has been extremely overwhelming.
And today is the deadline for people to at least engage with us.
We’ll probably be fixing people’s payments and things over the next couple of days.
But as long as we hear from you today, then you’re in.
If you get ahold of us tomorrow, then we may have to have a little discussion about it because we have to stop it somewhere.
For those that have been asking, we are working on our BITS web accessibility/HTML/markdown course.
And that’s coming along.
I’ve been working on curriculum.
And I need to sync with my co-instructor on that, Joel.
And that’s coming.
I expect that we will launch that in mid to the third week in October with sign-ups happening later this month.
And there’s already been quite a bit of interest in that.
So we’re pretty excited about that.
We started a new theme.
And everybody can blame me on this because, I don’t know, I guess I like to torture myself and do fun things, I guess.
We started a fun little thing.
And if you haven’t heard them, we’ll see what we can do about providing links to people.
But if you haven’t heard the theme songs for the Office course and the HTML course, then find a link near you and give it a listen.
I’m sure that the new HTML one will get up on the website, too, because Michael put it on the front page of the BITS website, which he didn’t ask me.
He just did.
And that’s fine.
I– OK.
So we are working on– and this is a topic I’d like to bring up later tonight.
And I’m going to mention it here, but we’ll bring it up under new business having to do with AZV rep certification for courses.
It looks like we have an in there.
The president of AZV rep, John, by the way, lives in Tucson, which is tremendous because that actually should help us in communication.
It costs $500 to register the organization.
And then we can offer continuing education credits for members as part of our training, whether we’re doing Office or Python or Web or whatever else we decide to do in the future.
And we’ll have to figure out how we– fundraising team, how we figure out how we charge for that.
Because if they’re going to get CEUs, we should figure out how we’re going to be able to profit from that.
We need to make our– at least to make our $500 back at some level.
So we should be thinking about that.
We can put that on the agenda for a future discussion and bring a proposal back to the board.
Our upcoming– and I’m sure John will speak to this briefly tonight– our upcoming constitutional convention is happening in October, with more information coming out later this month on proposed constitutional amendments and bylaw changes and the like.
If any of you have anything that you would like discussed or brought forward, then make sure to get in touch with any of us on the board or get a hold of John specifically, who’s sort of leading the charge on that.
He’s our all things Constitution dude, which is fantastic and amazing because we probably couldn’t do it without him.
I’m leaving the ask for prioritization from committees on this.
And it’s just an ongoing thing, just to make sure that we’re all keeping our eye on the ball of where I think the largest priorities are.
But I think that we’re in a really, really great place.
I think we’re hitting the ground running as far as where we are in our growth and where that will set us up for success for 2025.
John will talk a little bit more about that later on in the meeting in his membership report.
And I think that summarizes my report.
Any questions from the board?
All right.
Diane, where are you?
Are you still winging your way home?
It sounds like she is.
I’m just going into the house now.
All right.
So what we’re going to do is we are going to continue on with the agenda.
And then when you get to a good spot, then you can chime in and we’ll move to you after one of the committee chairs completes their part of their role in the meeting.
Is that all right?
OK, yeah.
And I do have a comment regarding renewals and concerning what it says currently in our bylaws about that.
So– OK.
All right.
Why don’t you bring that up during the treasurer’s report?
OK.
All right.
All right, great.
OK, I think we’re OK there.
But I guess you’ll tell us whether or not we are, which is OK.
All right.
Let’s start with the communication aspects of the organization.
And Merv, you’re up first.
Thanks.
OK, my report is in the packet.
OK, any questions for Merv?
Things have been quite lively on our lists.
And I think people are getting used to them.
And I think the traffic has calmed down a little bit.
So that’s good.
I think people are pretty happy about that.
OK, Rosanna.
Rosanna Dana.
Is she here?
She’s here.
I think I saw her.
Yeah, she’s here.
As far as publication goes, we have some really cool stuff going on right now.
As you know, we’re into September already, which is crazy.
The Publications Committee has been working on a few projects.
We are working with the Fundraising Committee.
And we have gotten a number of slogans and things together to go out to various lists to advertise for the two fundraising projects that are presently going on.
I do want to thank Robin Frost and Marty Solbo and Karen Hughes for their creativity.
We now have a whole bunch of things to work with.
The other thing is the BITS Bulletin will be going out shortly.
And I want to say thank you to those people who sent in articles for the BITS Bulletin.
It was really awesome.
As you know, BITS is growing leaps and bounds.
So please start to think about the Fall and Winter Bulletin, because there’s lots of things that we all can share with each other through the BITS family.
And the BITS Bulletin is a great way to do that.
So if you have something to share that you feel that others might benefit from, please send that to us.
And the address for that is newsletter@bits-@acb.org.
My Zoom was talking at the same time, so I couldn’t think.
Sorry about that.
I get it.
It is also in the packet that I sent out.
The link is in that packet, as well as the link for Blind Girl Designs and for the Terry Lynn fundraiser that is also in there as well.
As far as social media goes, guys, we now have 224 followers on Mastodon.
That is incredible.
And many of them have come over since we had switched servers.
The server address is also in the packet as well.
So if you need to know what that is, I did put it in there.
And on the social media side as well, Mary Ann Murad has been updating Facebook.
She does also post the events that are upcoming that Brad sends out to the Bits list.
Those are also posted both on Mastodon and Facebook page as well.
So social media is doing really well.
On the handbook side, we’ve accomplished an awful lot.
The handbook committee has gotten through all of the handbook at this point.
We are at the point of review, which will be at our next upcoming meeting and the table of contents and formatting.
So we have really come a long way.
Just if anyone has– anyone on the board or any of the chairs have anything that they think they might want to have us look at for the handbook, I do ask you to send that certainly within the next couple of weeks, because that’s when we’re going to be reviewing the handbook.
And you can send– the chairs can send it to the chairs list, and we’ll get it from there.
The board can send it either to Robin Frost or John McCann.
Both of them are on this committee, and they will forward it to the publications list.
So just a shout out.
If you guys have anything you think you want us to look at and review, we’ll be glad to do so.
Other than that, that’s all I have right now.
We’re looking forward to continued success of the bulletin and other things I know that are going to be coming up in publications and needing to get on the website.
So I will be working with Michael Babcock on that as well.
If anyone has any questions, please feel free to ask.
Sure.
I just have one comment.
Do you have any objection sharing the current rough draft of the manual with the chairs and the board list?
Yes.
As soon as we’re done reviewing it, Jeff, it’s going out to the chairs and the board.
We just want to get it reviewed, and that’s coming up next week.
So as soon as we do that, yes, we can share– I think we’ll be able to share the rough draft so that we can get feedback from everyone.
That’d be great.
OK.
That’s fine.
Sure.
I just wasn’t sure what your timing is, because if there’s been written changes, then people should probably review them.
So much has been going on, and it’s crazy.
But our goal is to try to get the draft to the board and chairs really soon, because we want to give you guys a month or so to reflect on it.
We want to have it completed before the annual meeting so that it can be approved and hopefully go out to the membership and go up on the website.
That is our goal.
I would like to see it approved by the October board meeting.
That would be great.
Well, if it’s approved by the board by then, then yes.
Then we can get it up on the website or at least out to the membership.
OK.
We’ll just keep us up to date, and we will be sure.
I sure will.
Yeah, that’s great, Rosanna.
Thank you for all your hard work, and thank you for everyone– My pleasure. –who worked so hard on the fundraising pieces of all of that.
I know we’ll talk more about fundraising a bit later, but a lot of people stepped up there.
Marty, Karen, you already mentioned, and others.
And we put three ads– Yeah, on Dots and Dashes. –in Dots and Dashes.
And I don’t think any affiliates ever had three ads in one issue.
So go us.
Let’s just all buck the system here and do things different, I guess.
I do have a question, too, when you’re ready.
And I’m here and able to– OK, great.
We’ll keep going and getting that stuff out in other places as well and up to various lists as well, Jeff.
OK, great.
Go ahead, Diane.
Diane, you had a question?
Yeah, I was going to make the comment that I also had submitted a piece of advertising to the group.
And I hadn’t heard anything about it.
Of course, my email box is pretty full right now.
But I wondered if folks just decided it wasn’t worth bothering with or if you did get it.
I don’t know that I have seen it, but– No, I haven’t seen it.
But Diane, I know what you’re talking about.
Karen has it.
Karen Hughes has it.
And I know she was looking at it.
I think that was the one that you were thinking for the media spot, correct?
Yes.
Oh, perfect.
Yeah, we haven’t– that’s the next piece of this that needs to go out.
Perfect, perfect.
OK.
And we’d like to get in touch with the right people who can do this media spot.
We do have– I have two people in mind that– We’ve got one of them on our board. –looking to address.
And what– yes, one of them is on the board.
And I have another one that’s not on the board that I think would be a great person for this.
But I don’t want to say anything until I reach out to them.
OK, great.
Fair enough.
Any other questions for Rosanna?
It’ll be fun to treat them when they come– it’ll be fun to stream them when they come out.
It certainly will.
Any other questions for Rosanna?
And Diane, stay tuned.
We’re going to take you after David gives his Zoom report, OK?
OK.
So any other questions for Rosanna?
Good job, Rosanna.
Thanks.
Just an FYI, too, if anybody ever has any questions for publications, there is– the publications is up on the website now.
Michael does have it up there.
But if you ever have any questions, please don’t be shy.
You can always send a message to Jeff.
He will get it over to me or any member on the board.
They’ll get it over to publications if anybody has any questions that they need answered.
And I’ll be glad to answer you.
We could set up an email address for that, like publications@bits-acb.org.
Yeah, that would be a great idea.
Michael, can you add that to your list?
Yep.
OK, cool.
All right.
Thank you.
OK.
David.
Hey, how’s it going?
Fine, man.
How are you?
Doing all right.
So my report should be in the packet.
And I haven’t read it all yet.
But there’s not much to say.
But we keep having regular chats on the weekends.
And we had a special bonus chats on Sunday and Monday of this week for Labor Day into summer type thing.
Another reason to chat.
But it seems to be well appreciated.
The other thing I was going to mention is if you are still interested in hosting, let me know.
I could always look at more hosts.
Great.
I’ve got my email.
And if you don’t, Jeff has it.
Yep.
OK.
Any questions for David?
Thank you, David.
Very good.
We are now going to roll the agenda back and go back in time without having to use the DeLorean and ask our treasurer to give her treasurer’s report, which I think we have some audio of as well.
But she may have some other comments prior to the report being played.
So Diane, take it away.
OK, well, I was just about to look it up on my computer.
And we do have a life membership $200 payment that came in on September 1.
And I was just going to look up to get the name because I didn’t have it off the top of my head.
If someone else has it, feel free to throw it out there.
But it’s not going to go on the treasurer’s report until the October, until I do the September report for October.
But I do want to welcome our life members and give them special recognition.
Other than that, the thing I was concerned about, but maybe because we did roll back, in the Constitution, it currently says that anyone that gets the extended membership has to be new to BITS, that they can’t have been– actually, what it says is on the prior year membership roster.
So I’m concerned about just opening that up to everybody when it might not be in the bylaws.
But we did roll back so that people that joined in June could– we did that last month, I believe.
Yeah, we did.
John, do you want to speak to that?
Yes, I just had to unmute my audio.
Sure.
Well, OK, several things.
What Diane said is correct.
And when the new Constitution comes out, we’ll set a time, like if you’ve had maybe in the past five– if it’s more than five years ago, we’ll treat you like a new member.
I don’t know how we’ll handle that exactly.
But you’re right.
In other words, well, I don’t like to contradict my president.
But let me say this.
If you are already– if you took a part in the moratorium, or if your membership– if you believe your membership ends in 12/31/2024, I really would discourage you from applying now to extend.
As a practical matter, if you pay us now and you’re good through ’24, we’ll extend you to ’25.
And we don’t just get to keep the money as a donation, OK?
So we will extend you.
We cannot prevent prepayments.
But right now, I need to– there’s been a huge influx of new members.
There are some difficulties with AMS that I’ll discuss, some of which in executive session, because I don’t think things should be said to cause consternation before I’ve had a chance to tell the board and before I’ve had a chance to talk to Nancy Becker.
But where I’m going with this is I really need to start giving full-time attention to the Constitution.
We’re not in crisis yet, but I need to not have as many interruptions with membership stuff so I can really turn full attention, or significantly more attention, to Constitution bylaws.
And I’ll talk about that.
I suspect things will calm down after today, because– Yeah, after today.
And that’s when– look, all right, I’ll just say a little thing here.
I think getting a constitutional convention by the last week of October is certainly doable.
That’s about seven weeks, six, seven weeks.
That’s doable.
So we’re not in crisis, but I can’t delay any longer.
And so– No, I get it.
I get it.
OK, OK.
So please, if you don’t– if your membership ends in 2024, feel free to wait for the solicitation for 2025.
And that’s fine.
OK.
We’ll return it back to Diane.
David?
Well, Brent had something, I think, in sort of– I thought our Constitution, or whatever, currently said we don’t open it up for renewals until November 1.
Because the cutoff to be a member eligible for this year is October 31 in order to vote.
That’s correct.
So we have a record date.
That’s why you have to– Because I heard Jeff say, go ahead and pay now if you want to renew till ’25.
And I was thinking, no, you can’t do that.
You can’t.
But you can’t prevent people from paying for renewals now.
It says in the cutoff, we don’t open it up till next year until– now, I realize we already had people that took advantage of the free membership, and we– moratorium, and we did extend their membership.
So certain people got extended out.
But I was under the impression that if you’re already paid up to the end of ’24, you’re not supposed eligible to renew until November 1.
Strictly speaking, that’s correct.
But like Jeff said, we can’t prevent free payments.
No, that’s true.
I suppose we can’t prevent it.
Let’s see.
David was next, and then we’ll take Michael’s.
Just asking about the Constitution event, if we cannot be on the last weekend of October.
Because I know some of us are dealing with state conventions.
Washington Council.
Well, maybe it winds up being the first week in November, then.
I don’t know.
I don’t want to rush it.
I think that would be fine, John, to do it in early November.
I don’t think that would hurt.
That would make me feel a little bit better.
That would be fine.
As long as we get it done prior to the annual meeting, I’m fine.
Annual meeting.
Which we certainly will.
Which we certainly will.
Yeah, I don’t want to be doing that at the same time.
Yeah, and I don’t want it rushed.
So that’s fine.
If we understand that it’ll be the first week in November, that makes me feel better about things.
OK, we will publish a date.
In fact, we probably should look at who has a calendar.
Do we want to do that as part of the board meeting, or do we want to set up a special meeting for it, John?
I don’t like special meetings.
I mean, I don’t know.
Let’s consult on the list, and if we reach consensus, do it that way.
First of all, I want to see what our current constitution says about how much advance notice there needs to be.
So it would need to be advance notice now.
So we will give people at least 30 days notice, though, correct?
I think that’s– By the end of this month, we need to say on November 9 is going to be pick a day.
Right, right, right, right.
OK, very good. 9 will be Saturday.
I don’t know about that.
Well, whatever.
Whatever it is.
We’ll figure it out.
OK, Michael?
Yeah, so one thing, I think– might be two, but– well, I guess it’s two.
With the HTML course coming out, I presume members will need to be part of the organization to join that.
So I don’t know how we want to handle that.
And number two, we can just turn off the join form so members can’t join right now if that’s what we choose to do.
Well, we will after– like, the end of today, we will.
Because people are still signing up.
Yep, so we can just turn that off.
So in other words, you could go set the thing to say it expires at 11:59.
Yep.
Yep.
That sounds awesome.
OK.
Did you have a second one, Michael?
Or was that sort of combined?
Well, just the HTML class.
Does this mean we won’t be taking new members?
Who are interested in participating in the HTML class if they’re required to be a member in order to participate in that class?
I think what is going on here, John– and help me here– we can’t prevent people from joining.
It just means that they can’t– what you want to prevent is 300 people joining the organization a day before the record vote, right?
Like– Most assuredly.
Well, depending on how deeply you want to get into this, I am very concerned about doing an HTML course concurrently.
And we’re touching the issues that you– I think you’re hearing a consensus among your board member to run these courses concurrently.
And of course, to the extent that these courses are used as membership drivers, dear god, like, can’t we punt that until January?
Yeah.
Yeah, we can.
I really don’t want HTML running concurrently with Office.
Well, that actually may make some sense, too.
So we’ll take that back to the education team and we’ll talk about it.
I’m also concerned about what night are you going to do it on.
How is this going to impact when we do presentations?
I mean, things of that nature.
I thought Monday night was class night.
And I was concerned when you were talking about more than one at the same time.
The number of people will be significantly less for that course, to be honest.
So we’re not going to see the– no, I mean, based on the– in fact, I can go get some counts if you’re interested.
But we don’t need to do that right now.
That’s huge.
We know that.
But I mean, it’s probably 10% of what our current numbers are.
In fact, it’s probably less than that.
It’s probably like 5% to 7%.
I don’t expect that we’re going to see either the Python number or the Office number that we had before.
But I could be wrong.
Well, yeah, and if you are wrong, I guess.
Yeah.
[LAUGHTER] So then– What are the consequences?
Jeff, I don’t want to get too deeply– How many weeks is it going to be?
All right, wait.
Michael, go, and then me.
All right.
Michael, go.
Just real quick.
So then I’ll just plan to close the forum tonight at 11:59.
Pacific time.
And then it’s closed.
And no one can join until we figure that out.
Right, right, right.
Both the Office one and the– And the main join bits.
Yeah.
This is bad.
Well, the main join bits forum, do we want to turn off membership as well at that point?
I’m concerned about that.
Because we still– somebody that’s never been a member before, we open it up and you can join.
And those guys get through the end of the year and through 2025.
So I mean– I don’t think we should turn off our membership forum, though.
Should we, John?
I don’t agree with that.
But I think once the class starts and we cut off registration in the class, that’s going to curtail some of the flurry.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We’ll curtail that for sure.
But I don’t think we want to turn off the membership forum.
Keep membership– keep the membership forum available and hope that things slow down considerably.
Well, they won’t be able to sign up for the Office course at that point.
Right, we understand that.
So if your motivation is Office, the ship has sailed.
Right.
Although we’re getting quite a number of people this evening.
So we’ll deal with that.
But most of those are BITS members already.
So we’re fine.
That’s good.
I can tell you that I haven’t looked at anything past August 31 because I wanted to make sure I got this month’s report done.
So I’m going to have a lot that I’m going to be looking at over the next several days.
You’ll hear about that momentarily when John gets his report.
Yeah.
OK.
All right.
Anyone else have any comments on those concerns?
We have a recording to play for you.
I understand that.
No, I know that.
But I just wanted to make sure before we did that, does anyone else have anything to say about what we’ve discussed thus far?
It’s a long report, by the way.
I do, but I’m not on your board.
OK.
Go ahead, Debbie.
I just want to say I’m one that’s going to want the HTML.
And I actually think you will have at least 100.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it’s closer to what Python did.
It’s based on your song.
Based on your song.
Based on my song.
Oh, I’ve got to hear that song.
I don’t know that the song is representative.
But– No, everything that’s good in it.
Everything that’s in it, there’s so much to look forward to.
And that course is going to be really important.
Yeah.
I think so.
I want it.
OK, very good.
All right.
We’ll turn the meeting back to Diane.
OK, well, yes.
It’s going to be a long report this month.
And I’m really– I certainly– I’m certainly impressed with some of the figures that came out on it.
So everybody enjoy.
Ready?
It’s about two– almost three minutes.
Are you ready?
Uh-huh.
Here we go.
BITS Treasurer’s Report, August 1, 31, 2024.
Checking, beginning balance $5,412.82.
Credits, Amazon refund for Innogear microphone arm bought by mistake $47.62.
ACB quarterly MMS donation $75.
Transfer from PayPal $775.73.
Total credits $898.35.
Debits, Zoom monthly subscription slash increase meeting size to 500 participants minus $53.
Total debits minus $53.
Ending balance $6,258.17.
PayPal, beginning balance $0.00.
Credits, 68 regular member dues payments $1,360.
Five international member regular dues payments $100.
One international student member dues payment $10.
Three student member dues payments $30.
One junior member dues payment $5.
Five possible ACB life member dues payments $75.
Four donations $50.
Total credits $1,630.
Debits, PayPal fees minus $75.37.
Transfer to checking minus $775.73.
Airfare reimbursement to Jeff Bishop as 2024 ACB convention delegate minus $387.05.
Total debits minus $1,238.15.
Ending balance $391.85.
Savings account, beginning balance $37,129.79.
Credits, interest $0.30.
Total credits $0.30.
Debits, no debits.
Total debits $0.00.
Ending balance $37,130.09.
Total for all account $43,780.11.
Asterisk 1, for information on PayPal fees, visit https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/paypal-fees.
Submitted for audit.
Prepared by Diane Scalzi.
Bits Treasurer, September 3, 2024.
[END PLAYBACK] Yeah.
And there was something I was going to say about one of those things.
Was it about the possible members?
Yeah, possible life members, yes.
Want me to shed light on that?
Yeah, well, I was going to say that John always checks those because we think that there is some confusion maybe with the application form.
And so John checks those.
And he has to check it with Nancy Marks Becker in ACB because she’s the one that has access to who all the ACB life members are.
So we weren’t able to get any information on that.
So– Because she was out of the office the last two months, the last two weeks of August.
OK, I just– Yeah, go ahead, John.
So for the last two weeks of August, she’s been unavailable.
So I’ve not been able to say, is person X correctly representing that they’re an ACB life member?
Sometimes these people are confused.
As you know, Diane, we’ve had people submitting $20 when they are life members and didn’t need to.
We’ve had people submitting $15 and they may not be ACB life members.
I don’t think that’s dishonesty.
I think that’s just confusion.
Why there’s confusion, I don’t know.
I’ll have more to say that later on.
Say about that.
Yeah, because certainly anyone who was an ACB life member is either going to have paid $1,000 dues to ACB or had it paid on their behalf.
And that’s the thing that distinguishes that.
So I guess that’s all I have, if anyone has any questions.
Great.
And we don’t need to approve it.
It will go to audit.
And so any questions before we move on?
All right, thank you, Diane, for all of your hard work.
And I know it’s been frustrating with all the activity going on and all that.
So thank you for all your valiant efforts.
And– We’ll have a lot more next month to report.
Yes, we will.
I think we’re looking pretty good for the Treasury here.
OK, I am going to– I think we’ve talked about education.
I’m going to just throw this out here really quick here.
We’ve talked a lot about education already.
Ms.
Armstrong, did you have any other things that you wanted to mention before we hand things over to Brad?
Debbie, I gave you permission already to– it didn’t go through for some reason.
Sorry.
Yeah, there.
I gave it to you before.
Did it again two more times.
Debbie Armstrong was– Debbie Armstrong.
But I’m the one who unmuted Debbie’s– Yes, I gave it.
No.
Armstrong was the co-host, I saw.
She was.
And then– Are you able to hear me now?
There you go.
Yes, go right ahead.
Sorry, I kept saying the host is not allowing participants to unmute.
But I had hit the unmute button a dozen times.
OK, so a couple of things.
So first of all, I do have enough articles for Bids Bulletin and Fall.
But I will be accepting anything for winter.
I know winter seems far away.
But I don’t want to scramble at the last minute.
So if you have something, get it to me now, and it’ll go in the winter issue.
Regarding education, the Basics for Bids is doing really well.
We have David Kingsbury and I have presented several times.
Dean Martineau presented twice.
And we have Brian Clark, who’s going to present on the fourth Saturday on Browser Basics.
And Joel Dotson is going to present on the 14th, which is the second Saturday, on the Be My Eyes app for Windows.
There’s a new Be My Eyes app for Windows.
So that kind of follows up with a lot of our AI discussions we’ve been having with Bids.
And I am looking for more people.
You don’t have to be on the education committee.
Contact me or contact Jeff if you want to be a Basics with Bids presenter.
Any basic thing that you know how to do is fair game.
Doesn’t have to be Windows.
It can be Mac.
It can be iPhone.
It can be Android.
And I think everything else in education was covered by Jeff.
I’m back on mute.
We will be doing the OneNote presentation in October.
And that’s a lot– I think we’re doing that on the fourth Saturday in October.
Is that right?
No, it’s on the list.
I haven’t got it down.
That one is going to be a little complex.
So we’ll see how far we get in that one.
But there’s a lot to OneNote.
I think it is the fourth Saturday in October.
Yeah, so I’m just saying that we may have to split that into a part one and part two because that– we’ll see how far we get.
I have an outline already, but it’s pretty exhaustive.
Just describing the layout of OneNote is complex.
So it’s going to be an interesting– that’s going to be an interesting presentation, I think.
OK, any questions for Ms.
Armstrong?
OK, so what I’m going to do now is I’m going to hand things over to Brad while I go get a drink and leave my computer.
So I’m going to let you babble away here.
And that way you don’t hear me grabbing ice and things.
Babble I will.
Babble away, my friend.
Go.
All right, so I’m going to hand things over to Brad.
And I’m going to let you go grab a drink.
And I’m going to let you go grab a drink.
OK, so I’m going to let you go grab a drink.
And I’m going to let you go grab a drink.
OK, so I’m going to let you go grab a drink.
And I’m going to let you go grab a drink.
OK, so I’m going to let you go grab a drink.
OK, so I’m going to let you go grab a drink.
OK, so I’m going to let you go grab a drink.
OK, so I’m going to let you go grab a drink.
OK, yes, thank you Robin.
Jeff, this is Cindy.
When I have done this before with other board meetings, What I have done is made like, as an example, You host, you tell me who you want to stay, and they’re stayers, and the others go.
OK, well, this is, yeah, this will be a little bit different, so we need to just check with the powers that be, and Brad, I’ll let you check.
You’re already in communication with her, so if you can just run.
You have too many members with their hand up.
OK, Debbie Hazleton, I think was first.
Debbie.
Come on, Deb, there you go.
OK, oh, geez.
OK, am I on mute?
OK, thank you.
I’m wondering about the zoom thing in the sense that we paid for a larger number of zoom rooms, is that only for our, that wouldn’t be only for our annual meeting.
When would we use those if we’re not, if we’re going to be in the community rooms.
Well, we’ve got over 300 people enrolled in the office class.
There you go.
We had 100 and.
OK, so that won’t be a community thing.
No, no, I just wanted to make sure they’re in our own rooms.
Just want to make sure that wasn’t going to work.
As I discussed with C.
We have almost 400 at this point, actually.
I haven’t discussed this with Jeff yet, but I believe our annual meeting is only open to BITS members.
So we’ll do that in our own BITS board meeting.
That’s correct.
Can I quickly just say what I need to say about nominations and go eat because it’s just a busy evening around here.
You may go right ahead.
Thank you.
So I do have a couple of people who have said yes, but I am not going to say their names yet because I want to see if there are two more that we might have to have a committee of five.
And if we do, that’s good.
If we don’t, then the three I will give their names for next report.
Okay.
Thank you.
Enjoy your dinner.
I’ll still be here listening.
You can go listen on the stream if you want.
I’ll still be here.
All right.
Very good.
All right.
Anyone else have anything before we move to Michael Babcock to give us an IT report?
There’s a lot to talk about there.
So.
You should be able to hear me now.
Oh, yes.
I’m sorry, Debbie.
Yes.
Right.
Right.
So just very quickly and Brad probably just was saying so many things.
It sounded a little strange, but he implied that the podcast that our bits presentations were not part of ACB community podcast and that is not true.
No.
I said the board meeting does not go on.
The board meeting is not, but the other.
Basics with bits does.
And the bytes.
They do not.
They are just regular Zoom rooms.
I was able to.
Mac bytes and Apple bytes have never been.
There are just basics with bits was treated differently because that is a.
It was originally set up as something to help promote bits.
It’s it’s it was always a little different than.
Well, before I was a bits member, I was able to download all of Herbie’s bits.
I was able to download all of herbie’s bits.
I was able to download all of herbie’s bits.
I was able to download all of herbie’s bits.
I was able to download all of herbie’s bits.
I’m just saying that the whole point of this is that we are teaching from a blindness perspective. – Oh, no, I get it.
I do. – I mean, my magnifier’s going to be blaring, believe me, so I can see it. – Okay, very good.
Okay, who’s next? – Let’s see.
Right now, nobody, but as soon as I say that, – We’ve got about six minutes left. – Mr.
President? – Yes, ma’am. – I just wanted to make mention that one of our own was featured in the ACB Braille Forum this month. – Ooh. – With an article. – Tell us more. – Our own Jamaica Miller has an article in the Braille Forum. – That’s right, she does. – In the Braille Forum. – That’s right, she does. – And we made mention of it on Mastodon, so I just wanted to congratulate her. – Yay, very good.
Thank you, Robin. – Thank you. – Very nice.
All right.
Does the board have anything else they would like to bring up before we adjourn into executive session?
Okay.
Very good.
Our next board meeting will be, Robin, kill me here, I think it’s October 2nd, right? – It is, yes. – Okay.
God.
I’m just second-guessing myself on dates.
I’m just not even trying anymore.
So our next board meeting will be, except for the special meeting that we’re going to have, and we may not stream that, that’s going to just be a one-off discussion that the board will, and we will report out what we talk about at that October 2nd meeting.
I would like a motion to move into executive session. – So moved. – Second. – Okay.
All right.
Very good.
So we need those who are here as guests to depart.
And… – Do we need to vote on that motion? – We just had one. – All in favor, say aye. – All those…
Oh, you mean if I vote? – Yeah. – Aye. – Aye. – Aye. – Any opposed?
All right.
Very good.
All right.
So the meeting is, except for executive session, is done as far as our stream.