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MINUTES OF EFF-AUSTIN DIRECTORS' MEETING - Jan. 12, 1993
 
   Prepared by Steve Jackson.
   Held at the SJ Games office. Called to order at 7 pm, following
an executive session to discuss board appointments. Board members
present: John Quarterman (presiding), Steve Jackson, Ed Cavazos,
Smoot Carl-Mitchell, Dave Smith, Jon Lebkowsky, Dick Anderson.
Observing: Bruce Sterling, Donna McLaughlin, Paco Xander Nathan.
   The minutes of the last meeting were approved without changes.
 
REPORT ON EXECUTIVE SESSION
   Donna McLaughlin having accepted nomination to the Advisory Board,
the Directors formally elected her to the Advisory Board. The Board
welcomes suggestions from all members for further nominations.
   The Board voted to elect new officers at the April meeting and
install them in May, allowing a month for transition.
 
OFFICERS' REPORTS
   PRESIDENT - Commended Dave Smith and Jon Lebkowsky for providing
written reports before the meeting. And, again, commended those who
had done local work, and Jon for dealing with national issues.
   VP - Reminded the Board that he will leave Austin in May, and
will resign from the Board and his office at that time.
   SECRETARY - New memberships continue to arrive at the office. I
requested information from CPSR on their chapter structure; this
was turned over to the Chapter Conference Liaison Committee.
   TREASURER - Presented a written report (Quicken works): We have
$426.24 in the bank. We also have $160 worth of checks not yet
cashed. Smoot noted that he bought Quicken for TIC, and uses that
copy at the office, so EFF-Austin did not have to buy it. Most of
our recent income has come from sales of Bruce Sterling's book;
however, we have more copies than we need right now. Bruce then
offered to buy some of those for what we paid for them ($12.88
each). At the meeting he paid $206 for 16 books. Thus, when all
this is deposited, we will have about $800 in the bank.
   We do not yet have a Texas CPA.
 
CYBERTEX
   Still dormant, pending proposals from interested parties, but Jon
and the Arts Committee are working toward it. His current report is
"Wait and see how the sysop panel and the other presentations go."
 
COMMITTEE AND OTHER REPORTS
   To avoid potential confusion, the Board voted to formally
establish committee procedure. Committees are established by the
Board, which appoints the chair, but unless the Board specifies
otherwise at the time the committee is created, the committee
chair is free to appoint committee members.
   Arts Committee: Jon Lebkowsky, (chair), Willard Uncaphur, Bob
Anderson, Sandy Stone, Marcos Novak, Vernon Reed, Dave Demaris. The
committee met Jan. 10 for general discussions. Very interested in
getting involved with ACTV, which has also expressed interest in
return. Lyn Bender, formerly of Europa, is now at the University Co-Op
and would like to host signings and presentations there. Discussions
of the "Freedom of Information" panel are continuing. X/XX^2, the
Experimental Music Festival, is interested in getting EFF support
and participation; Jon is talking to the Liquid Mice, the organizers.
Robofest is probably off until the fall; they're trying to get Mark
Pauline to attend. Upcoming conventions we may attend include 3CyberCon
(May 14-15). Possible venues detected for our events include UT
School of Architecture, Synergy, Vortex, Mexicarte, Dobie and
Guadalupe Street. Arts Committee wants to do SOMETHING on March
1 to celebrate the anniversary of the SJ Games raid; moved,
seconded and passed.
   BBS Committee: Dave Smith, Donna McLaughlin, Loyd Blankenship. (Earl
Cooley is interested.) A mailing list has been set up; this will be open
to any Austin sysop. Austin-EFF is gated to WWIVnet, and apparently has
been for some time - the net wanted it, the net did it. An InfoSite policy
proposal was posted. The Board decided that Dave should post a modified
version, and if there are no disagreements from directors in a week, it
will go into effect. Dave has sent mail to Earl Cooley but has gotten no
answer yet. Dave is not aware of anything we can do to help the RETSOF
list. The address for the BBS Mailing List is eff-austin-bbs@wixer.cactus.org.
   Chapter Conference Liaison Committee - JonL, Ed, Dave (chair), jsq.
Deal with this under Communications with Cambridge, below.
   Education Committee: Dick Anderson (chair), Smoot. Met with ACC; they are very interested in working with us. Max Cray and others have
expressed willingness to teach small groups about Internet. UT also
offers informal courses. Nothing on the other proposals.
   Infodisk Committee: Dave Smith (chair), Ed Cavazos. Dave is still
trying to contact the This!Group people about their CD-ROM idea.
Volume II (Sysop Issues) of the InfoDisk will be out by the end of
January. An updated version of Volume I will happen soon.
   Membership Committee: Ed Cavazos (chair). Board voted to table
all Membership Committee business until after the Atlanta meeting.
   Network Committee: Smoot (chair), jsq. Gopher is now running on
tic.com; the server got more than 300 accesses, from all over the US
and Europe, in four days. To contact it, you must be on an Internet
server with a gopher client. Type gopher tic.com. EFF-National has
gopher as well, with pointers to here, and vice versa.
   Newsletter Committee: Dave Smith. WORD 3 is out.
   Police Liaison Committee - Dick Anderson (chair), Smoot, Bruce
Sterling. No activity this month. Next priority is to meet the new
Austin Chief of Police, but the Committee wants to wait until after
the Atlanta meeting. Event proposal: get an appropriate guest for
April and hold a "law enforcement event." April?
   Publicity Committee: Paco Nathan (chair), jonl, SJ, Monica Stephens.
Voice mail box acquired - the number is 465-7871. We can use the fax
at SJ Games - 447-1144. No progress on the phone tree. Important note:
If you have something to publicize, get it to Paco - don't depend on
him to find out about it or to write the press release. Jon L. sent
the Chronicle an event notice for the sysop panel. The Chronicle
"special issue" suggestion is on hold. Progress on Sneakernet, the
system for physical distribution of publicity, continues; Paco is
developing a good list, and Donna is looking for volunteers.
   Liaison to Computers And The Law Committee of the Travis County
Bar Association: Ed Cavazos and Jim Robinson. They will be specially
invited to the sysop panel.
   Volunteer Coordinator: Donna McLaughlin. Hasn't done much yet, but
will get together with Ed and build the job description. Need to find
SneakerNet people, people to post information on BBSs for the
Publicity Committee, and a Librarian.
 
PROGRAM PLANNING
   Ad-hoc committees for each upcoming meeting:
   January Event: Ed Cavazos is organizing this open workshop
on legal issues affecting sysops. It will be Jan. 31, starting at
10:30 in the morning, at the Austin Marriott Hotel. Mike Godwin
(EFF staff attorney), Mikki Barry (counsel for Intercon), Pete Kennedy
(attorney for SJ Games), and Steve Ryan (senior counsel for Yuen&
Associates) will participate. The Board voted to buy a plane ticket for
Lance Rose, author of SYSLAW and columnist for BOARDWATCH Magazine, to
join the panel. The event is being publicized to the legal community
as well as Central Texas sysops.  We may want to publish a set of
"Proceedings," or give disks as handouts - Ed is still working on the
idea. Bob Izenberg is interested in doing a video; the Board approved
up to $150 to finance this, with the idea that we can sell tapes.
George, Donaldson & Ford will sponsor the event by covering the cost
the Marriott. Ed will call Monica about design of the Proceedings and
labels for the disk and video.
   January special events: Several, all related to the SJ Games trial.
   (1) Jon Lebkowsky is organizing a reception at Europa Books, 4 p.m.,
Jan. 17, for Emmanual Goldstein (editor of 2600 Magazine) who will be
in town for the trial.
   (2) Dave Smith will attempt to line up a reception for Mike Godwin
and Shari Steele, the EFF attorneys.
   (3) Ed Cavazos will see if Wayne Bell would like to meet local sysops.
   February GTC meeting: February 11, 1:30 until 3pm. Tracy LaQuey
will speak. Jon Lebkowsky is our liaison with GTC. We will have a table
there, as well.
   February Cyberdawg: Dave Smith will organize this - if possible,
in conjunction with the GTC - say, at High Time, from 5 until 8.
   March Event: Something on March 1; the Arts Committee will commit it.
   April Cyberdawg: Possibly a rave, maybe at SJ Games. Arts Committee.
   April Event: CopCon program, with all local law enforcement invited
and a well-known guest, run by the Police Liaison Committee. Bruce will
develop a proposal before next meeting.
   Dave Smith has started a "cookbook" for EFF-Austin meeting planners,
and will distribute it to the mailing list for comment. He's still
working on it, but it's at the bottom of his list.
 
LOCAL ACTIVITY SINCE LAST MEETING
   December Cyberdawg - big success. Tracy LaQuey, our speaker, was
very happy, and Europa sold every copy of the book that they could
get (about 20). Jon Lebkowsky had refreshment expenses of $15,
Willard of $30; the Board approved reimbursement and thanked Jon
and Willard for another successful event.
   SJ was interviewed December 30 on Emmanuel Goldstein's radio show
on WBAI in New York City (Pacifica).
 
OTHER OLD BUSINESS
   In order to avoid any possible appearance of conflict of interest,
Fringeware has withdrawn its offer to take over our sales at events.
However, Fringeware may be interested in buying EFF-Austin publications
for resale.
 
NEW BUSINESS
   The Board delegated Dick Anderson to look into the "Internet
connection to Congress" situation: what is the name of the enabling
bill or program, have either Jake Pickle or Lamar Smith already
signed up, and how does the program work? Next meeting, we'll act on
this information.
   Do we want to do anything with FedWorld BBS? SJ has requested
information; we'll look at it next month.
   Multi-User Dungeon as method of interaction? Interesting idea!
Prentiss, John Garnett, and anyone else interested are invited to come
up with a detailed proposal, including "Who's the GM?"
 
COMMUNICATION W/CAMBRIDGE
   Chapter Conference Liaison Committee - JonL, Ed, Dave (chair), jsq.
   The Board officially named Dave Smith as a conference representative,
with Dick Anderson as an alternate. Ed Cavazos is representing Houston,
unless the SJ Games trial makes it impossible for him to go.
   Following the expected Wednesday "Important Announcement" from EFF-
National, John Quarterman will determine whether it is necessary to
request a special meeting of the board.
 
ON THE TABLE
   Institutional memberships, and memberships in general.
   Fund-raising. (Dave wants to discuss this.)
   Talks with DIR - tabled until the GTC meeting.
   John Henry Faulk Conference - tabled until May, for September meeting.
   Officer elections - tabled till April for installation in May.
 
Roll call: All directors were present except Matt Lawrence. Since this
makes a second unexcused absence, Matt's seat on the Board is now 
vacant, per the "Tenure" section of the By-Laws. The Board voted to
invite Matt to join the Advisory Board.
 
The next meeting will be on Tuesday, February 9, at 6:30 p.m. (executive
session) and 7 p.m. (general board meeting) at the offices of Steve
Jackson Games.
 
ADJOURNED at 10:45 p.m.