Open Computing Facility (OCF)

Board of Directors (BoD) Meeting Minutes

2 October 2003

1. Attendance
1. In Attendance
2. Board of Directors as of this Meeting
3. Board of Directors as of next Meeting
2. Pre-Agenda
3. Minutes
1. General Manager (GM) Message
1. Telephone Lines
2. This Year's Budget
3. Barrows Cleaned
1. The Cart
2. Spare Equipment
3. Finishing Up
4. Heller Lab Cleaning
2. Site Manager (SM) Report
1. Account Sorrying
2. Compromised Account
3. Printing and PIMPing
1. The PIMP
2. How to PIMP
3. Discussion of Printing Issues
4. Powerpoint Printing
4. Fundraising
1. Do we need to buy anything?
2. Methods
1. Beg Companies
2. T-Shirts
3. Bake Sale
4. Service Off-Campus
5. Selling/Raffling Equipment
6. Web Development/Software Development
7. Auctioneering
8. Renting out Heller
9. LAN Parties
10. Job Fair
11. Technology/Product Fair
12. Selling Advertisements
3. Should we provide more services for free?
4. Assigning Ownership
5. Sol's Project
6. Miscellaneous
1. Food/Vending Machines
7. Closing

Attendance

In Attendance

• Devin Jones (jones)
• Bem Ajani Jones-Bey (ajani)
• David A Fullmer (remlluf)
• Charles Patrick Feyh (cpfeyh)
• Christopher Parry (laotzu)
• Yonathan Asfaw (yonathan)
• Elliot Block (elliot)
• George Wu (geo)
• Nicholas Joseph Stahl (njstahl)
• Patrick Henry Lee (phlee)
• Jimmy Kittiyachavalit (jkit)
• Eleen Chiang (eleen)
• Akop Pogosian (akopps)

• Dropped
• Gabriel Gonzalez (gmg)
• Karl Chen (karlchen)
• Will Orson Harris (wharris)
• Added
• Patrick Henry Lee (phlee)

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Pre-Agenda

        Hi Staff,
          There's a BoD Meeting TONIGHT as always, remember, it's a weekly
        meeting!  So just a little reminder, after two absences from the BoD
        meetings, you are automatically "ousted" off the BoD.  Please come to the
        meetings!  They're tons of fun...and it's the best way to see who everyone
        is instead of guessing by looking at the person next to you and at the
        text from running 'staff' on your shell.
          The meeting, as shown on our website and the text that flies by when you
        login, is at 8pm in 229 Dwinelle Hall.  And if you have anything to add to
        the agenda, feel free to e-mail me back at eleen@ocf and I'll add it.
        (pending agenda follows)

        thanks,
        Eleen

        BoD Meeting Agenda 10.02.03

        GM message:
        1. Phone will be back on 10/6
        2. Cleaning of Barrows was successful, next step...cleaning Heller?
        3. Budget Dollar Value as of now

        SM Message

        Issues
        1. Fundraising
        	a. Donation Box w/sign (Kevin)
        	b. Beg companies (Xin)
        	c. Raffle Tickets (donated products/movie tickets)
        	d. Sell T-shirts (Bem)
        	e. Service Off-Campus (Devin w/Andrew's support
        			      - non-berkeley domain name service)
        	f. Selling our Dells, selling other ppl's computers (Devin)
        	g. Web Development/Software Design (Shiva)
        	h. Lan Parties (Will - games:Fantasy Football, StarCraft, CS)
        	i. Job Fair (Devin)
        	j. Bake Sale (Alex - wolfster)

        2. Sol's Project
                        

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Meeting Minutes

Opening

Quorum achieved, meeting opens

• Telephone Lines
• OCF used to have three phone lines, unnecessarily
• Now reducing to one phone line
• Someone disconnected the wrong line(s)
• The phone will be back up by October 6th
• How Much Money We Have Left
• $4182.40
• Our only projected expenses:
• Paper
• $280/yr
• Why did the Dells come out of this year's budget?
• Charles Patrick Feyh (cpfeyh) says:
• Last year ASUC begged OCF for cash, and we gave them about $6000.
• Last year's budget was finishd off by the purchase of the large new air conditioner and a tape drive
• Thus the Dells came out of this year's budget
• Barrows Cleaning Monday 29 September
• Everything that needs to be in Heller is in Heller, except for:
• Solaris manuals
• The Cart
• Questions:
• What do we do with the cart?
• Where did it come from?
• Where should it go?
• Potential Options:
• Spraypaint "OCF" on it? and/or give it to the ASUC
• What should we do with our spare stuff?
• Monitors go to math department
• Akop Pogosian (akopps) should take care of it, knows how to do it
• Cleaning out the remaining junk from Barrows
• Call down E&S bin
• What's a bin?
• An 8'x6'x6' cage
• Stuff it full of equipment and they take it away
• No need to wipe the memory on disk drives anymore
• We already have a partially full bin
• Devin Jones (jones) will call E&S, since they might take a long time to bring a new bin
• Whenever we get a new bin we can arrange another cleaning day
• We already have a partially full bin
• We need to clean Heller

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• Account Sorrying
• If an acount is sorried, it doesn't let that user log in
• OCF sorries peoples' accounts if:
• the account has been compromised (someone besides the real account owner is using it)
• the account is being used (by the legitimate owner) to do bad things
• A user's account was compromised
• Account has been sorried, at the request of:
• the account's real owner
• server ops who were being hacked by that account.
• Not a big deal.
• Devin Jones (jones) says: If you happen to know the details of this story, don't gossip about it in public.

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• Nicholas Joseph Stahl (njstahl) volunteers to PIMP, consequently appointed by Devin Jones (jones)
• Other people can be on PIMP if they want
• Anyone is free to do extra work if they want.

How to PIMP

• Bem Ajani Jones-Bey (ajani): You can call yourself the PMP (Printing Management Panel) if you don't want to call yourself The PIMP.
• If people mail you about problems, evaluate on a case by case basis
• printing mistakes (e.g. accidentally printed 170 pages, tried to print 6 pages per sheet but failed)
• deal with requests from staff on behalf of themselves or users
• Usual practices
• Paper Increase
• Give people their first increase if they ask
• You can't sell people paper or diskspace
• The first increase is an extra 100 pages
• After that, no additional increases, unless there are extraordinary circumstances
• How do you actually do these things?
• Who knows how?
• Ask Bem Ajani Jones-Bey [ajani@OCF.Berkeley.edu].
• Bem Ajani Jones-Bey (ajani) has an info file: ~ajani/staffstuff
• Stephen McCamant (smcc) has a cheat sheet directory: ~smcc/cheat-sheets
• A humble request:
  • Devin: "Can you teach him how to do that?"
  • Bem: "What, to PIMP?"
• E-mail Derek Chan [dwc@OCF.Berkeley.edu] about special cases and messed up print page count

Discussion of Printing Issues

• David A Fullmer (remlluf): Can we implement rollover pages? (If we don't use all quota one semester, they get added to next semester's quota)
• Can we implement something that tells users their paper each time they print?
• Do we count double sided printing as two pages because it uses two pages worth of toner?
• Quota is supposed to be 250 pages (500 sheets) or 250 sheets?
• What is our policy?
• Devin Jones (jones) says: feel free to investigate print problems, and e-mail issues to OCF Staff [staff@OCF.Berkeley.edu].

Powerpoint Printing

• Jimmy Kittiyachavalit (jkit): Just us the iMac.
• Print to file

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• Devin Jones (jones) says:
• $10,000 for a 4 terabyte hard drive
• money for food
• We can't use ASUC money for food, unless we get permission.
• If we fundraise it goes into our own separate persistent account, not to ASUC

Possible Methods

• Beg Companies
• ask for hardware, money, donations
• even miscellaneous stuff like palm pilots and x-boxes are acceptable since we can raffle them off.
• Because we got them for free, any amount of money from a raffle is profit to us.
• they get a tax writeoff
• write letters
• make a webpage organizing our data, with progress reports
• whom to contact
• who's been contacted
• who's assigned to contacting whom
• results?
• Potential benefactor: Juniper?
• People Already Involved:
• Charles Patrick Feyh [cpfeyh@OCF.Berkeley.edu] is already engaged in this activity. Currently wants to ask for stuff we'd want to keep, not raffle
• Xin Lu [lux@OCF.Berkeley.edu] has already volunteered to write a letter. Contact her regarding letter writing.
• Would anyone else want to help writing letters?
• Contacting companies is not hard, but a time committment.
• Can obtain equipment to keep, or also equipment to raffle
• Selling Equipment
• Can we use our extra Dells in the lab? It's too crowded right now.
• Eschleman OCF satellite computer lab could make use of extra Dells -- mainly for ASUC use
• Giving to ASUC possibly has the benefit of obtaining their good will
• Get people to donate their old equipment and we'd sell it
• Does this infringe upon policy?
• People get a tax writeoff
• We fix it up, install Linux and OpenOffice, sell for cheap to starving students
• Maybe not "sell," but ask for suggested donations
• Raffle Tickets
• Raffle donated equipment
• Since we got the donated equipment for free, regardless of what we raffle it for, we still make money
• We can keep what equipment we like, raffle the extra
• Raffle our old SCSI drives?
• Appoint continuous raffle master in charge of raffles
• How often to raffle?
• Once a month?
• How to do you sell that many raffle tickets in a month?
• Selling a lot raffle tickets quickly is a lot of work.
• T-Shirts
• Enables us to convert ASUC funds to miscellaneous funds
• We can use ASUC funds to make shirts. Sell the shirts, and the money goes into our miscellaneous funds, which we can use for anything we want
• How much would we want to spend on shirts?
• Research shirt printers
• What would go on the shirts?
• Feel free to pitch clever designs
• Spam designs to Nicholas Joseph Stahl [njstahl@OCF.Berkeley.edu]
• Sell shirts in lab
• Portray selling as donating
• Sales pitch: "help ocf by donating and get a shirt!"
• OCF Staff Shirt?
• Maybe ones that staff "off duty" on them
• Bake Sale
• Who bakes?
• Service Off-Campus
• We can't do a lot of stuff as a campus organization
• Can't sell anything, because much of our resources aren't ours to sell
• Restrictions on users
• No starting businesses on OCF
• No arbitrary domain names
• Everything is generally supposed to support campus community
• We could provide extra, less restricted services on an off campus server
• Drew can get us a machine/rack at his colocation facility
• How would we advertise? Can we advertise on OCF?
• Worst case scenario, we would start a nonprofit organization whose mission it is to give money to the OCF
• Web/Software Development
• Make software for campus groups?
• Eleen Chiang (eleen): There's a mechanism for inter-student group hiring
• Would we want to do this for free? See below
• Auctioneering
• Silent auctions?
• Online auction service for users?
• Local campus version of eBay?
• Eleen Chiang (eleen): We could call it "bBay"
• Does craig's list already handle this well enough?
• Would we want to base the design off of craig's list?
• it'd be local -- you know the person's in the area
• how would we implement payment?
• people are so close to each other, they could contact each other via our system, but then avoid paying us by meeting each other directly.
• We could implement a flat fee to post items?
• Would we want to inventory the ASUC's spare equipment for them and auction it off?
• They already sell spare equiment, but we'd get them wider press and the convenience of online
• Renting out Heller
• Can we rent out the lab? Is it ours to rent out?
• Can we let people use the lab and rent our services in it?
• LAN Parties
• If the games are on OCF computers, they have to be licensed.
• ASUC won't allow us to use Heller however we like
• There's a reservations group
• Everyone needs to get permission from the reservations group
• Reservation group collects and handles funding.
• If we rent out Pauley Ballroom or Stephens we could hold a LAN party, and sell tickets to it
• Fairs
• Notes on fairs
• Fairs get us a lot of money
• You have to contact 10 times the number of companies that you want to show up
• This means contacting about 400 companies
• Devin Jones (jones) is willing to organize if other people will help put in work
• It's tax deductable to companies
• We need enough people contacting companies for this to work out
• need at least 10 people
• each at least 5 hours of work
• Have to find out when space is available
• Have to advertise on campus
• It's important to know who has not come recently--they are the ones who will be willing to show up
• There are a lot of companies
• Startup companies are a bad idea.
• Charge companies admission based on a sliding cost scale:
• Small companies pay little
• Large companies pay a lot
• Jimmy Kittiyachavalit (jkit): Can we advertise or vend stuff at fairs?
• Types of fairs
• Career Fair
• Job fair was the one big money maker in the past
• Akop Pogosian (akopps): "that was during the dot-bomb."
• Companies pay for a booth
• Career fair would have professional jobs, as opposed to job fair, which would have more temporary jobs
• HKN has talked abuot putting on a tech company career fair
• We could work with them.
• Devin Jones (jones): " They're good to work with"
• Job Fair
• Shorter term, less professional jobs
• David A Fullmer (remlluf): For example, Quiznos has been hiring a lot
• Technology/Product Fair
• Invite companies to show off their newest stuff
• Buy on the spot
• Selling Advertisements
• Banner ads?
• Popups?
• Desktop background?
• Benefits: cheap to implement
• Coupons/Pirate Cards
• talk to local companies
• No Ned's, since they compete with official campus outfits.
• Is anyone willing to go contact local companies
• No one at meeting was willing

Should we provide more services for free?

• Devin Jones (jones) and David A Fullmer (remlluf) suggest that we provide several of the above services for free
• They're worth doing in and of themselves
• If we provide a lot of services we'll get a wider audience
• Wider audience would cement the need for the OCF as an integral part of the campus community, and would possibly help sustain funding

Assigning Ownership

• It's best to get jobs assigned and get them rolling ASAP, or else interest and progress die

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• Done setting up framework
• Find the prototype at: http://www.dis.org/cassiel/ocf/
• Need to put the page somewhere and give write permissions to the people that want to help add content
• Tell Solitaire MacIan [sajmm@OCF.Berkeley.edu] or OCF Staff [staff@OCF.Berkeley.edu] if you want to help edit pages/content

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• E-mail: these people if you have questions
• OCF Staff [staff@OCF.Berkeley.edu]
• Derek Chan [dwc@OCF.Berkeley.edu]
• Eleen Chiang [eleen@OCF.Berkeley.edu]
• Try not to be shy about questions

BoD Elections

Explained BoD and elected Patrick Henry Lee (phlee)

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Eleen Chiang (eleen) motions to close and Jimmy Kittiyachavalit (jkit) seconds

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The End!