Minutes of Board Meeting of August 13, 2003

Location: IRC server webmaster.ca.us.webchat.org, channel #asfar
Time: 9:00 pm eastern time

Board Members Present: Tevi Abrams, Winston Featherly-Bean, Jacob Kafka, David Schneider-Joseph, Oliver Traldi, Susan Wishnetsky

Members Present: none

Visitors Present: none

The meeting was called to order at 9:07 pm eastern time.

Reports of Officers

The President, David Schneider-Joseph said that he would write about the International Democratic Education Conference in the next issue of Youth Truth.

The Vice-President, Oliver Traldi, had no official report.

The Secretary, Susan Wishnetsky, reported that she was caught up on approving new members and and mailing out packets as of the previous Saturday.

The Treasurer, David Schneider-Joseph, reported ten book sales and a bill of $12.95 for a month of YRFire hosting. The PayPal account contains $165.41. Susan Wishnetsky added that she had deposited a $30 donation to the bank account.

The Webmaster, David Schneider-Joseph, reported 20616 pageviews in the month of July, and 7343 so far in August. He expected to be able to post Youth Truth and make membership database improvements in the coming week.

The Recruiting Officer, Winston Featherly-Bean, reported 9 applications for membership since the last meeting. David Schneider-Joseph asked if the board could do anything to help him or give him greater incentive to focus on recruiting. Winston Featherly-Bean promised to devote more time to developing plans to do this.

Reports of Committees:

For the Zine Committee, Susan Wishnetsky reported that she had drawn a cartoon in need of improvement, and was reading a book to review. Winston Featherly-Bean said that he was also reading a book he planned to review in the future.

For the Demonstrations committee, Oliver Traldi reported that, as far as he knew, no one had attended the previous meeting of July 25; a new date of August 27 was set for the next meeting.

Old Business

-Access of officers to membership database: Susan Wishnetsky moved that Winston Featherly-Bean be given access to the membership database. The motion was seconded and passed 6-0.

-Board vacancy: Some suggestions were made as to who the board might appoint. One member had expressed interest. The issue was tabled until the next meeting.

-T-shirts: David Schneider-Joseph reported that a member contacted him offering to have t-shirts printed at a low cost. They had discussed a simple design, which David offered to produce for approval at the next meeting.

New Business

-Spam to ASFAR e-mail groups: Board members and officers had been bothered by spam to e-mail addresses such as <board@asfar.org> and <info@asfar.org>. David Schneider-Joseph reported that these could not stopped on the server side; Tevi Abrams reported that a pretty good free client-side spam filter was available at .

The next meeting was scheduled for September 3, 2003 at 9 pm eastern time.

The meeting was adjourned at 10:40 pm.

Respectfully submitted,

Susan Wishnetsky
ASFAR Secretary