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APANA Sydney 2003 Annual Regional Meeting held on Saturday, 06-Dec-2003

These are the minutes of the ARM as recorded by Craig Dewick:

Note that due to the low attendance, it was considered pointless to stick to the standard meeting format, so much of the non-relevant parts were passed over... 8-)

Minutes of APANA Sydney 2003 Regional General Meeting, etc.

Meeting held on Saturday, 6th of December 2003

Meeting venue was 9 McKell Avenue, Waterfall, NSW 2233 (Craig Dewick and Tiffany Pugh's house)

Meeting opened at 1620

Members in attendence Craig Dewick, David Fisher, Tiffany Pugh, Ian Ridley

Apologies from John August, Peter Somerville, Carol Quirk, Adrian Lyons, Donald Pedder, Jim Lynch [if I have left anyone else out of this list, my humblest apologies!]

RC Nomination form received from Carol Quirk nominating Craig Dewick for Regional Co-ordinator for 2004 calendar year

Proxy Appointment form received from Carol Quirk appointing Craig Dewick as voting proxy

No incoming or outgoing correspondence

Craig Dewick nominated for Regional Co-ordinator by David Fisher. Seconded by Ian Ridley. Accepted by Craig.

John August nominated for Deputy Regional Co-ordinator. No seconder. Position not filled.

David Fisher nominated as ordinary member of Regional Committee. Seconded by Tiffany Pugh. Accepted by David.

No other members nominated, and no other emailed or printed nomination forms received.

Discussed contribution rates for 2004 calendar year. Decision made to increase website hosting rate from $50 to $75 per annum. All other contribution rates left unchanged and it was decided that if Brisbane region with ECN cannot get back to us soon with some idea on costs for offering ADSL to Sydney region members, we'll pursue other providers. Jamie Lovick [read below] works with the infamous Skeeve Stevens (!) and they have a good deal of experience in working out how to achieve good deals in the DSL arena, so we may explore that in more depth.

I raised the point of overdue payments and we agreed that all members with overdue payments will be contacted (again in some cases) between now and the end of December, telling them that at the end of December all members with overdue payments who are not intending to continue their membership past the end of their current membership period will have their network access rights removed. We need to make a fresh start for 2004 and 'clearing the decks' with regard to overdue payments is one step to getting the new year going with a clean slate.

As there was no other business (and since David Fisher needed to head off to another event [for SSS]), the meeting was closed at 1626.

Addendum to Minutes

The weather held off and David, Tiffany and myself had a BBQ lunch. Ian Ridley had arrived but had already had lunch.

It tried to rain on and off but by about 1600 it was getting cooler and starting to rain properly. 8-)

We were fortunate to have Jamie Lovick and Erik Houseman from the Australian Wireless Association Inc. visiting (they were here for about 3 hours!), and they gave us a talk on wireless networking, showed us some equipment, and we discussed at length many of the issues facing the wireless networking movement, and in particular, how wireless networking could be used within APANA's framework both from a physical networking perspective and from a legal perspective.

The topic of reciprocal memberships were discussed and we would like to get some discussion going at MC level about that idea. AWAi is just like APANA Sydney in that they have a small, diverse membership and are constrained in terms of how and what they can do just as we are.

Jamie and Erik demonstrated and talked about various types of antenna, and we were able to try out Erik's home-made 'cantenna' with my D-Link access point, and one that Erik brought along, to show how good a simple, low-cost home-brewed antenna is!

Jamie is of the view that with the current legislation, etc. it would be perfectly feasible for APANA regions (not just ours) to use wireless links *internally* for connecting different parts of a region's network, but offering direct Internet access would still be pushing the boundaries of what the ACA would view as 'commercial' activity, even though he can't see any reason why it would cause problems because of how conscious we are of APANA's non-profit status and the flow-on effects of that status.

One way around the possible legal conflict is for there to be no specific fee or price attached to wireless network access if it's made available to members in a region, but simply provide it as an adjunct to traditional network access contributions, perhaps with a slight increase in rate to offset extra costs which might be incurred.

We talked quite a bit about problems with geography, particularly since Sydney is very bad in terms of making it extremely difficult to set up wireless links and AP's in places that give decent signal propagation to as large a surrounding area as possible.

Jamie is a great PR person and he's very interested in helping us come up with novel ways to promote APANA Sydney (and APANA in general). Jamie said that they will have a stand at next year's CeBit expo (as they did at the previous one) and I raised the idea of APANA involvement, especially if we could demonstrate community-based aspects of networking and how wireless networking from a non-profit angle can provide opportunities for doing things which can't be achieved easily from a commercial angle.

Also in attendance prior to the official meeting was Robbie Barnett who is a prospective new member with a very keen interest in wireless networking. It was good therefore to have the AWAi guys present since Robbie had some interesting things to talk about in regard to local wireless networking activity.