Brian Smither has been transcribing the meetings for the past few months. To do the transcription, he puts the meeting tapes in a tape player, presses play for a few seconds, then stop and rewind. He then types a brief part of what was recorded. Then he presses play for a few more seconds, stop and rewind. This goes on ad nauseum for the entire tape.
Brian discovered that there exists a machine that does this a whole lot easier: a transcribing machine. He made a successful bid on eBay for a Dictaphone 2920 and asked the Steering Committee to have the SPCUG recompense Brian and add the machine to SPCUG's equipment inventory. The next person to transcribe the meetings would then have the benefit of access to it.
Tim Cardozo reported that Compu-Mentor is having a day to train volunteer technicians to install anti-virus software on the computer systems of small non-profit organizations. The training is four hours followed by field assignments. Compu-Mentor is asking the SPCUG to make the announcement requesting interested parties to contact them. Compu-Mentor, based in San Fransisco, trains and provides tech support for small non-profits, including obtaining and installing software at reduced cost.
Greg Thorsell is still up for hosting the Christmas party at his house Dec 8 in Diamond Springs.
President Milt Hull would like to encourage more members to subscribe to the General Members listserv. Nearly all members have their e-mail address in our database, but less than 20 members are signed up on the Officers list and less than 50 members are signed up on the General list.
Editors Tom Anderson and Ken Hopkins are working on their last issue. They planned to make it a Nov/Dec combined issue but Brian Smither recommended otherwise. Brian Smither will pick up editing duties beginning with the December issue.
The group's HP LaserJet IV-M printer, usually managed by the Editor-in-Chief, is reporting an error code when turned on. First guesses point to the fuser assembly. Somewhere at UC Davis, there exists a low-cost laser printer repair facility. Milt believes it is worth fixing (under $200). Tim Cardozo will research repairs and/or disposition.
Brian presented a spreadsheet of Sacra Blue issues 2000-2002 downloaded during 2000-2002 on a month by month basis. The numbers show the hits for each issue for any given month.
Nearly every issue is being downloaded every month. It stands to reason, and the numbers reflect this, password protected issues will have low numbers. On the other hand, these numbers are based on hits from the 1st of the month to the last day of the month. Sacra Blue is published during the second or third week. But overall, the numbers are indicative of how many members are downloading vs. the world at large. Unfortunately, low numbers point to the fact that not many SPCUG members are downloading the PDF. However, no numbers were analyzed to indicate how many members were reading eBlue.
The evidence suggests password protection has driven readership down. But, the point of password access is to restrict the readership to members only. Some discussion was brought up suggesting the Steering Committee revisit password access as it relates to readership numbers that we can claim to potential advertisers.
The SPCUG approved this year's offer for two each $500 scholarship awards.
