Subject: Minutes Oct.11, 2005
From: RLaRosa331@aol.com
Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2005 17:49:30 -0400 (EDT)


My attendance count: 21 members and 3 guests.

Treasurer Dave Rost reported $ 6199.32 in the bank account.

Telephone referral voice mail: Comments were made about blank messages and low volume. 
My recollection is that Vonage was asked to increase the volume and the answer was that 
what we have now is as loud as it gets. There was a question about Mike Tedaldi removing 
old or useless messages.

Telephone referral volunteers:
October - John Liguori
November - Murray Kleiner
December - Dave Rost
January - John Dunn

Stu Senator asked for nominations or volunteers for 2006 Chairman. This was followed by a 
long moment of silence.

Chairman Murray Kleiner announced that the December speaker would be an attorney speaking 
about protecting our assets.

"State of the Network" : Murray said we need more publicity and more members. To help with 
this, we have updated our website and telephone referral service, and had good response to 
joint meetings and meetings offering professional development credits. Murray has been pushing 
for a Special Event Committee to plan one big event per year. Jerry Brown had volunteered 
to head it, but got too busy to do it, so the committee is in limbo.

Marty Kanner suggested that if members paid more dues they would have a bigger stake in the organization and would volunteer more. He suggested $ 1000. Irwin Weitman said an organization goal would justify more money. Chris Early said we should spend more money on advertizing.

Irwin Weitman said that our meetings are not getting announced in the Pulse. He said that 
our Recording Secretary (That's me, even though my official title is Secretary.) should send 
our meeting notices to Dave Wolff. I sent the November meeting announcement to him on Oct. 12, 
but it was too late for their Oct. 5 deadline. Their deadline is the 5th of the month before. 
This means that to announce our December meeting in the December Pulse, I will have to get the 
info to him before Nov.5. Our December meeting is Dec.7, so the Pulse might reach people in time. 
Our November meeting is on the 2nd. The receipt date of the November Pulse will tell us whether 
we need to get our info in on the fifth of two months before. This is probably not possible, 
so it may be necessary to have a standing announcement about our meeting dates and suggest a 
visit to our website.

Richard LaRosa noted that our Newsletter was in the Members section of the website and the 
answer was that it used to be checked by several people and we did not want our dirty laundry 
exposed to public view. Personal news is to be kept private. White papers can be published 
separately on the website.

Chris Early settled final details regarding the group ad in Pulse. John Dunn volunteered to do 
the artwork.

Peter Buitenkant led a discussion on hardware, software, virus protection, general business, 
and insurance.

Richard LaRosa
Secretary