RockNet Home Page   RockNet Meeting Minutes - October 11, 2001


                     ROCKNET MEETING MINUTES

                         October 11, 2001

The meeting convened in the City Manager's Conference Room of Rockville City
Hall at 7:30 PM

In attendance:
  Bob Ekman
  Roald Schrack
  Mike Cannon
  Betsy Robbins
  Brian Pierce
  Ben Pauwels
  Jim Beller
  Paul Arveson

1. The minutes of the meetings of August and September were accepted as
submitted.

2. Betsy reported on the City web site. Candidates for the November
election had their photos and 250 words posted. Material on the Antique
Auto Show of Oct 20 and the proposed Master Plan for the city were posted.
A complete redesign of the city website is being planned. Suggestions for
changes were elicited.

Rocknet had an average of 412 hits per day during September. This is a drop
from the August value that was unexpectedly high. The availability of the
digital camera for use by civic organizations was advertised but no
requests were received. The information on the coming election, dates and
places of forums sponsored by civic organizations was kept up to date. The
poll search facility was made available to the public after testing.

3. A web page authoring workshop was discussed. It was tentatively planned
for 2 Saturday mornings in November, the 10th and the 17th. Course content,
program materials, and goals of the workshop were discussed. Bob Ekman
offered to teach the course. He suggested that there was a list of about 20
potential participants that he could contact.

4. Roald Schrack brought up the possibility of having an interactive poll
on questions of interest to city residents as a way of generating public
interest in Rocknet. He agreed to submit a proposal.

5. Mike Cannon discussed the need to acquire a new listserve program. The
present program has features that cause it to be a security risk. In
addition the program is quite old and updates are not available. Last month
a seamless transition from our old DSL provider to a new provider was made.
The availability of broadband ISP is becoming increasingly difficult as
companies are going out of business. The eventual hope is to acquire a T1
line as a provision of the franchise agreement with Starpower.

The meeting adjourned at 9:00 pm 

Submitted on October 12, 2001 by
  Roald A. Schrack
  13 Farsta Ct.
  Rockville, MD 20850
  voice: 301-279-7017
  fax:   301-279-8889