ROCKNET MEETING MINUTES
March 9, 2000
The meeting was held at the City Manager's Conference room of Rockville
City Hall, 111 Maryland Avenue. It began at approximately 7:45 pm with
president Robert Ekman as chair.
In attendance were: Robert Ekman, Paul Averson, Jim Beller, Mike Cannon,
Stan Klein, Brian Pierce, Betsy Robbins, Roald Schrack, Bob Skinner, and
Chuck Wilsker.
Actions:
1. The minutes of the previous meeting were accepted as published.
2. Betsy Robbins reported on several new items on the city web site. The
city web site now averages 584 hits per day.
3. Bob Ekman reported on the status of the Rocknet server. We now have
four accounts on the server. There was some discussion of computer
security in light of recent denial of service attacks on prominent
sites. The Rocknet server has a moderate level of security against
penetration by Trojan horses, etc.
4. Mike Cannon reported that the city is leaving the Internet link
through Sailor because of the extremely slow response time and is
contracting with Capunet to supply a DSL link to the Internet with a
speed of 1.1 MB/s. There was a discussion of the need for a smooth
transition of the IP address change from Sailor to Capunet so as to
avoid minimum disruption of service.
5. Bob Ekman reported that he has set up three index server files on the
Rocknet server. He pointed out that dead files that are not available
to the site user will appear on the index and some provision should be
made to either remove them or locate them in areas that will not be
indexed. Rocknet has 2,000 pages on its site and the city has about
16,000 pages on its site.
6. Bob Skinner announced that the corporate address of Rocknet be
henceforth be 104 S. Adams ( his address) rather than city hall to
avoid loss of incoming snail mail.
7. Bob Ekman reported that he sent a letter to the city Finance
Director, Donna Boxer, asking for $5000 for the coming fiscal year
for software. The request will appear in the draft budget for Mayor
and Council consideration. Bob Ekman will appear before the Mayor and
Council during the public hearings on the budget with a presentation
asking support.
8. There was a discussion of a proposed new brochure. Betsy Robbins
reported that the city will print the brochure in color in time for
the Rockville Science Fair on April 30. There was additional
discussion of give-aways such as pencils and mouse pads.
9. The present system allows only 20 listserves for Rocknet and the
City. This capacity is now almost used up but it was remarked that
many of the lists are static and do not need to be used on an
interactive system and could thus be moved to another system. The
City was asked to do an inventory of the current list servers. While
there are two addresses, rocknet.org and ci.rockville.md.us, only
rocknet.org will work. ci.rockville.md.us has been taken over by the
City's Lotus Domino e-mail system.
10. Fund raising for RockNet was discussed. It was suggested we need to
upgrade our strategic plans, which would then lead to the services
we want to provide, and what we would need funds for. It was
decided we needed to do a survey of our citizens. It was suggested
we send out a letter, or combine it with the letter to the citizen
associations. It was also suggested we do an on-line survey.
11. It was announced that the City was doing an Information Technology
strategic plan. The lead for the plan is Julie Jacobson.
12. The pending UCTIA Maryland Assembly legislation was discussed.
While RockNet took no position, it was noted that this issue may be
important to Rockville citizens and RockNet could take a position.
The meeting was adjourned at 9:35 PM.
Summitted by:
Roald A. Schrack
13 Farsta Ct.
Rockville, MD 20850
voice: 301-279-7017
fax: 301-279-8889
