RockNet Home Page   RockNet Meeting Minutes - March 9, 2000


                     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