3/28/2010 AIC Meeting Notes

[zyrain]

Attendees:

Brad Temple
Matt Pollock
Jessica Arjet
Neal Tibrewala

Discussed Funding Guidelines

Need to get AIC state non-profit status (AR Matt) -- This means we'll be needing to do Purchase Orders for tax exemption

LAFF funding, will be grandfathered in under the old rules.
LAFF expenses should complete our expenses obligations to the city for the current funding period which ends in June.

We covered these kinds of events, and want more for the new funding proposal this year:
Same Years Eve
WaffleFest
Johnstone Maestro @ Long Center

Offerings to the community:
AIC can take care of these kind of expenses:
Discounted venue rental (e.g. Long Center, Hideout downstairs & green room)
Advertising (e.g. special deal with Jenny's printing)
In-kind expenses can be maximum 1/4 of budget.

Upcoming Events

July or August TheatreSports at Long Center

How To Get people to the table:

We need to get more people involved in the AIC.
We need to express that the AIC is good for independent projects.
We should talk to theater owners to forward people to us when they don't want to 'host' an improv project.

Ginny's Printing

Community made use of Ginny's deal to the tune of over 7,000 posters.
Neal will negotiate with Ginny's a special deal for discounted posters (between $500 to $1,000 for the year).
Our incentives include cobranding AIC logos, Jenny's logo, and possible subsidization using AIC funds

Personnel Changes

Kristin resigned.
Neal will meet with Kristin for document hand-off
Ratification of this temporary appointment will be done online.

Web Site & Forum Problems

Web Site is out of date
Bob Apthorpe runs the servers, but he isn't local, we'll consider a migration of duties to a local person

Funding Update

AIC's funding period ends June 30th, we have 30 days to prepare our report for the city.

[smerlin]

Web Site & Forum Problems

Web Site is out of date
Bob Apthorpe runs the servers, but he isn't local, we'll consider a migration of duties to a local person

My husband, Jon Bownds, and his software company have offered to host the austinimprov.com stuff.

[arclight]

I apologize that I've been off-line via email due to a server failure that is currently being actively worked on.

Any problems with www.austinimprov.com or its management are not mine; I didn't set up the software or hosting for that system nor do I maintain its content. I've worked several times to resolve this issue with various members of the AIC over several years but as is typical custom web projects, there was little clear idea of the end product or goal of the site which made the selection or development of software to implement it virtually impossible, especially when all labor was volunteered. I believe everyone did their best but the project succumbed to a common disease of web site design - bring-me-a-rockism.

Still, I would appreciate that people address me directly with concerns about the management of our internet resources. The best way to do so is by mailing me at <bob.apthorpe@gmail.com>

[arclight]

I'm going to hazard a guess at what the issue is: responsibility for the content and software maintenance of www.austinimprov.com.

Those are two separate, linked issues and it helps to understand a little historical context of why www.austinimprov.com is the way it is.

Once upon a time (2003 or 2004), www.austinimprov.com was hosted on the same servers as the rest of the *.austinimprov.com sites. It was running the blog software Serendipity (s9y.org) and was very sporadically updated since it wasn't actively used. The site was functional but not inspired, it had essentially no content contributors and nobody really chomping at the bit to develop content, and since I had set it up I was in control of it by default.

In the early days of the AIC there was a statement that "we need a website." My contention was that we in fact had a website (i.e. ian HTTP client connecting to the IP address associated with www.austinimprov.com over TCP/IP on port 80 would receive legitimate HTTP traffic - there was a webserver listening and returning content there.) What we did not have was a website with a defined mission, target audience, or content contributors. We may not have had a website that certain people liked or thought was adequate (and in this I concurred), but in a very literal technical sense we had a website. An extremely frustrating exchange occurred centering on this circular "We don't have a website/Yes we do - point a web browser at www.austinimprov.com/But we don't have a website" argument and I simply punted.

Someone else could find hosting for "a website", set up their own software, and run it, and my role was to redirect www.austinimprov.com to that site. That was the end of my involvement. The wonderful Eric Heiburg set up the site and various people have maintained the content there; I can't give much more detail than that since I've had essentially no involvement with it, aside from the initial DNS redirection.

As I said in a previous post, I've made at least two attempts to define the mission and functionality of a new www.austinimprov.com with the AIC and I've helped with technical support on a third, none of which bore any fruit. I don't know the current state of the site so crediting or blaming me for its condition is rather moot - I have had nothing to do with that particular site for roughly 6-7 years aside from managing the parent domain's DNS.

I would be perfectly happy to help resolve this problem by installing whatever software is desired on the server in Dallas which hosts the remainder of the austinimprov.com websites. However, I've sunk too many hours into a www.austinimprov.com redesign to burn anymore time on that process, I'll leave that to someone else. That said, I've always provided the tech support and hosting gratis so people can work on a site redesign and migration.

Another note about the server in Dallas. As far as I can tell, the system last had any noticeable trouble in the Spring of 2009 and I spent a week or so tweaking database settings. I haven't seen any performance or stability problems since then. The server is getting backed up and aside from the recent mail server casualty (also backed up and being actively worked on), all austinimprov.com sites aside from www.austinimprov.com have been working well. At least I have heard no complaints so I'm not sure what concerns there are about hosting. Changing web hosting will not solve the underlying problem as I understand it.

Ultimately, someone at the AIC has to make up their mind about what is going to happen with www.austinimprov.com. I'm more than happy to pull it back onto the server running everything else, set up access for whoever is going to set up the development site, maintain the live site content, and set up database and software for actually implementing it. I'm not willing to do site design or maintain the content - I ceded that responsibility to the AIC 6-7 years ago and realistically that function needs to be defined and distributed to a team in Austin.

My apologies if this is off topic; I've had to guess at the underlying issue, since as I said, nobody has contacted me directly.

[bradisntclever]

Bob, this was just an inquiry Neal had. I had tried to PM and send e-mail to you at the only e-mail address I have in my records, but that appears to be an address on the server that went down. Had I known your gmail address, things would be much easier.

Neal's main question involved who was updating www.austinimprov.com, and nobody at the table actually knew the answer. I agree with you that content and site design are more of the issue than hosting itself. Hosting has been quite reliable to date.

[zyrain]

Bob, I apologize if any offense was given. Non was intended. As a new person to the organization, I asked questions about the management, and want to resolve the issues that people are having. If you're not the one 'in-charge' but people are saying you are, that's just more evidence that there's confusion out there.

Also, I had intended on communicating with you directly on what should be done, and will do so.

Thanks for the history, it is very helpful!

- Neal