1. Upgrading Alice
As noted in the last year's AGM, Ubuntu Server 10.04.4 LTS reaches end of life in April 2015 (after which date we assume no security updates will follow). This is now 6 month away.
While the hardware itself my be fine for another few years, an upgrade-in-place to 14.04 LTS is probably too risky because we have no fallback.
As per discussions over the past year, we also intend to use virtualization to streamline future OS upgrades, but have tried unsucessfully to virtualize the current hardware.
We currently have a little over £1,000.00 in our account. Therefore we decided to use this money to buy new hardware prior to the upgrade in April, and virtualize that. We took no decision on how to use virtualization, noting instead that this can be taken once we have our new hardware to experiment with.
We further decided that we must purchase the hardware by January 31st 2015, so as to give adequate time to source and configure it before the April deadline.
ACTION: JBB to initiate discussion on hardware specs and purchase (Note also to research any likely software configuration issues between 10.04 and 14.04, eg Apache 2.2 to 2.4)
2. Members' Subscription for 2015
Since we plan to use our current balance for hardware purchase, David suggested we aim to replenish the upgrade fund over the next 5 years by targeting the annual subscription at £120 ex. VAT. each year until then. This amount may vary (for example in the event of members arriving or leaving), but it was felt a target amount provides some forward planning while still offering very good value.
Subscription was therefore set at £120.00 plus VAT (£144.00 incl.)
ACTION: David to send out invoices.
1. Choosing the AGM Date
It was noted that despite having 12 months notice, no more Hatters attended the AGM this year. Richard suggested that the act of choosing a date closer to the time might focus people's diaries more. It was suggested that we allow members to choose which Sunday in September they would like to attend (or indeed later if it comes to that). This to be done on line in the usual way on the mailing list.
ACTION: JBB to arrange the choosing of the next AGM date at least 6 weeks prior to the first Sunday of September 2015.
2. SSL Certificate
It was decided to renew the certificate for another year. While it was suggested that we should renew for multiple years, we felt that if we did so we would forget how to update to a new one when the time came.
ACTION: David to renew the SSL certificate.
3. Domain Renewal
David suggested that both hatters.org.uk and tradeline.org.uk should be changed from 1-year to 5-year registrations. It was felt there would be no harm in renewing these for a further 5 years, since it would be one less thing for David to worry about.
4. Should We Have a Club Debit Card?
Provided it is free of operating charges, a debit card would be a convenient way of paying for things for the club and would reduce David's administrative burden.
ACTION: David to investigate the possibility of this.
The meeting was then called to an end.