On Mon, Mar 17, 2003 at 04:24:15PM -0600, steve ulrich wrote: > so i wasn't able to make the meeting last week @ the dunn bros. are > there any notes or comments that folks had from the meeting? > inquiring minds want to know. ... I didn't take notes, so this is from my fuzzy recollection. We took over the "meeting room" area upstairs. There were about 15-20 people present; the space was almost sufficient but it was a little tight. The big presentation was by Sue (sorry if I get names wrong), who works as accountant for "Twin Cities RISE!", a local non-profit. She talked for about 20 minutes about the process of becoming a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, and handed out a bunch of informative paper including pointers to the state and federal paperwork and a checklist from a California non-profit that is designed to help organizations figure out if 501(c)3 is right for them, and to navigate the treacherous shoals of the IRS and state Dept of Commerce. If you're interested in this material, attend the Organizational Meeting next week. There was also some discussion about other ways to provide a formal organization without going all the way to independent 501(c)3 status. One of the local radio clubs, TCFreenet, and the Walker were all suggested as possible "umbrella organizations", to varying levels of enthusiasm from around the room. The general feel I got was that it *is* important that the group find *some* sort of formal organization, as this reduces individual liability, enables companies to donate to "the group" rather than just giving gear to individuals, etc. (I'm sure I'm missing other important points.) Leif Utne presented some information about his proposed plan to create a "Wireless Loring Park". This project could involve neighborhood geeks, businesses facing the park (including Utne Magazine, Joe's Garage and other restaurants, and the Walker Museum, among others), the city Park Department, etc. Leif has put out some initial feelers to the Walker and to City Hall and has gotten some good responses. Mike Horwath also expressed interest in providing rack space and bandwidth if that turns out to be necessary. I am quite sure that I'm forgetting some of the other important discussion that went on, but that's all I remember at the moment. (On a personal technology note, at the meeting, I managed to get OpenBSD 3.3-current to initialize my Linksys WPC11 on my Vaio R505TE for the first time. The magic incantation is "pcic0 at 0xcc000 size 0xc000", apparently. No more FreeBSD for me!) -andy _______________________________________________ Twin Cities Wireless Users Group Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota http://www.tcwug.org tcwug-list at tcwug.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tcwug-list