2010-02-18 Staff Meeting Minutes

Taken by David Eads.

Money

$2390 in the bank. Check is in the mail for back rent.

Heat

Still not fixed -- Shawn *may* be in tomorrow (Friday) to fix the heater.

Recycling update + decision time

Gaylords

Taylor's boss is getting gaylords for us via Uline. Alex has gaylords but we need to come pick them up.

Recyclers and materials

Plastic

• Adams Plastics bales and sells plastics -- will take it for free or maybe $0.01/lb ($20/ton).
• SSI does the same and just uses a third party.

PCBs

According to Jada there is no smelter in the US that handles PCBs directly -- you need to see if they send to the Europe and Canada vs. East Asia.

• SSI: $0.12/lb (approximate rate).
• Intercon: $0.12/lb. Taylor will hear back from them soon -- BAN certified, $0.25/lb. Michiana's only problem with Intercon was that it cost a lot of money.
• SiPi?: $1/lb.

CRTs

• SSI exports to Mexico -- to an R2-approved facility.
• SiPi? doesn't take them.
• Cascade, Cloud Blue -- boutique, BAN-certified recyclers... very expensive.

Printers

• SSI has a good process in place.
• Dee will call Threshold's printer recycling business. But some printers will need to get recycled no matter what.

Wire + aluminum

• SiPi?, probably.
• Also, need to recycle some of our ribbon cable.

Old, old equipment

• ISA
• Modems
• 10 mbit cards

Recycling standards: Based on FreeGeek/Portland?

Taylor reports FreeGeek/Portland? has criteria for picking recyclers on their website with addenda that we will include Western Europe as an "OK" export site in addition to all of north america.

Tentative choice

Based on quoted rate 0f $0.15/lb Intercon will be our primary recycler for this run, barring new information.

Homework results

• Jeremy: Called "B2B Computers" rep, waiting on reply.
• Eads: Called Han, got prices, uses distributor who handles excess stock.

Windows malware

Dee: Portland's wiki universally discourages helping Windows users in any way -- should we just do that?

Taylor: Hard to track down mom and pop shops.

Dee: Let's use it as a way of marketing ourselves and establishing a working relationship.

FreeGeek/Retreat?: Set a date

We'll wait to decide.

Donation days

• Knockbox: Willing to do it.
• Star Lounge: Willing to do it.
• Get 3rd party folks to advertise it.

Jeremy's PoS

Data model is done, Jeremy is teaching himself Django. Next month or so.

What we call ourself

Proposed: Proper spelling of our name is "FreeGeek Chicago"

Consensus: Consensus reached!

Overall marketing materials

Waiting, to some degree, on logo.

Logo

We looked at the two options, and decided we should discuss this and vote on it with the community council.

Next meeting

Two weeks, Harold Wash, 6p.