01. Roll Call.

Ann Saunders, Chairperson.
Chris Payne, Treasurer and Memberships Administrator.
Richard Wilkin, Web Master.
Carol Forrester, Executive Officer.
David Richards, Drusilla Insole, Elisabeth Standen, Gladys Taylor, Greg Hamilton, Ian McNamara, John Hosch, John Wells, John Wilsher, Katie Myers, Lee Buckingham, Lee Garrett, Lisa Peck, Mark Tyler, Martin Foden, Maurice Pothecary, Michael Brown, Miriam Raymond, Peter Beasley, Peter Hallam, Sal Pitts, Stanley Saunders, Stephen Evans, Stephen Hassall, Steve Hyde-Dryden, Steve Pallett, Teresa Payne, Trevor Franklin.

02. Apologies.

Amanda Burt, Secretary.
Justin Macleod, Events Co-ordinator.
Catherine McManus, Executive Officer.
Alan Davis, Andrew Payne, Billy Whitcombe, Charlotte Payne, David Norton, Gary Price, Ian White, Jayne Connor, June Porter, Keith Waters, Lynette Norton, Michael Payne, Paul Smith, Sharon Bowell, Shirley Grant.

03. Acceptance Of Minutes From May’s Meeting.

Proposed By Lee Garrett. Seconded By Michael Brown. Ann thanked Lee and Michael.

04. Matters Arising.

Ann Saunders: There are 2 matters arising regarding the last members meeting, which Teresa has agreed to read.

Teresa Payne: 1) The TAFN Logo. I and the exec would like to thank those members who have written to us suggesting logo designs more appropriate to the ethos of TAFN. At the present time our priorities are to complete the migration of email lists away from Google with a view to making list management easier for members to control by way of simple to follow instructions that will be drafted, and, of course, to get our website up and running again.

It is anticipated that the website will be completely back during the term of the present executive, and probably before this Christmas. It is therefore intended that, once most of this work has been completed we will compile a list of all the logo design suggestions we have received from members- your further suggestions are still welcome – and we will then show them to a graphic designer for his or her advice. We want to take the time to produce a logo worthy of our organisation’s of a blind and visually impaired community supporting each other in friendship. We
will show you the finished result before we go public so that you can consider whether it meets the criteria of our charity. The new logo will be launched with the completion of the website with as much publicity as possible. I and your executive are confident that the plan set out here is the best way forward.

Observers At Exec Meetings. It was suggested at the May Members’ Meeting that the TAFN exec committee might admit observers to their regular meetings without any right to speak. The idea was to work such access like happens at local council meetings at town halls etc. around the country. The exec have considered this request but feel that, via the Communicator, it would be difficult to ask all observers to clear the room when a sensitive issue is to be discussed. In a local council situation it is, I believe, usual for only parts of the agenda to be discussed in public and it is easier to clear a room physically. Often in exec meetings sensitive issues relating to members’ health or finances, for example, or issue relating to possible disciplinary action against a member or, on a much more pleasant note, the planning of a surprise for members, such as last year’s Christmas CD gift should not be heard in public.

The exec believe that we are being transparent by holding Open Forum meetings every four months at which members are encouraged to ask questions of the exec, make suggestions and criticise too in an informal atmosphere where no recording is being made. We feel that that is the best way for members to engage with the executive.

Ann Saunders: Thank you very much Teresa. Chris have you received any requests to speak? The answer was no.

05. Chairperson’s Report.

Ann Saunders said she wished to speak about Communicator 3. Which is now out of Beta, Richard has been in touch with Barry Jennings and VIP about us getting it.

In the past, we’ve never had control of the Database. The Database are members records. This has always been kept in the USA by VIP. Communicator 3 has arrived and Barry’s communication to Richard was, that we can have the hosting of the Database. But, and the but is this, that having just launched Communicator 3, Barry wishes to take a couple of months off, and would only be able to do the necessary changes to enable us to host the Database on our server, when he comes back, round about September/October, round about then. He also said that if we want the Database, we’ve got to go onto the Communicator 3 at the same time as the Database, we can’t go on Communicator 3 now, and the Database later on. This has only just come up, because, we have never been offered the Database before.

With regard to Data Protection issues, and the fact the Database is hosted in the USA, Richard as Data Protection Officer for TAFN, has spoken to the Data Protection Office, and we’ve been informed that we should either, host our own Database, or, have a contractual agreement with the people who are hosting the Database, in other words, VIP in America. It is a difficult one, because she can’t see that we would get that agreement, somehow. She’s not sure, until one’s tried, we don’t know. This has all come up this particular week. It’s only this week that Richard heard from Barry, that we could have the Database, but not at this minute, therefore we would have to wait before
going onto Communicator 3. But the advantages of having our own Database, are that first of all, from a security point of view, it is more secure, being held on our server, with the protection we’ve got. And also, there is the other point, that, it happened, just as a matter of interest, in happened about 5 or 6 weeks ago, on a Sunday evening. She was on the communicator at the time, so she knows what happened. In an event, and we were all chucked out, couldn’t get back in again, because her login page had disappeared. No login page, what was the problem? VIP had crashed, and with it, the login page, so therefore we were really in the hands of VIP, at the time, to get the login page. When they were back up and running we got our login page back again. So we wouldn’t have had the problem if we had our own Database.

What she wants to do is put to the members, she wants us to consider this, ask if you wish to speak, we would be pleased to hear, we want to hear your views. We are putting this to you, as to
whether we go onto Communicator 3 now without our own Database, or whether we wait until Barry can sort this out after his break and give us our Database and the Communicator in a couple of months time? That is the thing to consider. And bearing in mind also, the requirements of Data Protection.

Following on quite nicely from that, comes the matter of concern recently, about the whereabouts of the monthly minutes during the temporary, you know until we get our members area back. Which should be quite soon now. The members area is going to be the first part, and Richard will correct her if she is wrong, but she thinks the members area is the first part of the web site to come back. When you’ve got a secure members area, of course, the minutes will be in the right place. We’ve had to do it this way, and she thinks Leon gave Richard another double login now, just as a bit of extra security, if you want to go and view the minutes. Also Richard is only going to keep the minutes on this particular web site for 7 days, they will com off tomorrow after this meeting. That will be it. They will be stored, and put in the members meeting when we’ve got it back.

But apparently, it would appear the security, is perceived rather than actual with regards to where the minutes were in the past in the members area.
Richard is typing up the security, has taken advice on this one from someone who is an expert with regards to security online and this is being tightened up. But for the moment, Richard thinks it should only be about 1 more month it should be on this other site accessible friends.

Following on from that, a reminder that on Friday the 20th of June at 3pm, we will be having another Open Forum. Where you can come and discuss anything with the executive, criticise us, give suggestions, say what you like. The meeting is not minuted,and therefore you can speak whatever you wish to say, and it won’t come back on you. These matters such as the Logo or the Communicator can be discussed there as well. And something else that can be discussed there as well, oh by the way first of all she would like to thank Sal, who has her afternoon chat on a Friday afternoon, who very kindly agreed we could hold the Open Forum at the time of her chat event. The Open Forum is held 3 times a year, once in the afternoon, once in the evening and once in the morning, so that everyone has an opportunity of coming.

And this leads her to another item which could be discussed at the Open Forum. One of our American members, wrote to her and said that a Sunday afternoon meeting is very difficult for him to attend and he would like to attend them, and he feels it is the same for other members in the USA. And he wonders whether the occasional meeting could be held on a Saturday afternoon.

Now Justin isn’t here today, but he saw the email and he said that any event which is scheduled for a Saturday afternoon could be switched to Sunday. Actually,the only one she can think of, would be his event, Classic Books, at that time of day, that’s at 3pm on a Saturday. It is something to consider, but she wouldn’t agree to it if we weren’t going to get the members there. it’s something to think about, and maybe to discuss now or maybe at the Open Forum.

Just to finish off her report, the Executive Committee have been meeting weekly, and she would like to thank all of the Exec, who have been helping out by carrying out work that is normally carried out by Amanda, who we know is not well at the moment. And thank you very much indeed. And there ends her report.

Lee Garrett: Just a couple of quick points. Firstly he can understand why TAFN would want to hold the Database on their own server. But he would say, go for Communicator 3 now, continue to hold the Database over in the States, because at the end of the day, the Data Protection Act in America is far more strict than it is over in this country. And therefore is a lot safer.

And secondly, in regard to the meeting, he would propose that we have it in the evening, then people in Australia come in, because it would be their morning, and the people in the States could come, because it would be their afternoon.

Greg Hamilton: His point actually relates to the point made near the beginning of Ann’s report. He wasn’t able to put the question in in time. He would just like it to go on record, he personally doesn’t agree with the Executive’s rationalisation re the observance of meetings. He doesn’t thinks it’s what is needed. But thank you anyway for noting it.

Ian McNamara: Like Lee, he was wondering if maybe we could have the members meeting in the evening, because when you brought up the fact of the American people, well it would be better for the Australians if we could have it in the evening as well. because although it would be early morning for them, some of them would find it easier. Obviously that could cause a few of us in the uk a problem, depending on the time we had it.

That’s a good point that Lee made. But also with the Database issue, he thinks it would be great for TAFN to have their own Database to help with the Data stuff and as you say, when the Communicator throws us off, we’re not going to lose our login page, but he does think, with the problems this Communicator’s been having lately, we need to get on to Communicator 3 as quickly as possible to try and get rid of some of these problems that have been happening.

Stephen Hassall: He would agree with everything that Ian said about Communicator 3. he thinks we do need to go to Communicator 3. Although the login thing can be a nuisance if it freezes up on us, we must do it, because there are so many problems with this current Communicator, lets face it, it’s dying.

Concerning the members meeting, this matter came up once before, and he agrees with a possible evening one so that Catherine and others in Australia, who are valuable members, because Catherine is a valuable member, Previously being on the Exec. but not on Sunday morning. Because obviously some of us go to church and things like that. So the question in point is how do we get it right?

Ann Saunders: Sunday morning was never suggested. What was suggested was a Saturday afternoon. Remember this would be the occasional meeting. It wouldn’t be every meeting, we could have the meetings as with the Open Forums, we could, so long as there’s a meeting each month, we could have a schedule and give people an advanced list of which meeting was going to be in the evening, we would have to work out and negotiate with hosts of events that might have to be re-scheduled because of it or in the afternoon, or what evening, there are a lot of events on a Sunday evening. We’d have to work out when is going to be the most suitable time. But she’s glad we’re having this discussion because there are some good valid points and she feels the more people are brought in on the monthly meetings, the better.

Mark Tyler: He also does feel that TAFN should have their own Database, even if it means waiting 2 or 3 months. We’ve had Communicator 2 for x amount of years, so a couple or 3 months more wait isn’t going to hurt.

Just one suggestion, couldn’t we go over to Communicator 3 now and then have the Database after Barry has had his break. But if that’s not a suggestion, then he thinks yes, we should wait.

Ann Saunders: She Had asked this already, She thinks, Richard, is she right this is not possible?

Lee Garrett: Just a quickie. In respect of a time and day for the meeting, and he knows this would probably put Leon out, he would suggest Thursday evenings 8pm, which in the winter, would make it 7am in Australian time, at 5am at this point in time, 3am U S time, perfect idea.

Chris Payne: He does believe these days, Thursday has four different events, Lee, it’s not just Leon’s event. He only has it once a month. He wanted to check that there was no-one else before bringing Richard in.

Sal Pitts: Could she just say it was Tuesday that had 4 events, not Thursdays.

Chris said he thought it was Thursdays as well.

Richard Wilkin: Just quickly on that Thursday thing, if there’s a fifth Thursday in a month, that might be good for a meeting.

As for Data Protection, his conversation with the information commissioner’s office. Basically he was told in no uncertain terms, that unless we know how the information is transmitted, and how the information is stored, we need to gain control of that storage, so that we are sure, and we do know how it’s stored. There’s little information in the Database of anybody, but it’s still identifiable information. He believes it’s first name, last name, telephone number and email address, and possibly Skype ID’s, he can’t remember. It’s a long time since he’s seen the membership system. But it’s still definite personal identifiable information. And we have to comply with this country’s laws, not the United States of America’s laws, when it comes to Data Protection.

He still needs to get back to Barry, and find out what the situation is, because if we can get Communicator 3, while he works on us being able to acquire the Database, then all the better. Sorry was there another question that somebody asked?

Ann Saunders: No, that was it Richard. Her concern was whether we could have Communicator 3 now, and Database later when Barry had worked on it. And if Richard could get into communication with Barry on that one, well that would be very, very helpful. That’s fine and you’ve also clarified the situation with the Data Protection.

One thing she would stress as she said in her report, this is the first time we’ve been offered the Database. In the past when we’ve asked, and we’ve asked during our time on the Communicator from the word go, we’ve asked, and we’ve had a no each time. This is the first time that we have actually been offered it, with the new Communicator. Believe you her, she’d like to get on the new Communicator as soon as possible, maybe the key-sticking business will stop – hopefully.

Richard Wilkin: He Believes that the Database mainly validates that a person is logged in and is meant to be where they are, in relation to the Communicator.

Someone jumped in and said, quickly he agrees with Mark, we’ve waited this long, a little more won’t hurt.

Ann asked Chris if there was anyone else?

Ian McNamara: He doesn’t know whether this is an option, it would be a lot of work, but isn’t there a way we could create our own Database with all the member information, that isn’t linked to VIP? Probably not, but it’s another option, if there could be a Database developed on a server of our own choosing rather than having to use them.

Richard Wilkin: He thinks that is the problem. First of all, if we have the Database, we have the ability to say to VIP Conduit, well thank you very much for the software, and we then have everything. Barry is an excellent programmer, and he’s done a fantastic job on Communicator, and he does it because he enjoys coding. And that’s all there is to it. So he wants to make sure that he has full access to that Database. Richard imagines that Barry doesn’t want anyone messing around with his work either. We have a Database which he’ll talk about later when he comes on to the web site report. Which means that we don’t have to play with their Database at all. But if you are talking about creating our own Database effectively, that would be our own software. He doesn’t think we could merge 2 things together like that particularly easy. And he doesn’t think Barry would be too happy with that either.

Chris Payne said no more comments, Ann.

Ann Saunders: Well thank you very much everyone. we’re meeting weekly now, so in this coming weeks meeting, we shall discuss all suggestions we’ve received, and we will go forward both regarding the Communicator and regarding a possible occasional change of day and time for the monthly meeting.

06. Treasurer’s Report And Memberships Administrator’s Report.

Treasurer’s Report For May 2014.

Opening Balance: £ 2,156.34
Paid in: £ 421.90 As Follows:

• Bingo: £ 59.00
• Bonus Ball: £ 235.00
• Donations: £ 37.50
• Memberships: £ 90.40

Paid Out: £ 1,462.71 As Follows:

• 1 & 1 Ltd: £ 71.99
• Bingo: £ 70.00
• Bonus Ball: £ 262.50
• Tech Support: £ 300.00
• Transfer: £ 758.22 To PayPal to pay the 2 years subscription to VIP Conduit.

Closing Balance: £ 1,115.53

Savings Account: Interest: £ 19.49
Balance: £19,405.33 PayPal Account: Credits: £ 818.97
Debits: £ 1,558.25
Balance: £ 00
TAFN Grand Total: £20,520.86

Memberships Administrator’s Report.

We had 1 new guest who became a full member within 3 weeks of joining. There have been no deletions of members or guests.

Quick note on the CAMEO. We have been in contact with the Hilton Hotel in Sheffield. And they have said that it will be towards the middle to the end of this month before our menus will be ready, so we’re not going to be contacting people as quickly as we thought.

We do now have 60 people wishing to go on the CAMEO. So there’s still room for people to book in if they wish to. Send an email to chrisp@tafn.org.uk and he will then send you details of what’s required.

And very quickly our up and coming Auction, which will be held next weekend. We have now got the catalogue well under way and he’s pleased to say we have just under a hundred items on the catalogue to date.We do know of 2 or 3 parcels due in the early part of next week, so that is going extremely well.

On a slightly sad note, while he has the key, he has to inform members that on the 14th of April, he had to go for a semi- emergency operation on his right eye, and when he went to the clinic on Friday of last week, he was informed that the operation had not taken, and he therefore has to have the procedure done again. This will take place tomorrow afternoon.

So can he ask members who will be contacting him, no doubt, in the next few days, if he is a little slow in responding to your emails, to bear with him. His wife Teresa has said she will keep an eye on his inbox, and try to answer to emails where appropriate.

Hopefully, that’s the end of all my reports, Ann.

Ann Saunders: Thank you very much Chris. Any members wishing to speak?

Lee Garrett: Good luck with that, Chris. Hope everything goes well for you this time mate.

Ian McNamara: Regarding the operation, Chris, good luck with that. Hope all goes well. It’s always a sad thing when something like that doesn’t work.

Just a question about the CAMEO. Have the booking forms gone out yet? I’m just wondering because he did put his name down but he hasn’t received one. And if not, when are we likely to be getting them?

Chris Payne: Yes, you’ll be getting the booking forms at the same time as we get the menus, because obviously, the majority of people that have put there names forward this time round, have been in the past, and we’ve been very efficient and kept your booking forms from previous years, so when we send them out to you, it will only be to confirm that the details are still the same. Obviously those who have had guide dogs coming in the past who may not have guide dogs now will take that off their booking form,and those who have had double rooms and wish for twin rooms, for whatever reason, you can amend them accordingly.

David Richards: He was just wondering, how many members have we got now, because you didn’t mention it in your report. It was at 280 the last he heard. he presumes it’s now less than that.

Chris Payne: Yes, we’re now floating around about the 250 mark again. But of course this has been drastically hindered by us not having our web site up and able for guests to come freely to fill in the application form, but he’s hoping Richard’s going to be announcing in the very near future, if not today, certainly next month, that this will be eradicated and we can only look forward to the membership growing. But currently, we’re roundabout the 250 mark.

Nobody else had sent him a message.

Ann Saunders: First of all, Chris, she does hope everything goes well for you tomorrow, we’re all thinking of you and hope the operation is a success this time, and that you’ll soon be feeling yourself again. She means that Chris was asked if he would like to reschedule the Auction, but he said no it would be alright. Teresa is a great help to him, she really is. And for that we thank you Teresa, with regard to acknowledging receipt of gifts and dealing with the catalogue and all that, she thinks it’s absolutely excellent.

She would like to say something on the CAMEO, just quickly, based on what Ian just said. In the past, if we wanted to go, we were sent a booking form, we filled it out, and we sent in our deposit. This time, you asked for the deposit, you said, if you want to come and you want to secure your place, send your deposit, she thinks it’s £25 per person, if she remembers rightly, just off the top of her head, but send your deposit and you’d confirm that we were booked in, and the booking form would follow when you wanted to know further details, regarding what room was wanted. So if people haven’t yet contacted Chris and want to go, thinking they were missing a booking form, all you need do is say you wish to go. Chris, could remind us what the cost is and also when the final amount is due please?

Chris Payne: Yes. For people wanting a single room, for a 3 night stay it’s £330. For people wanting a twin or double room, it’s £420 for the 3 night stay.

He was hoping to be able to announce at today’s meeting, that we have secured a discount for members, but unfortunately it hasn’t been forthcoming as yet. He has been informed we will be able to give a discount, but at this moment in time, we have to charge the full amount, and may well be like the first time we went to Sheffield, a refund will be given at the weekend itself. But currently they’re the prices we have to charge. The weekend itself is from the 5th to the 8th of September. We currently still have approximately 30 places available for member to come along and join us for the weekend. The final amount is due by the middle to end of July. So you’ve got the whole of this month, June and most of next month, July in which to get your money together. But obviously, we are anticipating early part of July, we will be sending out your booking form
along with your menu choices and the amount you still have to pay.

Ann Saunders: Thank you very much indeed Chris.

07. Secretary’s Report.

Ann Saunders: Obviously, Amanda is still ill. She should have had the operation last Friday. Does anyone know what the situation is?

Carol Forrester: Yes, she has had the operation. And as far as she knows at the moment, everything is going well. But she will keep us posted.

Ann Saunders: Thank you very much Carol, it’s good to know that she’s on the way to recovery now and that’s excellent. She’s pleased to hear that.

Well, as she says, the other members of the Exec have been doing her work. On the list management side, and in sending out notices. Catherine’s been sending out the announcements, the Communicator guide lines, the List guide lines monthly and the announcements weekly as well. All the work that Amanda does has been split between the Exec. And we are managing and thank you very much for everyone’s help.

Chris Payne: We in the Exec have actually told Amanda not to come back until she is fully fit. And when she does come back, at least to start with, it maybe just part time.

08. Web Master’s Report.

Richard started by saying he hoped Amanda had a speedy recovery and that everything went alright for Chris tomorrow.

Server: Now we had some problems with the wishing well email address. And he spent 4 days locating the problem and finding out what was wrong. he’s going to try and keep this as anti-technical as possible.

With our email server, we have a thing called SPF record, which is a sender policy framework. Basically what this does, it tells the likes of Gmail and Google mail who we are and that our emails are legitimate. Well anyway, after trolling through thousands of emails, he found that we had a bounced message from Google. So he went and investigated and eventually found that there was an error in our SPF recorder, there was a typo. So he’s now corrected that, so hopefully we shouldn’t have that problem again.

And just as a double assurance measure, he’s going to propose that for the future that we have – even though there was only one person that was receiving wishing well emails – incidentally, some got through and some didn’t, – but what he thinks we should probably do, is to set up a mailing list and
subscribe that person to the mailing list and that way if anything like that crops up again, it doesn’t effect the membership, Because that’s the most important thing.

It’s also highlighting that, if anybody receives an error message, via TAFN email or from any other part of TAFN, if you could please forward it to him, richard@tafn.org.uk , then he can look into it as quickly as possible and get things sorted. This isn’t a regular occurrence event, with the SPF record, the documentation on SPF records is quite limited and so until the problem actually showed itself, we were not aware that it was actually a problem.

On a similar note while he was actually clarifying with our hosting provider that our SPF record was now correct, we were entitled to a free server upgrade. We got double the amount of memory, from 2 to 4 gigabytes. We are now on solid state hard drives instead of the standard drives, which makes things a lot faster. So he’s hoping that when we get Communicator 3, that that is going to perform
extremely well.

The new mailing list system is almost ready, excellent work to Justin, who had a lot of teamwork going on. It’s been fantastic and Justin has spent hours writing up all the list documentation in a simplified way, so that everyone can manage lists and of course help will be provided for people who struggle, that’s absolutely fine and dandy.

The lists themselves, we have actually a link that we will be placing in the members area, that will give a list of all public lists, so that people have all of the information about what lists are available to members. That’s also positive.

He should also say, in keeping with tradition, last month, we had 9 gigabytes of Data Transfer, that was the new mailing lists and the new mailing system.

Moving on to the web site, we have finally finished sorting through the backup file. The web pages are now organised. Thank you very much to Greg, for his meticulous attention to detail in actually sorting through those. And Mark for correcting the remainder of the white space, the blank spaces in the files, that were there. We can now prepare them to go up in a members area. Which he has to say, as a result of the emails this week, brings me onto another topic.

Data Protection and Security. Many of you may remember, 2 or 3 years ago, somebody came to us, he can’t remember who it was, and said that they were searching on Google and actually found extracts of member meeting minutes, in the search results. At the time, what we found was that the login scripts, that demand a user name and password, does not actually protect the contents of the document. All it does is give the end user a login box. So what happened was the robots, no index, no follow, commands were put in – they’re not actually commands – his apologies. No index, tells search engines do not make a record of this in your search engine, your search listings. No follow, tells the search engines not to follow links, not to check email addresses out and things like that. However, this is not a security measure, this is not a command or an instruction. This is a polite request, saying please do not. So while it appears that this takes the snippets of the members meeting minutes away from the search engines,
any malicious robots out there, will ignore those instructions entirely, and the way it’s actually set up is that the callers will actually look at the contents of the page before doing anything else. So he’s been looking around at membership systems.

Thanks to Word press, there are tens of thousands of plugins, and he actually just uninstalled one earlier today, that was not accessible. He is looking around, we’ve got some pretty unusual requirements, we’ve got a discount scheme, that needs to be taken into account. We also have – we need the human intervention, because obviously we don’t want people just signing up, that aren’t entitled to sign up. So we need human verification and that type of thing. So one of his next jobs is that.

As Chris was saying about the membership form, the membership form is actually up on the site now, just so that you know. He is also going to be working on a contact form. Now the one that he’s found, is not a hundred per cent perfect. It does flag Spam, and it does try and
prevent machines from grabbing email addresses and then spamming them. However, as he found out a few days ago, the only way to move the form fields around, is either to delete them and start again, or to drag and drop them. Well he’s sorry, he can’t drag and drop. So we will be looking at getting that tidied up a bit. It’s there and it works, what we need to do, is just get the form fields re-arranged, which, what he’ll basically do is create a new form. Because we’ve got an unlimited Forms we can create with this tool. He will create a new form, and replace it once it’s ready and once it’s all tidied up.

And as for the contact form, he’s reading through the documentation, because what he wants to do is allow people to choose from a drop-down list, who they want to contact, and of course, each of those options has to then tie into an email address. And that means that if you’re having problems with your email client or whatever, you can get in touch with the help-desk via the public web form that we will be
creating very, very soon.

Once we have the member system up and running, to secure the documents, which is obviously a concern, we will be getting all of the html, all of the web pages themselves up into the members area.

Work has kind of halted a little bit on the public site, for health reasons. There’s been a few people who haven’t been too well, and there’s been so much work going on. We are getting there, it is looking like the launch event that we’d like to do in August will happen – we want to do a launch event on the members area.

That is, is that everything? Sorry He’s just checking his notes to see if there was anything else. Can’t find anything else. He thinks that’s his report, if anyone’s got any questions, feel free to ask.

Lee Garrett: Richard, you’re doing a fantastic job mate, And he knows it must be an absolute nightmare for you. 2 questions.

Firstly, Human verification. That immediately rings alarm bells with him. Can you please confirm whether that will mean if you’re going to put human verification in, that the caption image will be employed?

Secondly, Would the members area incorporate everything that was in the members area previously, but obviously, in an updated version? Thank you.

Richard Wilkin: Ok. First point. He, under no circumstances, will ever, ever, ever suggest putting any, actually, you know what – putting images on the site for people to verify that they’re human, sounds like a great idea. No. That is not the case. We’ve got 2 behind the scenes verification methods.

1 is a spam protection service, and what happens is, when somebody submits a form, the spam verification service checks against known spam techniques, and then it will flag it as spam, but still send it on to Chris. Because occasionally, things may get flagged as spam, that are not. And the other 1 is a honeypot trap, which, he doesn’t know how exactly they work, but they attempt to determine whether or not, your form has been filled out by an automation system, like these robots that come along and try to grab email addresses and all kinds of things. And so we’ve got 2 background, behind the scenes, verification methods. There is a caption option in there, which is not going to happen.

In actual fact, he got an email a while ago, from somebody, because we were looking originally at doing a mathematical question, so it would ask what’s 3 plus 1, and you type 4 into the box, who said that system access wouldn’t recognise it. Which is actually why there’s been more of a delay, because we were looking for a different system. Whenever somebody sends a message saying, problem, looking into it is important to make sure that everyone can access the forms and all of the things on the site.

As for the members area, yes, it will be as complete as it can be, bearing in mind that the backup file was created in June of 2012, he believes. So there will be a gap, which they’re confident that they can plug. Because members between them will have any missing audio or whatever. Any of the text documents of course, will probably be missing. At some point we’re going to have to go through an archive of emails, if there is such a thing, and find all of the 2013 general members meeting minutes, and try and get those up on the site.

So there’s a lot still to do, but what we’re going to try to do, is, we’re going to try and get as much of it back online as possible, and the if people see something’s missing, then if they wouldn’t mind helping us out by sending those related files, we can get that put back into place.

We’d also like to get a support area up on the site as well – step by step guides for doing everything relating to your TAFN account – whether it’s emails and mailing lists, or Communicator 3, or whatever else, we want to support section. There’s all kinds of new things that we’re going to have.

We’ve got a write-ups that are being done of regular events, that can go on the public web site, so that we’ve got information that will interest new guests, and we’ll probably end up with the sharing buttons, in fact we will end up with the sharing buttons. So that people can say, hey I like this page, share it on twitter or face book or wherever else. And we’ll get more interest from across the world, hopefully.

Lee Garrett: Brilliant stuff, Richard. Thanks ever so much mate. That’s really put his mind at rest. As long as there no caption images! Yuk!

Richard Wilkin: They’re awful, aren’t they?

Chris Payne: Depends what they are, he supposes. No more Ann. On to the next one.

Ann Saunders: Thank you very much Richard. Actually, that’s one of the reasons we’re moving away from Google groups. With regards to the mailing lists. Because for list management, to get in to do this management, you have to deal with a caption. No thank you. we can’t be dealing with that, and that is one of the reasons we’re moving away.

Richard, thank you very much for your very comprehensive web master’s report. And now you have very kindly said you will play Justin’s recorded Report.

09. Event’s Report.

Justin Macleod: Hi everybody here is the events report for May and June. Sorry that once again He can’t be at the meeting in person. But hopefully this report will cover everything.

Last month we had a one off event from Ian White – a Louie Armstrong book event, which was well attended. He’s following up this month on Thursday 26th of June, with the start of a monthly Jazz event, that will take place on the 4th Thursday of each month and this will be a pick and mix event featuring various Jazz musicians, and their contribution to the genre, with music and interviews and so on, and possibly there’ll even be some room for some requests.

Just like to take this opportunity to really commend Ian’s enthusiasm for the diverse programme of events that he comes up with, and it’s all based on his personal interests and he just grows events out of it. And he’d like to encourage anyone else who has an interest, that they might like to base an event around, to step forward and not to be shy, and there’s space for
everybody’s different interests in the events programme. In there are particular quite a lot of Sunday slots, the open mike slots going spare, if anybody fancies doing that.

Tony has returned, so the people who have covered his events, no longer need to do that, Mark and Sal. Thanks very much to both of them. So he’s back in the saddle for his events. Unfortunately though, On An Island event had to be cancelled on the 1st Saturday of this month, so that will be returning next month.

Thanks also to Sal for covering his Classic Books event, he had a Christening to attend, and therefore wasn’t able to host that and she did it in my place, and once again it’s really nice to see the team spirit that abounds relating to event hosting. And also he’d very much like to thank Mark Tyler for covering Jackie G’s Midweek Quiz slot, as she was away doing other commitments.

Moving on to this month, and of course, the thing that everyone is talking about is the Auction, and the Wishing Well. We have a little promo regarding
the Auction which he is going to play for us now. Justin then played the promo recording for the forthcoming Auction.

And he would just like to remind you that it’s not too late to send donations to Chris. He has given out his address in the previous events minutes, and he is sure he would be prepared to give that out again, and you can email him to let him know the donation is coming, if you don’t think the item will get there before the Auction itself. If we can a hundred per cent guarantee that it is going to be with us at some point soon after the Auction, it can be entered as a lot.

And it’s really quite an exciting Auction this year because in addition to the wonderfully diverse array of donations members have made, including bespoke jewellery, home knitted blanket, and other various things, we’ve managed to get some companies to donate to the Auction. We’ve got some donations from McMillan’s Publishing, Crabtree and Evelyn, Human ware, and Boom box plus. We’re very grateful to those companies for their
generous donations, and more details will be forthcoming.

The Auction is the place to be, it’s Saturday 14th of June in the evening, and Sunday 15th starting at 5pm in Coffee and Cakes usual slot. So the normal Saturday evening events programme will be suspended, there’ll be no Saturday Playhouse Movie Night and no Bingo. Those will be possibly rescheduled throughout the month. He’ll be liaising with the events hosts about that.

He’ll be hosting an event this Tuesday night at 6.45pm, which is a bit of an introduction to the world of sound design. If your interested in what makes the weird and whacky sounds, how do they do that? Or if you’re an audio editor and want to be using some of these sounds yourself, he’ll be focusing on convolution reverb. Which is a process where you basically take the acoustic fingerprint of a room, or indeed a glass box, or a bin or a bucket, and you superimpose it on any audio. That’s how you make different singers sound like they’re coming from Carnegie Hall, if even if you don’t have the budget to get there, and how you make actors sound like they’re in Cathedrals and Churches even if they’re in vocal booths. And you can do lots of other things with it as well.

And there is kind of an ulterior motive to doing this event, not only is it very interesting in it’s own right, but he is donating 20 custom-made sounds to the Auction, which you can bid on, so if you fancy some sound effects for any purpose, and you don’t know what convolution reverb is or how it works, then you might want to pop along and see if it’s something you’d be interested in bidding on.

He’s been taken up with administration for the Wishing Well, and remember that the Wishing Well Draw takes place sometime during the Auction, so that’s Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th of June. So be there if you want to know if your Wish is the 1 that’s been picked out. We’ve had 38 Wishes this year, and thanks to everybody who Wished.

And he thinks that covers everything for this month. So it only remains for him to thank all the
event hosts, both regular and one off. And oh yes, just 1 more thing before he goes, Lee’s Variety box, will be being covered by Stephen Hassall at the end of this month, because of the World Cup. So that’s the 29th of June and the 5th of July. He’ll be watching the World Cup, so Stephen has very kindly offered to step into the breech, thanks very much to him.

And of course, the big event for next month will be taking place just after next month’s members meeting, is the Talent Night. Here’s a little promo about that to wet your appetite. He then played the promo. If you would like to participate on the big stage, then send an email to talent@tafn.org.uk for details. Email as soon as possible for the TAFN Talent Night, Saturday July 19th 2014.

If you’re interested in taking part in Talent Night and you need a backing track, please do get in touch with us, we’ll try and set you up with one. We’re negotiating with Chrissie to see if she’s free to be able to help us. And also he knows that John Hinchliffe – John in Marsden has quite an array of backing tracks, he’s sure that he’ll be happy to help you out with, and Justin will be happy to help anyone with mixing that needs it.

For the rescheduling, cancellation or promotion of existing events, please email eventinfo@tafn.org.uk , and for any comments or concerns about events or proposing new ones, please contact events@tafn.org.uk . And that concludes this month’s events report.

Chris Payne: Before we carry on, we have to welcome Lisa, who’s just joined us.

Ann Saunders: She was just going to do that. Hello Lisa. You texted, giving your apologies for being late, that’s fine.

She knows Justin isn’t her in person, but she would like to just thank him for his report, and for those 2 great promos that he played, they were very good.

Lee Garrett: He’s being a right pain this afternoon, really getting his monies worth. Just 2 things.

Firstly, Could he just tell people that on Sunday 15th at 11am, Catherine McManus and himself are going to be piloting a new music game. Hopefully it should be on the schedule, but we’ve only just finalised the details, but that’s on the 15th, at 11am, so if you could turn up at about quarter to 11, that would be great.

And secondly, also with the Talent Night, he would also be happy to help people out with backing tracks. Thank you.

Lee Buckingham: A correction. The first date that Justin mentioned, is the 21st of June not the 29th.

Chris Payne: He would like to just clarify emphatically that the Auction is next weekend, the 14th and 15th, not the 19th, which Sal so lovely put in her promo. He thought that was really good and he laughed all the way through that.

Richard Wilkin: Just want to remind people as well in terms of the Auction, if you’re donating items, do not please send them to the TAFN BCM Address, as they won’t reach Chris in time. You’re best off to either ring or email Chris and ask for his home address, so that he gets them in time for the Auction.

Chris Payne: Yes. We will be accepting items until, we’re telling people to make sure they’re in the post by Wednesday, but anything that does arrive on our doorstep on Saturday morning, will be going into the Auction.

And just to give people a quick reminder, the Auction starts at 10 o’clock in the morning, where we send out the catalogue, and you can make early bids, if you’re not able to attend the live Auction in the evening. The catalogue will then go out again at 12 and 2 o’clock. It will then go out finally at 4 o’clock, and any amount next to items on the 4 o’clock catalogue, will be the starting bid for the 7.30 Live Auction. And as he says, if anyone can’t make the Auction, by sending an email to himself, we will collate them together, and himself or his wife will bid on your behalf, i.e., you just tell us the maximum amount you wish to go up to on the given item.

That’s all the things on the events, Ann.

Ann Saunders: Well thank you very much for the additional information regarding the Auction, which is very good. A terrific amount of work goes into that, and thank you Chris and Teresa once again.

And Lee Garrett you’re not being a pain, in what you were saying before. If you have anything to say, we welcome listening to what you have to say.

10. M.A.D. Report.

Ian McNamara: Thank you. Sorry about what just happened. He didn’t get chucked out, but he lost all audio. He thought it was a key stick, but it was obviously him.

The 5 people who represent the M.A.D. Committee for 2014 are as follows: Ian McNamara, that’s himself, who is the chair for this month, John Hosch, Monique Lannott, Stephen Hassall and Steve Hyde-Dryden. Carol Forrester is the Executive Representative, who will go to the Executive with any problems that we as a committee may have.

This month the M.A.D. Committee have no complaints or issues that needed to looked into or resolved. We are, however, putting together a survey, about technology in the future. We also hope to arrange extra meetings in order to get this job done as quickly and efficiently as possible.

If anyone feels they need to contact the M.A.D. Committee for any reason, please email mad@tafn.org.uk . And that concludes the M.A.D report for May.

Ann Saunders: Thank you very much indeed Ian, for a very comprehensive report. That was very good. Any questions Chris?

Chris Payne: Not for the M.A.D. , he has had a text message.

When will people be able to see the catalogue for the Auction? As he stated, it will go out 10 o’clock on the day of the Auction. That’s the first time anybody gets to see it, because of course until then, we are collating it.

Lisa Peck: Sorry Chris,you did say that.

11. Any Other Business.

There was none.

Ann Closed the Meeting saying the next meeting will be on 13th of July at 3pm.