Members General Meeting Minutes for September 2014

01. Roll Call

Chris Payne. Vice Chairperson, Treasurer and Memberships Administrator.
Catherine McManus. Executive Officer.
Carol Forrester. Executive Officer.
Ann Saunders, Brian Clayton, Colin Palgrave, David Norton, David Richards, Elisabeth Standen, Gladys Taylor, Greg Hamilton, Harry Mason, Ian White, Jackie Glynn, Jaye Ayres, Jim Bradley, Jim Welch, John Wells, John Wilsher, Lee Buckingham, Lee Garrett, Leon Gilbert, Linda Tyler, Lynette Norton, Mandy Clayton, Mark Tyler, Martin Foden, Maurice Pothecary, Michael Brown, Monique Lannott, Muzaffar Ali, Nick Todd-McCoid, Peter Beasley, Peter Hallam, Roma Creech, Rosemary Bradley, Sharon Bowell, Shirley Grant, Stanley Saunders, Stephen Hassall, Steve Pallett, Sue Pallett, Teresa Payne, Tony Bowers, Trevor Franklin, Wayne Busbridge.

03. Acceptance Of Minutes.

3a, July’s Meeting.
Mark Tyler Proposed. Stephen Hassall Seconded.

3b, August’s Meeting.
Monique Lannott Proposed. Martin Foden Seconded.

04. Matters Arising.

4a, July’s Meeting. There were none.

4b, August’s Meeting. Stephen Hassall thought there was no August Meeting because it was on the 31st July. Mark Tyler explained that that was August’s Meeting.

05. Chairperson’s Report.

Chris Payne: He was sorry to have to take over the reigns of TAFN, the way it happened. We were sorry that Ann was unable to complete her term of office, and thank her for all the work she was able to carry out on behalf of TAFN, and hope health improves sooner rather than later.

Soon after we were told that Ann was standing down, The Exec Committee pulled out all the stops to get the voting documentation and procedure sorted out, so voting could get under way, for our new Chairperson. He chose to be part of the count, even though he was going to be on holiday, for 6 days during the procedure. It was quite pleasant to be able to sit on Bournemouth beach, while logged on to TAFN.

The vote has gone very well, although a little disappointing, but he will let us know more later in the Meeting. He had the pleasure of Chairing the weekly Exec meetings, and apart from setting the vote going, there has not been much else happening.

Oh yes, there was 1 very important event that took place during the last month.
That was the CAMEO Weekend. He personally had a very good time, meeting many of the members and on the whole, he believes everyone had a good time. Every Member who attended, had a discount of £100.00, plus tea and coffee on their first afternoon. There was the usual Free Bar in the evening, although this was limited to 3 hours, instead of the 5 hours we’ve had in the past. He has been asked to let us know, that there will be some changes for the CAMEOs in the future.

We were also able to obtain a number of large print and audio recipe books, from Blind Life in Durham, which were given out to members. There are still some of these available, on request, until we run out.

Ann Saunders: All she wanted to say was, thank you very much for the very kind words at the beginning of the report. She has thoroughly enjoyed the time that she was in the Chair, and she wishes whoever wins the Election, every success in the future.

Chris Payne: The recipe books are called Cooking Without Looking, and they will be available on a first come, first served basis. He will be sending a message regarding this to the announce list, in the early part of this week.

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

6a, Treasurer’s Report for August 2014.

Opening Balance: £ 2,164.00
Payed In: £ 224.00 As Follows

• Bingo: £ 49.00
• Bonus Ball: £ 165.00
• Donations: £ 10.00

Payed Out: £ 870.69 As Follows

• 1 And 1 Ltd: £ 71.99
• Bingo: £ 85.00
• Bonus Ball: £ 112.50
• Music License: £ 301.20
• Tech Support: £ 300.00

Closing Balance: £ 1,517.31

Saving Account: £19,424.66
PayPal Credits; £ 944.86
Debits: £ 627.93
Balance: £ 2,101.31
Grand Total: £23,043.28

6b, Memberships Report.

We welcomed 3 new guests, and an old Member returned. We lost 2 guests, and 3 Members who decided not to renew their Memberships.

08. Web Master’s Report. Chris played the following recording from Justin Macleod.

Justin started by saying that this report had been compiled by Mark Tyler, Greg Hamilton and himself, based on their knowledge of what’s going on in Richard’s absence, because as we probably know, he’s having computer difficulties at the moment. So apologies to Richard and anyone else if we miss anything.

Firstly on the Server side, there’s not a great deal to report, other than that WordPress has updated itself, which has thrown up some accessibility issues, specifically with the media plugin, which is used for uploading and managing audio. We’ve had mixed reports about the accessibility of this plugin, and we’re trying to look for a more universally accessible solution. This has slowed down the implementation of the Member’s Area, because obviously audio is a very important part of that. However, whilst that is going on, there’s still the editing and preparation of the audio to be done, so not all that much time will be wasted.

Strictly on the web site side, we’re pleased to report that the content for Elisabeth’s Gardening Page is now online and can be accessed either by going to www.tafn.org.uk/garden, or by going to www.elisabeth/garden.co.uk . Many thanks to Sharon Bowell for proof reading all that content and getting it sorted out, and do go and check that out.

The mammoth work that’s been carried out to recode Sue’s Kitchen, and organise it, is very nearly complete. He’s been informed that over 90% of the pages have been brought up to date from an html point of view, and some of those are indeed on the server. All that remains is for Richard to complete the work that he’s been undertaking this month on the navigation system, so that people can easily find what they want from what is truly a vast repository of high quality knowledge, and we’re really lucky to have that resource from Sue, which is why we’ve been taking the time to get it absolutely right. It has been an excellent sort of case study, in what the web team has to do. That should be fully operational just as soon as Richard’s health and technology problems have stabilised.

Also on the coding front, Mark has been working busily on Member’s Meeting Minutes, we need to keep an archive of those, for people to look back on, see how the organisation has progressed, and remind our self of when decisions were taken, how and by whom.

Richard and himself have also been working on the Room Templates. The Room Templates are web pages built into the rooms which you go into via the Communicator, and Room Templates are used for things like On An Island, where you have the sound effect of seagulls as you go in, or The Advent Calendar, or The Voting Booth. We’ve Hit a bit of a snag at the moment, either you have to set the pages up within the rooms, so that you get a lot of content that you don’t want, or the navigation, or the visual styling, which means it’s slower to load, and means that anyone wanting to look at the text content has to wade through more. Or you have to log in to see the content, which, for something like The Voting Booth or The Advent Calendar isn’t ideal. Because you want the content to start playing straight away, so what would happen currently, is that someone would have to press f6 to access the web page in the room, and then enter their login credentials for TAFN to be able to see the content. So we’re working and when he last spoke to Richard, he’s very much on the verge of resolving this, so it should be fixed soon.

Once that’s been fixed, Justin has been tasked with writing Room Templates for all of the rooms, so that people have a better idea of what goes on in each particular room, what events are tied to it and so on.

We’re also working on the navigation system for whole site still, and he knows Richard has been very much involved in an events calendar, very keen to improve the Events Scheduling and Announce System that is used at the moment, both from an administrative point of view and for the Membership as a whole and Richard has found a system that he is very enthusiastic about and wants to run through with him. So when health and technology and other commitments allow, we’ll be going through that.

There’s also a lot of audio to prepare, for uploading when the afore mentioned audio issues are sorted out. So work is very much still on going, slower than we would’ve hoped, but we’re sure you understand the reasons for that.

That concludes the Web Master’s Report, Mark or Greg will add anything that he has missed, if he has.

09. Events Report. Second Recording.

Here is the Events Report of what’s happened since the last Meeting.

The major event that took place is Trust Me, which required a tremendous amount of effort from a large number of people and really went well, we’ve had almost unanimously positive feedback regarding that event, which was well attended.

Thanks in particular to the marvellous panel, whose banter, embellishments, adornments and ornamentations to the definitions of the words they were given, really completed the evening and made it what it is. The panel were Chrissie B, who was this year’s fibber of the year, wresting it from last year’s champion Ann Saunders, and Ned B and John Wells completed the panel. A good time was had by all, he thinks they all enjoyed themselves.

Special thanks to Tony who produced all the definitions, found all the obscure words, coached the panel, tweaked the format and really put a tremendous amount of work into this and has done for the last 3 years or more. Also thanks to Liz for producing the false news stories.
They were very entertaining, really enjoyed putting those together. Thanks to Sal, Tony, Katie and John in Marsden for doing the quotes for those news items. Thanks ever so much to the whole team, who worked to produce the event.

Also last month we had quite a bit of cancelling and rescheduling, because of people having other summer commitments and CAMEO, between
Friday evening and Monday evening, there were no events at all while everyone was attending the very popular CAMEO event. So things like On An Island, Classic Books, Lee’s Variety Box, Coffee And Cake and so on, were all cancelled.

Chris was unable to host one of his Friday Night Quizzes, so Mark very kindly stepped into the breech there. Pamela was unable to host her Quiz last Tuesday, owing to a domestic crisis involving a fridge explosion, so he stepped in there. Jackie will be unable to host her Quiz next Wednesday, so he will be stepping in to cover that. Tony will be covering for Sal, on her Coffee And Cake slot, as she and John will be on holiday, returning later this month. Which also means the Playhouse that John Pitts hosts will be cancelled until their return.

One final note in the rescheduling and cancelling of events, Catherine, who those of you went to CAMEO will know, is on her big holiday, so her Life Skills Event has been cancelled as has the Friday Morning Quiz, Her Wednesday Morning Event, The Aussie Mixed Bag Event is being covered by Sandra, thank you very much to her for that and her Monday Morning Chain Reaction is being covered by Tony, so thank you very much to him.

The big event to watch out for this month is The accessible Devices Presentation to be held by Brian Hargton on the 4th Thursday of this month, which covers Jay Say, the aztec developed interface between Dragon Naturally Speaking and Jaws. Which allows you to use Dragon Natural to dictate all your documents and to use your machine by voice rather than keyboard input. So if you’re interested in that, do come along.

There will also be an accessible devices presentation by Mark Tyler, on cuecast. Which is a pod catcher. So if you’re interested in pod casting, people really do underestimate the wealth of information that can be had from pod casting, not only can you use pod casting to catch up on your Archers fix and your other radio programmes that you might enjoy, there’s a wealth of tips on gardening, cooking and you name it, whatever you’re interested in, there’s probably a pod cast on it. So if you don’t know much about pod casts, or if you’d like to know how to become more actively engaged with them, look out for email announcements regarding that.

Also Mark will be moving his Pop Quiz, because we are seeing a return of Team Challenge this month. Team Challenge will take place on the 4th Tuesday of September, very pleased to welcome Tony back into that slot. So Mark is moving from the 4th Tuesday to the 4th Saturday at 8.30pm to fill in that empty slot.

Just a couple more items to mention from last month. We had of course, events to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War 1. We had Greg’s World War 1, a 100 years on event, where he put on an episode of a documentary that was broadcast 50 years ago by the BBC. Every night, practically throughout the month of August. He followed it up with a successful discussion event on what people had heard. Many thanks to Greg for that commitment. It does take quite a lot to come onto the Communicator every day and put that on.

Justin also filled an open mic slot or two with Black Adder Goes Forth, which is the series of Black Adder set during the first world war period. Not only is it very entertaining, But it takes quite a reverent and melancholy look at the waste of life and the circumstances surrounding the first world war and in classic books, we’re doing Warhorse currently, due to finish that next week to round things off.

But the whole event was started on a more positive note, the positive things to come out of the war, if that’s the right word to use. The rays of sunshine through the clouds, as it were, which Tony and himself ran. Many thanks to Tony for all the work he did on it, he did definitely the lion’s share of the fact finding, and he organised the running order. And thanks ever so much to Gladys for contributing her poem, Liz to writing something for us, and John in Marsden for acting it out. It was really good. there was some
music from the 1914 – 1918 period, and that stimulated some interesting discussion. And that rounded off our world war 1 season.

Not much else to expect for September, it’s the quiet month, where everyone’s returning from their summer breaks, gearing up for the winter months, and the Events Team is very much focused on what promises to be a busy winter, on the TAFN Events Calendar. We’ve got a lot of plans, a lot of things to implement for Halloween, The Bonfire Night Event, which was postponed from last year to implement, and Christmas. Sorry to be the first to mention Christmas on TAFN, but it’s looming very large on Event Team minds at the moment.

He thinks that covers everything. So it only remains for him to thank all the event hosts and all who contribute to them in whatever capacity. And to say that if you want to reschedule one of your events, promote it in a different way, or arrange cover, please write to eventinfo@tafn.org.uk . If you have a proposal for a new event, or would like to comment on one of the events that’s currently taking place, please write to events@tafn.org.uk . or use our contact form at www.tafn.org.uk/contact . And that concludes this month’s Events Report.

Tony Bowers: It was nothing to do with the events report, He wanted to get into the web business. He wanted to thank Greg, Mark, Richard and of course Justin, and all those involved in trying to rebuild what we had before, to make it better than it was. He just hopes that people will be a bit more patient, and not so quick to condemn. It’s going to be a long and hard job, and he knows these guys are working their bits off. And he would like to personally say thank you guys, and he hopes you continue to carry on.

Chris Payne: Yes indeed. He knows there are some evenings these chaps are actually working till the early hours of the morning. Because obviously they get stuck in, and like the best of us, when you get stuck into something, then time just seems to fly. But it’s not just that, if something’s nearly complete, they endeavour to finish that bit, before going away and doing something else, and he takes his hat off to all of them. They’ve got a lot more going for them on that score than what he would do.

Ian White: While we’re on events, there’s been an error somewhere. Justin put out today’s events list, that he’s doing one tonight, but he’s got it down for next week. He can do it tonight if people are expecting it. He’ll probably turn up and see who else does. He’s sure it’s the 3rd Sunday of the month, but Justin has it down as today.

Chris Payne: Yes, he thinks that being as Justin is not obtainable, unless anybody knows what should have been on tonight, it might be a good idea to turn up and if nobody else turns up, then Ian should do his event this week and if the other person turns up then they can do their event and notify Justin during the week.

Chris doesn’t know exactly where Justin is, he just knows that he can’t get hold of him at the moment. The report that we had from him was that he had family commitments this weekend.

The only comment that Chris wanted to make, was that Justin may have inadvertently put himself forward for doing the Quiz on Wednesday. Because he knows Jackie is going away on Wednesday, but he thinks Justin has forgotten there’s actually an Exec Committee Meeting on Wednesday night. Hopefully Chris will be able to get hold of him on Monday or Tuesday, so keep an eye on the events emails to find out what will be happening with that.

Carol Forrester asked if Chris would like her to try and get hold of him as well?

Chris said yes , if she could, because as he said he has put himself down for doing a Quiz on Wednesday and he really ought to be Meeting with our new Chairperson instead.

10. M. A. D. Report.

Stephen Hassall: We had one Committee Meeting last Thursday, 11th September. The members of the M. A. D. Committee are, Himself, John Hosch, Steve Hyde-Dryden, Monique Lannott, Ian McNamara, and the Executive Representative is Carol Forrester.

We received one complaint, which has been resolved. The TAFN Survey on Technology And The Future has now been finalised, and will be sent to the Exec to be circulated to the Members.

For any questions, concerns and complaints, you can contact the M. A. D. Committee, at mad@tafn.org.uk . You can also do it on the web site at http/www.tafn.org.uk/contact, but he does recommend that you write straight to them at mad@tafn.org.uk . Be sure to send your email from a regular working address, so that we can reply to you instantly and personally.

11. Member’s Meeting Days.

Slight change to the agenda. We’d like to get a slight idea as to whether or not you would like to try to change the Member’s Meeting on a Thursday. We would like to clear the spot to have it on the 9th of October, instead of on that Sunday which is the 12th, he thinks. So depending on whether you who are here today or some of you say yes, we would have it on Thursdays for a period of time, to see how it goes. We have as many here today as we had at the last Thursday Meeting, about 30 to 35 people. So number wise, it’s not going to make a lot of difference. He’s not asking people to key up and say yes, could he ask if anyone has any major objections, to say no!

12. Result Of Chairperson’s Vote.

Chris said, as stated in the Chairperson’s Report, he thought it was very successful. We managed to get 23 people using the Voting Booth, and he now has an insight to how it actually works, and he thinks it’s a very, very good invention that was devised a couple of years ago. And it does definitely work. And as stated, it was quite a pleasure to be sat on Bournemouth beach, whilst taking the vote count.

We had a total of 74 votes. And that’s the disappointing part of this whole procedure. 74 people voting which correlates to 31.5% of the membership. It is very low. He can understand and probably, the Executive Committee can understand, when they see the actual full report on the voting, that it is for an interim position, but it would have just been nice if more Members had taken the time to vote. As stated earlier, 23 people used the Booth, and he does thank immensely, Tony Bowers for his assistance in taking that count. We also had 51 people vote by email, and we thank every Member that did take the time to vote, for this particular post.

The breakdown of the vote is as follows: Abstentions or void votes: 2. Steve Hyde-Dryden, had a grand total of 28 votes. He has spoken to Steve, and he thanks everybody who had faith in him, and felt it was very encouraging. Harry Mason, drew 44 votes, and therefore, he declares Harry Mason to be the TAFN Treasurer, Chairperson, even, you can’t have his job, Harry, he’s keeping it. You can have this one with pleasure, so without further ado, he’s now going to hand over to Harry, who will give his thanks in person.

Harry Mason: Thanked Chris very much, and said he wouldn’t want Chris’s job, he was really very welcome to it. He then thanked everyone who took the trouble to vote, he knows that Chris had already mentioned it, but it is important that people do take the trouble to vote, and those of you who did, he’s very pleased that they did, whether they voted for him or for Steve. it doesn’t matter, the fact that you took the trouble to vote, is a plus as far as he’s concerned, and he hopes that there will be more people voting next time.

He’s here. We’ve got him to live with or put up with, for the next 9 months or so, until the whole Executive comes up for re-election next year. he will try to do his best, to lead TAFN, in the next 9 months. He hopes he can be accessible to as many Members as possible. He wants people to feel that they can get in touch with him if they feel that they need to do so. As well as all the other avenues that you can get in touch with people. It’s just good to have this opportunity, to lead this great organisation of TAFN. And he hopes that we will all go along with him, in helping to guide this organisation into the future.

Chris then said he didn’t want to burst his bubble too greatly at the moment, but unfortunately, he didn’t have 9 months. He’s only got the Office until re-election in February of next year. So he has 5 months. We’ve cut it short because we just can’t afford to pay you enough.

There then followed a number of congratulations for Harry, including Ann, who said that TAFN was lucky that Members had voted for him. And Commiserations for Steve.

Harry thanked everyone for their congratulations and said his strong point was never maths. 5 months gives you the Members the chance to see how he gets on as Chair, and him an opportunity to see how he feels about it at the end of that time.

13. Any Other Business.

Harry asked if there was anything from the Secretary to do with any other Business. Chris said there was nothing from the Exec, and no-one had sent a message to say they wanted to speak, so it was the shortest any other business Harry would have in his Office.

Someone said Thanks to Ann for all that she had done as Chair.

Harry said thank you to said person.

As Chris has already mentioned, next Meeting will be on Thursday the 9th of October, at 8pm. And at that meeting, we will decide what day of the week, we will hold the monthly Meetings.

He then closed September’s Meeting.