SECRETARY'S REPORT & MINUTES OF MEETING

December 10, 1997

Minutes and Comments by Merle Nicholson, Secretary ‘97, Tampa PC Users Group

The pre-meeting HTML class started at 6:00, followed by introductions and announcements. TPCUG Officer nominations and elections followed. A very informative talk on the Roadrunner Internet service by Time Warner was next and the meeting was concluded with the door prize drawing.

A pre-meeting tutorial on HTML was conducted by member Don Patzsch from 6:00 to 6:30. As expected, Don presented a very concise, informative session. A large group of members and guests attended the session. This is to be a monthly feature, and if you’re even remotely interested in the subject you can’t help but learn something about the Internet and how it works.

Connie opened with SIG Announcements. The Comm SIG was spoken for by Charles Howe and the Genealogy SIG by Ford Bond.

Starting in December, the meeting room will be in a different location. It will be in the new wing on the second floor gallery above the main lobby. This should make us easier to find.

Connie briefly mentioned upcoming events such as a possible job fair in the spring in conjunction with MOSI. Also the FACUG is conducting a web page contest and a judge is needed to serve for a limited time to look at the contested web pages. Also intentions are to bring in tax preparation software for demo starting in January for a couple of months.

The officer elections for 1998 came next. The following people were nominated and duly elected to serve in 1998:

• Merle Nicholson, President
• Mike Hodges, Vice President
• Kevan Sheridan, Secretary
• Jenny Lind Olin, Treasurer

Bruce Register, Member at Large

A very informative talk on the Roadrunner Internet service was next. A representative of Time Warner, Jason Wells, assisted by Ty Abrahams of Groupware International gave an outstanding talk on the cable modem system being installed throughout most of Hillsborough and Pinellas Counties. There was just too much data given during the talk for me to be able to do it justice here.

They are a complete Internet Service Provider (ISP), offering approximately 27MB/sec at the modem for $39.95/month for current cable subscribers after an installation cost of $99.95.

The installation of the necessary infrastructure to offer all of the Time Warner system in the two counties is still ongoing. They look for completion of that by June 15^th, 1998. The City of Tampa area will start at the first of the year and be completed to South Tampa in March or April.

As an ISP, they are offering added services: 5MB for personal web sites, up to 5 e-mail addresses etc. The equipment installed, including an Ethernet card installed in your PC, is owned and maintained by Time Warner. It consists of the Ethernet card, cable modem and cabling, and a new dedicated cable run into your house. There is a discount offered to all TPCUG members reducing the installation cost to $49.95. Contact Jason Wells at jason@timewarnercable.com.

The door prize drawing followed after a short break. Roger Waters won a hat and software. Micrografx Greetingcard Gold was won by John Weber, and Janet Bowersox received a Tee shirt; Vince McCoy won a mouse pad; and Warren Fuss, Larry Anders and Merle Nicholson received Time Warner hats. u