Time and Location

• 9:15 PM approx, to 10:25 PM
• J.C. Penney Meeting Room 3rd Floor

Attendance

• President: Dan Kern-Ekins
• Vice President: Bob Byron
• Training Director: Jim Burke
• Promotions: Barbara DeVries
• Webmaster: Pete Carapetyan
• Secretary: Irina Marchenko

General Business:

• Attendance:
• Attendance at the general meeting was agreed to be approximately 75 for the evening
• Minutes:
• Minutes for the December Board meeting were approved as submitted by Secretary.
  Minutes for the general meeting were approved with the addendum proposed by President in his e-mail correspondence to the Board of 12/16/2001.
• Webmaster proposed January 13 as the deadline for up-loading 2001 minutes. The Board agreed.
• Domain Name Registration:
• President distributed a report submitted by Treasurer on the status of the domain name registration. Registrant: Delphi Consultants, LLC (JAVAMUG2-DOM), ISP: Texas Metronet Inc, record expiration date 20-Sep-2003.
• Programs:
• President announced speakers and topics booked with the Program Director through May 2002.
• Board exchanged comments on presentation by Mr. Taber and came to the conclusion that in future all measures should be taken to avoid the "throw-catch" delivery method of book prizes to ensure participants' comfort.
• Promotions:
• Barbara's report indicated that many companies on her contact list experienced budget cuts and could not provide immediate sponsorship for JavaMUG general meetings. Many businesses would like to maintain close contacts with the JavaMUG in future, as the group holds a good reputation whithin the business community.
• Barbara proposed to use a local businesses survey project initiated by Texas Tech Univ. students to update her contact list. A discussion followed regarding the appropriate wording to elicit information whether companies have membership in professional associations like JavaMUG.
• Training::
• Jim reported on the work done thus far on slides for class presentation for Java Basics and Certification Review. The hand-outs will be available for students at production cost according to Kinko's price list.

New Business:

• Badges:
• New name badges for the Board members and JavaMUG business cards arrived.
• Web presence:
• Dan distributed a list of technology-oriented WebSites and raised a question of the JavaMUG's presence in the given virtual niche. He moved to charge Vice-President with the resposibility of gathering all pertinent information and submitting a status report no later than February 2002. The motion was seconded by Pete.
• Certification:
• Irina proposed to honor JavaMUG members, who hold a certification from Sun , in a special prize drawing. Only those who would have presented their certificates would be eligible. This event will have a two-fold effect of celebrating people who have shown dedication to their profession and updating members certification information.
• Group needs:
To better serve the memebers the Board made an assessment of the skill level of the general memebrship. It was stated that
• the group at large represents no novice level developers (Barbara);
• we should continue to focus on more advanced topics as opposed to the breadth of coverage including core competecies (Pete);
• JavaMUG should be looking for new venues to attract new memebers and widen its exposure within high tech businesses (Dan);
• JavaMUG should continue to maintain relationships with other user groups,verification of whether the friendly sites provide a link to the JavaMUG WebSite was deemed necessary (Bob).
• Flyer:
• Dan stressed that a printable flyer with the JavaMUG general meeting announcements would be an excellent addition to the group's promotional efforts. Pete spoke about challenges of having sponsor/speaker information ahead of time and technical difficulties of furnishing graphics.
• Sponsors:
• Dan reminded that sponsors and prizes should be listed each month in historical minutes. Pete came up with an idea of designing a special give-away page.