Meeting notes from 12/8/06. (My bad, TANs!)

Whoops...so I realized that I haven't posted the notes from our conference call on 12/8/06.  Here it is 1/7/07 and our next conference call is tomorrow.  My apologies for the delay in posting these.  I promise to be more quick in posting tomorrow's notes (if you let me!), do a better job, and be more interesting.

Tim got us started out with a very informative, interesting, and later entertaining, presentation on using on-line collaboration software, specifically Vyew.  He did a better job than I could ever do explaining it in his blog.  If you haven’t checked it out already, you really should…it’s neat stuff! 

Next up will be Cheryl, who will teach us about having a Disaster Recovery Plan.  No matter what part of the country, or the world, you’re in it’s always important to have a plan, and we look forward to learning how to go about getting that done! 

We briefly discussed using MySpace for the organizations we’re VISTAs for, but I don’t really remember where that discussion ended up going…any comments/input would be greatly appreciated! 

Next, we did a best of/worst of for November and early December (personally or job-related).  Sorry if any of the details got mixed up or something is listed as happening that didn’t happen that way…feel free to let me know or correct me in any comments!  Here’s what people had to offer! 

Best thing that happened:

Cheryl – She has been interviewing with nonprofits learning a lot about what different organizations do.  Informational interviews are a great way to not only learn about what others do, but a networking opportunity as well! 

Andrea – She got a new bike (and helmet)!  Living in a place where she can ride year-round, I’m sure she’ll get great use out of it! 

Kamilla – I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear anything you said!  If I had thought about it before, I could have emailed you to get your responses, but alas I didn’t.  L 

Corey – Thanksgiving!  It’s Thanksgiving – what is there NOT to love about it! 

Laura – She took an HTML class!  What’s big about it is that this is the first computer class that she has ever taken.  Seeing how it seems that most of the other CTC VISTAs have backgrounds in computer or at least technical skills, Laura is on her way to expanding her general technical knowledge…something she honestly never thought she’d do! 

John – During the Thanksgiving holiday, one of John’s favorite moments was seeing the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC.  He’s also glad to be keeping busy with work! 

Jeff – Cisco recently donated phone equipment to his organization, which he has been having fun playing with! 

Tim – His boss has been facilitating workshops on Open Data and Open Gov, and Tim has been assisting in the preparation for those workshops.  I really hope that’s right…I didn’t really understand what you were talking about. L 

Worst thing that happened:

Cheryl – She has also been remotely working on technical assessments for different groups.  She is responsible for writing up the results of questions asked during the assessments, and wants to figure out an efficient way to do this.  Something that could automatically generate results would be great! 

Andrea – Along with the joy that the holidays bring comes stress…especially stressing about getting things done before the new year.  Hang in there…it’s almost over! (Or here, rather, by this point.) 

Kamilla – See above 

Corey – She continues to face struggles in working out her loan situation.  It really would be great if she could use her Ed Award when she finishes to help pay off loans! 

Jeff – He almost ran over a kid with a U-haul trailer.  If you ask me, that would be enough to ruin anyone’s day. 

Laura – Although she was fortunate enough to go back to Indiana for Thanksgiving, she was unfortunate in the fact that she got sick in doing so.  But I guess that’s what going from sunny, warm San Diego to grey, rainy, chilly Indianapolis will do to ya! 

John – In order to get to DC for his best moment, a 10-hour drive from Boston was required.  Not so fun. 

Tim – One thing he has been working on is improving security for social source commons.  The reason for this, however, he is less than thrilled about (understandably).  Apparently someone got into and tampered with it.  That’s never a good thing. 

Our next call is scheduled for 1/8/2007 (yes, tomorrow/today, but I’m writing this as if I actually posted these on time).  Sorry this turned out kind of long…I hope it was at least was up to par.  Until then!