Vancouver Community Network

President's Report on Board Activities, November, 2001

At VCN it's been another year of challenges, achievements, and changes, and growing pains as VCN begins to mature as an organization. It's been an interesting year on the board and I'd like to give a brief overview of our activities over the past year.

The board expended considerable time and energy this year reviewing its governance structure. As a result the number of committees reporting to the board has been reduced and the committee mandates have been more clearly defined. The governance review produced the bylaw amendments that will be presented later in the meeting, and the board expects to continue a systematic review of VCN's bylaws over the next year. Our plan is that this will be a participatory online exercise. Other ongoing governance tasks for the board include revising board position descriptions, providing board training and education, and continuing board succession planning.

Early in the year, VCN joined the United Community Services Co-op, a purchasing co-op for non-profit groups. Other pragmatic, operational decisions included approving corporate credit cards for staff use and obtaining a merchant account to process donations by credit card. The board also approved the creation of a half-time office manager position to cover our in-house bookkeeping needs and to oversee our office procedures.

One of the biggest challenges for the year occurred in August when the hard drive on VCN's main server unexpectedly failed and VCN did not have a current backup of the data. The drive was sent to a data recovery firm and 75% of the data has since been recovered. More importantly for the future, VCN now has a daily backup procedure and will be implementing drive mirroring and offsite backup storage.

In the area of user services, the board approved putting a click-to-agree user agreement online, which is the first step to moving the entire registration process online. This would make it considerably easier to register for access to VCN services. At this point the board is close to completing the necessary updates to the user agreement text. The lion's share of this work has been done by board member Jim Sayre.

The board has also approved enabling web-based email accounts that won't require any form of ID (i.e. a non-commercial service similar to Hotmail for residents of the Lower Mainland). This will be the first service which VCN will make available though online registration, although the development work by VCN staff is still underway. In the future the board would like to also extend the online registration process to include dial-in accounts. This is, however, going to require substantial technical development work in order for VCN to be able to validate accounts online.

After the events of September 11, civil liberties in general, and privacy protection and access to information rights in particular, are being threatened, and are therefore issues of concern to all sectors of civil society. The VCN board has endorsed a statement (available on our web site) reiterating VCN's commitment to protecting the privacy of our users and our opposition to racial, ethnic, and religious discrimination. In the face of anti-terrorism legislation such as bill C-36, the board is aware that continued vigilance and advocacy on these issues will definitely be required.

There's been a great deal of coming and going on the board over the past year, as people have moved, moved on, and moved in. I'd like to thank outgoing director Greg Sturk for his five years of service on the board, which included stints as vice president, secretary, and member at large. I'd also like to thank resigned directors Lyle Gardiner and Michael Gurstein, who have both moved out of province, Tom Hansen (past treasurer), Suzanne Klinga , Richard Songhurst, and Veronica Ainome for their contributions over the past year. A couple of directors joined the board mid-way through the year. I'd like to thank Amali de Silva, who took on the challenging job of treasurer in March, and Craig McLachlan, who joined the board in June and has taken over as VCN's liaison to the BC Community Network Association.

My thanks to all those who are continuing on the board and have offered to stand for the VCN board slate for next year. After two years I am stepping down as president, but I look forward to working with the board as past president over the next year. And I'd like to congratulate Sharlene Smith and Alex Samuel, the board's nominees for the positions of president and vice president.

I cannot say enough good things about the staff at VCN. They are truly a pleasure to work with, dedicated, talented and committed. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank staff for their hard work over the past year and introduce them. They are:

Peter Royce - Co-ordinator

Steven Chan - Technical Co-ordinator

Carolyn Nantais - Co-ordinator of Volunteer Services

Jack Vickery - Group Services Co-ordinator

Elzbieta Green - Group Services Assistant

Ljupko Mandic - Technical Assistant

Vimmi Pruthi - Office Manager

Teresa Neri - Administrative Assistant

Rupinder Sohal - Administrative Assistant (past)

Donald Johnson - Summer Student (past)

Ken Akin - Bookkeeper (contract)

I'd like to end this report with a quick acknowledgement that VCN's continued financial viability is due to support from many funders and contributors. This year, as in others, the bulk of our revenue has come from project-based funding. Our funders include, and I would like to thank:

Industry Canada

Human Resources Development Canada (Office of Learning Technologies)

BC Ministry of Community Development, Co-operatives and Volunteers

Langara Students Union

BC Gaming Commission

City of Vancouver

Vancouver Foundation

Health Canada

United Way of the Lower Mainland

I'd also like to give thanks the members and users, both groups and individuals, whose financial and volunteer support provides the base for all our activities.

Respectfully submitted, Alison Curtis, President

November 26, 2001