Steering Committee Meeting
Tuesday, October 29, 1996

Steering Committee members in attendance were:

Janina Sajka, Ruth-Ellen Simmonds, Myrna Votta, Peter Altschul, and Tom Dekker.

ITEM 1. Progress of interaction with NY PC, the New York PC users group

After a rather impressive presentation by NY PC Vice-President, Curt Kaufman, we are disappointed to report that as of October 29, we have heard absolutely nothing from him. In a follow-up telephone conversation a week or so after the September 16 planning meeting, Mr. Kaufman said that he would arrange for us to receive both NY PC bylaws and SIG guidelines either on disk or via Email, which were never forthcoming. He also said that he was going to ask his Board of Directors to strike a committee to liaison with our steering committee, but this too has not happened.

As a result, your steering committee has decided that too much time has been lost already, so that we should initiate the process of building our own independent organization. When provided with the appropriate information, we will decide at that time whether membership as a SIG of NY PC is appropriate.

ITEM 2. Finalizing a name for the group

After some discussion, your steering committee has decided that we need the simplest, yet most inclusive name possible. Thus, we propose that the "blind" of BCUG should be replaced with "visually impaired", to make it VICUG (Visually Impaired Computer Users Group). We also discussed whether we should have NYC as part of the name or not. In any case, this is one of the issues we'll be voting on at the general meeting, where a final decision will be taken.

ITEM 3. Mission Statement

After much editing and discussion, we have managed to come up with a version of the mission statement which we think the membership will support. With so much to include, we think you'll agree that we've made it as simple as possible, while still covering all the bases. The text of the mission statement is as follows:

The mission of is three-fold:

1. to facilitate more experienced users in keeping abreast of developments in access and information technology;
   
   
2. to encourage, educate and support new users of computer and access technology:
   
   
3. to advocate for technologieswhich are fully accesssible to, and useable by all members of society, including people who are blind or visually impaired.

The mission statement will be presented at the general meeting, where we will move for its adoption by the membership.

Please let us know if you think any changes should be made to this and we'll do our best to accommodate them. Otherwise, the proposed agenda is as follows:

1. Welcome and quick role call/very brief personal intro. (This is important since it lets everybody know who's there; it facilitates networking within the group).
   
   
2. Steering Committee update.
   
   
3. Mission Statement
   
   1. Presentation
   2. Discussion
   3. Motions
   
   
4. Steering committee and election of officers

1. to prepare for election of officers to an official Board of Directors.
2. to carry out the formal organization of the group, be it independent or part of NY PC. This should include establishment of a bank account, collection of very minimal membership dues and development of an accountability system for funds received.
3. to organize interesting events which will attract new members and keep existing members interested in the meetings.
4. to encourage the membership to form its own committees as per specific areas of interest and to encourage those committees to develop ideas either for projects or general meeting presentations.
5. to begin introductory work on preparation of bylaws. In addition to contacting the groups in Chicago and Pittsburgh to get copies of their bylaws for our examination, we will attempt to enlist the assistance of some local visually impaired lawyers to be part of a bylaws committee.

We would like to get your concensus on the following:

1. What would really draw you to meetings
2. Should they be as early as possible so you can get home to dinner
3. Should they be later so you can grab a bite first?
4. Would you pay a small fee if we had the meeting catered with a light buffet so you could eat there and have social time to mingle and network with other members outside the actual business meeting?
5. Should the meetings be at a restaurant willing to accommodate us?
6. Should we investigate arranging for door prizes to encourage attendance, such as low-end pieces of accessible software, modems, etc. We could well find sources of donation for such items.

ITEM 7. Adjournment.

Having prepared the general meeting agenda, we adjourned the steering committee meeting.

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converted to hypertext March 4, 1997