LICN Monthly Meeting
Meeting Minutes – January 7, 2015
	
I. Administrative
a. The meeting began where each attending member gave the usual ~30sec skills summary.  
b. Dave Rost reported that the LICN treasury account was around $9,500.
c. For the telephone referral service Peter Buetenkant announced that John Dunn was handling January, Len Anderson was doing February and John Dunn volunteered for March.
d. Thanks once again to Andy Baxt for arranging for the pizza.  

II. Discussion
a. Glenn Luchen  provided a summary report on the IEEE LI Excom meeting including note that John Vodopia is Chairman.  
b. Andrew Baxt started the Join-Me communication at 7:20PM.
c. Marty Kanner introduced his breadboard for a voice amplification system originated by Murray Novack. The breadboard featured a closed loop AGC network. It worked in conjunction with Murray’s wireless microphone.
d. The charging for CEU credit hours was discussed and it was agreed not to charge. It was suggested that this be introduced as a special rate, so that if it is desired to charge again there will be less objection.
e. The email list was corrected so that some notifications can be sent to full-members only, and that other notifications can also include associate members. This one will be called a Super-List.
f. Andrew suggested that once the LICN website is completed, he would like to do a hard-copy mailing of the full brochure including skills and member backgrounds. This was not voted on.
g. Lyubov Knyazeva-Renselaer discussed giving a lecture on a proposed 5G wireless communication technology. This may be in April, but is not definite.

III.  New Business - Website
a. There was a small last-minute meeting held during the month for discussion of the website by Andy Baxt, John Dunn and Chris Early.
b. Chris Early requested a $20/month authorization to fund a presence on Meetup.com. It was accepted unanimously. A discussion about an RSVP function for meetings was held and it was mixed opinion as to whether it was needed. It was said that it would be good so that pizza quantity could be adjusted based on the number of respondants.
c. A vote was held as to setting up the LICN website to accept new member application directly from a website form and whether to set up the website to accept payments through PayPal. There was not much interest in this feature at this point in time.
d. A discussion was held on the website. It was determined that the home page was weak and needed improvement. Suggestion was made to possibly put some dynamic images in it in a rotating carousel fashion. The California IEEE Consultants group’s home page was shown for inspiration.
e. Chris Early made some excellent comments on some improvements to improve search engine optimization. It was mentioned to check if the individual skills on each person’s experience page could be ported to the meta-data for that page to optimize website catch.
f. A suggestion was made by Fred Katz for a logo that consisted of turning the IEEE diamond with an arrow with a circle on its side and replacing the arrow with a silhouette of Long Island. See below image.
g. It was suggested that the hyper-links which was listed as first name initial followed by last name be changed to the whole name hyphenated between the first and last name as a way to improve search by name optimization.
h. Andy called up the website and showed how to login and mentioned to change the password from the default password: Tesla, and that the password should be customized to an individual password. Making changes on the website was demonstrated.
i. People gradually left, fairly late and the meeting dissipated, slowly.