[FreeGeek] May 5th, 2007 Meeting

[David Repa]

Free Geek Monthly Meeting Minutes

15 people present.

* Old Business Discussed

Earth Day; both at Jericho Beach (with Rev Phil from Free Geek PDX) and
Everett Park. Free Geek was popular in both spots.

Vancouver Library Presentation, done by David, Ifny.

Vancouver PHP User Group Presentation, done by David.

Windowsless Wednesday, and Movie Night discussed.

David has been (or will be) interviewed by CBC Radio One, and Global
TV. Possible story with the the Globe and Mail newspaper.

Free Geek Vancouver was the North West Recycler's [Council?] Photo of
the Week in their online newsletter.[1]

New server promises to be powerful; the database has been installed.
Server needs a bit of tweaking, but should be up and running next week.

The wiki has been migrated to Portland's server.[2]

Mailing lists will be migrating from Resist, over to Puddle.

FG location. David is calling regional managers of local real estate
brokers, and mentioning all the media attention we are getting. CBRE at
least returns calls. Lots of interesting leads, but nothing concrete.

* New Business

New Events

Hack-a-thon party in Gastown: May 11, 1 PM - 1 AM, location: 1 Alexander St.
Recycling Council of BC Conference: May 17 - 19, location: Whistler.
(Free Geek is now a provisional member of this Council)
Windowsless Wednesday: May 23rd, location TBA
Movie Night: Tues, May 29, location TBA

Bert Monesmith's Presentation

Bert is president of the Recycling Council of BC, and formerly worked
for Genesis Recycling. He is currently a director of 36zerowaste
recycling. He has 32 years of experience in recycling, the last seven of
those specializing in electronics. He is currently building a recycling
facility in Richmond, and working to have it ISO certified. In fact, he
wants to have it certified twice (as he did with Genesis) to meet every
safety specification he can. He insists on transparency from his
downstream recyclers (and researches them, too, to ensure that he gets
it), and is working on educational packages for the upstream producers
and suppliers. He will not ship anything offshore, and remarked that
"zero waste" is in the company name because there is no waste from
electronic products, if they are processed properly. He appears to be in
the recycling business for all the right reasons (ie environmentalism),
and seems to be a living example of how one can make decent money by
doing the right things. Their web site is 36zerowaste.ca

Also present at the meeting was Boris Schaffer, President of 36zerowaste.

36zerowaste is interested in a "partnership" (the terms of which are not
yet defined) with Free Geek. Essentially, they want the old hardware
that we cannot re-use, because that's revenue for them. In return, they
will give us favourable rates, and an arrangement that should give us
some steady revenue. They appear to meet our transparency
requirements.  Bert sent David a letter of intent which can be read
here[3]

Boris and Bert agreed to appear to explain their business, and to take
questions. Bert got a lot of questions, and answered them all
forthrightly. We got a little distracted by his statement that parts of
his business (particularly research) are, and will remain, proprietary.
We eventually got around that , but it did give rise to an
interesting question for the Recycling Committee: How do we (Free Geek)
legitimize third-party businesses who wish to associate or partner with
FG? Do we need a set of guidelines? If so, what should they be?

Spring Hardware Drop-Off

May 6, noon - 5 PM. Location: parking lot at 138 West 3rd Ave. Call for
volunteers, and some came forward. Bert has offered to store some
monitors for us, if we get more than we can store.

Promotional Flyers

We had an offer from Bernard , who runs a painting company in the West
End. He usually prints 13,000 flyers in the spring and early summer, one
side of which is blank. He offered the blank side for a Free Geek ad in
return for distribution. He would pay for the printing, and we would do
the distribution. We decided that this was not a good use of our time or
volunteer effort, and declined the offer, with thanks.

Follow-up on 36zerowaste Recycling

Ifny proposed that we proceed with the "partnership" with 36zerowaste
Recycling.

We are favourably inclined, but wish to take the discussion to the
mailing list for the benefit of those not in attendance. We also wish to
impose a deadline for a decision to be made, and that deadline will be
one week from the posting of these minutes.  Any one interested in
discussing Bert and 35zerowaste is asked to do so on the recycling
mailing list.[4]

[1]http://dtn.earthworksrecycling.com/

[2]http://wiki.freegeek.org/index.php/Free_Geek_Vancouver

[3]http://wiki.freegeek.org/index.php/36zerowaste_letter_of_intent

[4]http://puddle.ca/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fg-recycling