ELECTRICAL REBUILDER’S ASSOCIATION BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEETING Wednesday, April 5, 2006 The meeting began at 7:40 pm EST via conference call. Dan Smith, Mike Schroeder, Chris Thompson, Alan Melton, Scott Fureman, Mike Dietrich, Hank Henke, Wes Grueninger and Bob Thomas were in attendance. The first item discussed was the advertising and sale of the Tech Ed DVD’s. Mike S. explained he was worried that seminar attendance could be hurt if the DVD of the Friday night seminar is advertised in the Electrical Rebuilders Exchange and sold on the website. There was much discussion of the pro’s and con’s of selling the seminar DVD with 12 seminars yet to be held in 2006. The decision was made to table plans to advertise and sell that DVD until early fall, when the subject will be revisited. The soldering DVD will be sold aggressively on the website and in from the office with advertising in the newspaper. Vensel Enterprises has already sold quite a few copies, and everyone agreed to place another order for 100 copies. Bob brought up the fact that Joe Davis needs a way to accept credit cards for selling books and DVD’s at his seminars. He suggested those sales could be run through the association’s account, with Joe covering the processing fees. After a short discussion, the decision was made to process Joe’s sales through the ERA office for a 5% discount to cover the costs involved. Bob agreed to work out a simple procedure for keeping up with the accounting. Next item on the agenda was the website and forums, the abuse that took place over the past weekend concerning two members and the use of ethnic slurs on the off topic forum. Everyone present agreed that Wes handled what was obviously a difficult situation in a professional and proper manner. He was applauded for acting quickly and intelligently, in spite of the rash of criticism he was unjustly subjected to on the forum by members who did not know of all the facts. Bob suggested that perhaps it was time to remove the off topic forums altogether. Dan, Scott, Hank, Mike D. and Wes each stated the case for keeping them. After some discussion, the decision was made to add another rule to the Rules of Use, for the purpose of authorizing the webmaster to handle future situations should they arise. Dan made a motion to add the following rule to the Forums: “The webmaster is authorized to temporarily limit the posting of messages for violation of rules until the next board meeting.” This motion was seconded and passed unanimously. A decision was also made to place the rules where they will be more visible. All forum users agreed to the rules when they joined the forums, but Alan pointed out that some probably never really read them. It was felt that posting the rules where they can be seen regularly may help prevent future incidents.