This is the documentation for Free Geek Twin Cities (FGTC) procedures.
PLEASE NOTE: This documentation is generally older, and is being superseded by that on the wiki - http://freegeektwincities.org/wiki - so look there first!
Given you have a username and password for this site that allows you to create and edit documentation, follow these instructions on how to create documentation for Free Geek Twin Cities (FGTC).
If you don't have a username and password, or aren't yet logged in, go to the User page.
The documentation is laid out in a hierarchical manner. Make sure you look around before creating new documentation, and try to add to existing documentation if you can.
You can either go to Add Node Book page to add a new page. You can also click on the Add Child Page that appears on all documentation pages.
Questions that frequently come up about Free Geek policies and activities.
How to take in hardware donations.
Tear-down of recyclable computers to learn parts and how they go together (1-2 times or until participant is comfortable with parts ID)
Tear-down and reconstruction of a known-to-be-working computer with no 'issues' -- repeat Stage 1 and reverse process – plug it in – does it work?
Construct a working computer from parts (available in garage)
Or: Making Sure Things Work
Before a machine is ready to go out the door (either to a volunteer, or for sale) it needs to be tested as follows:
The last step before sending a machine out is to clean up any files we may have left behind as the oem user -- to do this, run the oem-config-prepare script as follows:
GUI method
Command-line method
sudo apt-get install oem-config-gtk, hit enter, and enter passwordsudo oem-config-prepare and hit enterOnce oem-config has been run, just reboot -- oem account will be deleted, and user will be asked for username & password on next startup
It is important to test parts up front, otherwise we will waste a lot of time in the building process. There is a fair amount of Testing documentation on the Free Geek site. There is not much need to duplicate the information, but to make it specific to Twin Cities Free Geek (TCFG).
People are concerned with how hard drives are handled because they contain data. dban wipes drives securely. We need to have physical documentation of what it does because people will ask.
How will we make decisions....
These Bylaws of Free Geek Twin Cities, Inc. (the "Corporation") are intended to conform to the mandatory requirements of the Minnesota Nonprofit Corporations Act, as amended (the "Act"). Any ambiguity arising between the Bylaws and the discretionary provisions of the Act shall be resolved in favor of the application of the Act.
The name of the organization shall be Free Geek Twin Cities. It shall
be a nonprofit organization incorporated under the laws of the State of
Minnesota.
The primary purpose(s) of Free Geek Twin Cities, in furtherance of its
charitable and educational purpose, shall be to recycle technology and
provide access to computers, the internet, education and job skills in
exchange for community service.
All memberships shall be granted upon a majority vote of the voting membership present, and shall be contingent upon continued participation in the Corporation's meetings and activities to an extent determined by the Board.
Each member shall be eligible to appoint one voting representative to cast the member’s vote in association elections.
Any member may resign by filing a written resignation with the secretary. Resignation shall not relieve a member of unpaid charges previously accrued. A member can have their membership terminated by a majority vote of the membership.
The board shall have the authority to establish and define non-voting categories of membership.
Regular meetings of the members shall be held at a time and place designated by the chair.
An annual meeting of the members shall take place, the specific date,
time and location of which will be designated by the chair. At the
annual meeting the members shall elect directors and officers, receive
reports on the activities of the association, and determine the
direction of the association for the coming year.
Special meetings may be called by the chair, the Executive Committee,
or a simple majority of the board of directors. A petition signed by
five percent of voting members may also call a special meeting.
Notice of each meeting shall be given to each voting member not less
than one week prior to the meeting.
The members present at any properly announced meeting shall constitute
a quorum.
All issues to be voted on shall be decided by a simple majority of
those present at the meeting in which the vote takes place.
The board is responsible for overall policy and direction of the
organization, and delegates responsibility of day-to-day operations to
the staff and committees. The board shall have up to 10, but not fewer
than 3 members. The board receives no compensation other than
reasonable expenses.
All board members shall serve two-year terms, but are eligible for
re-election for up to five consecutive terms.
The board shall meet at least quarterly, at an agreed upon time and
place. An official board meeting requires that each board member have
notice at least two weeks in advance.
New directors and current directors shall be elected or reelected by
the voting representatives of members at the annual meeting. Directors
will be elected by a simple majority of members present at the annual
meeting.
A Board Development Committee shall be responsible for nominating a
slate of prospective board members representing the associations
diverse constituency. In addition, any member can nominate a candidate
to the slate of nominees. All members will be eligible to send one
representative to vote for each candidate, for up to 10 available
positions each year.
A quorum must be attended by at least forty percent of board members
for business transactions to take place and motions to pass.
There shall be three officers of the board, consisting of a chair,
secretary, and treasurer. Their duties are as follows:
The chair shall convene regularly scheduled board meetings, shall
preside or arrange for other members of the Executive Committee to
preside at each meeting in the following order: secretary, treasurer.
The chair shall also convene committees on special subjects as
designated by the board.
The secretary shall be responsible for keeping records of board
actions, including overseeing the taking of minutes at all board
meetings, sending out meeting announcements, distributing copies of
minutes and the agenda to each board member, and assuring that
corporate records are maintained.
The treasurer shall make a report at each board meeting. The treasurer
shall chair the finance committee, assist in the preparation of the
budget, help develop fundraising plans, and make financial information
available to board members and the public.
When a vacancy on the board exists mid-term, the secretary must receive
nominations for new members from present board members two weeks in
advance of a board meeting. These nominations shall be sent out to
board members with the regular board meeting announcement, to be voted
upon at the next board meeting. These vacancies will be filled only to
the end of the particular board member's term.
Resignation from the board must be in writing and received by the
Secretary. A board member shall be terminated from the board due to
excess absences, more than six (6) unexcused absences from board
meetings in a year. A board member may be removed for other reasons by
a majority vote of the remaining directors.
Special meetings of the board shall be called upon the request of the
chair, or one-third of the board. Notices of special meetings shall be
sent out by the secretary to each board member at least two weeks in
advance.
The Board may create one (1) or more committees of the Board of Directors. The Board may appoint Directors of the Board to serve on them or designate the method of selecting committee members. Each committee shall consist of at least one (1) Director of the Board. The Board may appoint non-Board members to Committees of the Board who have specific experience in the committee's area of responsibility. Committees of the Board shall report to the full Board and require Board consent of all actions unless specific authority has been delegated by the Board to the Committee.
Groups other than the Board and the Committees thereof may be formed on an as-needed basis by the Free Geek community. These other groups shall not have the authority to act for or on behalf of the Board.
The Free Geek Community Council (the "Council") shall be organized from
members of the Free Geek community. The function of the Council is to
provide general guidance and vision to Free Geek. This includes both
short term and long term vision and goals. The Council shall meet to elect members to the Board at least once per year. The Council shall not have the authority to act for or on behalf of the Board.
No person shall be denied the services or facilities of this
organization or be excluded from participation or service herein
because of race, age, color, sex, creed, religion, handicap, or
national origin, and discrimination of any kind in respect hereof is
expressly prohibited.
All funds of the Corporation shall be deposited in the name of the
Corporation in such bank, banks or other financial institutions as the
Board may from time to time designate and shall be drawn on checks,
drafts or other orders signed on behalf of the Corporation by the
Treasurer and/or such other person or persons as the Board may from
time to time designate.
All contracts, deeds and other instruments shall be signed on behalf of
the Corporation by the Board Chair or by such other Officer or agent as
the Board may from time to time designate.
The Corporation shall have no seal.
Notwithstanding any other provision in these Bylaws, no Officer or
agent of this Corporation shall have authority to borrow any funds on
behalf of the Corporation, or to hypothecate any assets thereof, for
corporate purposes or otherwise, except as expressly stated in a
resolution approved by a majority of Directors, duly entered in the
minutes of the Board. No loans shall be made by the Corporation to any
Director or Officer.
The Board may accept on behalf of the Corporation any contribution,
gift, bequest or devise for the general purpose of the Corporation, and
any such contribution, gift, bequest, or devise is subject to the
Board's acceptance.
These Bylaws may be amended by a majority vote of the Board then in
office at any regular or special meeting of the Board provided the
notice given for such meeting indicates that such amendments will be
considered.
The Corporation shall indemnify, to the fullest extent provided in the
Act, any Director or Officer who was or is a Party or is threatened to
be made a Party to any Proceeding (other than an action by or in the
right of the Corporation) by reason of or arising from the fact that
such person is or was a Director or Officer of the Corporation. The
determination and authorization of indemnification shall be made as
provided in the Act.
The Corporation may pay for or reimburse the reasonable Expenses
incurred by a Director or Officer who is a Party to a Proceeding in
advance of final disposition of the Proceeding as provided in the Act.
At the discretion of the Board, the Corporation may purchase and
maintain insurance on behalf of any person who is or was a Director or
Officer of the Corporation against any Liability asserted against such
person and incurred by such person in any such capacity, or arising out
of such person's status as such, whether or not the Corporation would
have the power to indemnify such person against such Liability under
the provisions of this Article.
The indemnification referred to in the various sections of this Article
shall be deemed to be in addition to and not in lieu of any other
rights to which those indemnified may be entitled under any statute,
rule of law or equity, provision of the Articles of Incorporation,
agreement, vote of the Board or otherwise.
The terms used in this Article shall have the same meanings given them
in the Act.
"In writing", as used in these Bylaws, refers to documents that are
hand-delivered, faxed, mailed, or sent by email communication, unless
another definition is required by the Act.
I hereby certify that I am the Secretary of Board of Directors of Free Geek, Inc. and that the foregoing Bylaws were and are the Amended Bylaws adopted by the Directors of Free Geek effective September 1, 2010.
Brian Dunnette, Secretary
Q: What do we need to do to be compliant with data privacy laws (Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, FERPA, etc.)?
Q: Are there legal issues with lending or donating hardware to particular organizations (for instance, activists under federal investigation)?
Board Meeting Minutes
Free Geek Twin Cities
October 12, 2010
7:00 PM, PPNA
Present: Owen Jones, Jeff Wechter, Brian Dunnette
Absent: None
Quorum Present? Yes
Amanda Luker, Cynthia Matthias, Jeremy Cooper, Peter Scheie, Andrew Berhow, Ken Marsh
Meeting called to order at 7:00 PM by Owen Jones, Chair
New Business:
Meeting adjourned at 7:20 PM.
Future Business:
Minutes submitted by Secretary/Treasurer, Brian Dunnette.
Tentative Agenda
(5 min) Cynthia - how thorough do we need to be? (marketing strategy, branding, etc.) need to assign positions or start committee? need rough numbers (in-kind donations, grants, sales)
Amanda - maybe wiki/Google Docs would be good, so people can add information as needed
Maybe tied into External Board -- TODO: start figuring out board criteria, potential members?
Sales Permit: need to contact Joe (see what status is, or if it's OK to restart process), city (to see what criteria we need to meet), surety bond issuer
Publicize grant criteria to potential grantees; only send grant request link upon request
Peter - Dells will go to Staples, Sonys to Waste Management, as these are free (manufacturer-subsidized) programs with major recyclers; we have a number of smaller CRTs (~70, 2000+ lb.) we'd like to get rid of, but don't have free manufacturer take-back; currently, money is mostly tied up with rent, so how do we pay for recycling? Need better revenue stream! (see: recycling, sales permit)
We also have 10-12 larger, higher-quality CRTs that we might like to keep -- where to store?
Sort for break-down/recycling: Printers! (keep lasers/all-in-ones, maybe test printers?) Floppy drives Optical drives Clear out space between shelves?
We want people to have a decent experience -- need to have some "floaters" helping guide people, particularly in the Build process?
What's a good ratio (teacher/student)?
Might be good to develop curriculum, so that less broadly experienced people could teach course? (see Education)
Develop scripts for common tasks (intake, tour, etc.)
Encourage people (particularly those with more organizational/technical experience) to stick in one area for extended period and/or make sure that they're being replaced
Supervise kids/teens!
General policy: we don't know what stuff's worth, and want to keep things consistent, so unless we have special policy (e.g. giving away CRTs!), we don't give stuff away, and don't let people hoard stuff.
Garage sale? - postpone
Compensating people? - itp, postpone?
Maybe go with standard IRS rate ($.50/mile?)
Are we OK doing in-kind compensation -- what are other Free Geeks' policies on this?
Meeting adjourned at 6:45 PM at PPNA
Present:
Board Members: Jeff Wechter, Owen Jones, Brian Dunnette
Others: Cynthia Matthias, Gary Bucher, Amanda Luker, Andy Berhow, Peter Scheie
New Business:
Recycling
Education
GarageSale
Ideas and procedures about fundraising.
A possible starting point: Free Geek Chicago's "Statement on Funding"
The purpose of this document is to allow anyone to schedule or perform a recycling run for FGTC.
The E-waste FGTC recycles can be split into two basic types: Metal and Non-Metal. Each type is handled differently.
Metal recycling (mostly aluminum and steel) is simple and requires little planning as metal is generally not an environmental hazard when recycled. Many metal recyclers will pickup and carry for no fee and be willing to work on a schedule you provide. There is no reason why FGTC should have to pay or perform any work for metal recycling. If the chosen recycler requests payment or fee a new recycler should be chosen.
Currently FGTC works with a metal recycler named Kenneth (612) 978-0602. He may be called to schedule a metal pickup. Be sure that when the pickup is made the recycler does not grab any other metal not intended to be recycled.
In the future it may be in FGTCs best interests to do the metal recycling itself as this could provide another revenue stream.
Non-metal e-waste may contain metal as part of its composition.
Examples include:
Part of the Free Geek Charter is the responsible disposal of e-waste. To this end, FGTC should (must?) use a BAN certified recycling partner for Non-Metal items.
Currently FGTC works with a local company called MPC. FGTC has arranged a deal with MPC where we receive credit for Medium Quality circuit boards (Motherboards, CPUs, and other high density circuit boards). This credit helps us offset the costs of recycling other items we would normally pay for; like CRTs and Printers.
To drop off items at MPC, they must be made aware of the incoming materials and a bill of lading must be created and attached to each container of materials being recycled.
To schedule a drop off and have a bill of lading created, e-mail Kimberly Howard: khoward mpc-e com
Sample e-mail request:
Hi Kimberly,
My name is _____, I work with Free Geek Twin Cities and would like to get a bill of lading for a recycling run. We have about _____ boxes of plastic and _____ boxes of circuit boards. We would like to drop off tomorrow or possibly the next day.
Thanks,
Once the e-mail is sent she will respond with a bill of lading attached or possibly a few further questions for clarification. Once you have the bill of lading you may basically drop off the materials whenever they are open M-F 7:00AM-3:30PM (be aware that lunch is taken at ~1PM).
Once the material has been received and processed, you will likely receive an e-mail indicating how many pounds of each material category was received a few days later. Please be sure to forward this e-mail to the staff list so we can use it in our yearly reporting to the state.
CRT monitors are a special case in recycling, since they often contain lead (several pounds of it) in their (titular) tubes; fortunately, Minnesota mandates that manufacturers have programs to deal with them.
Free Programs:
If there's hardware that Free Geek Twin Cities can't accept at the moment, here are some other options for disposing of it responsibly.
The intake and management of volunteer and their hours.
About how the different volunteer programs will work.
Intake and management of computers (and other materials).
With each box we give to a volunteer, they need to get instruction on how to use it. We offer hands-on training with hardware, but they need to have some idea how to use the software on the computer.
Please gather the following materials for each Adoption Class student:
Write the following agenda on the whiteboard:
Please explain the purpose of the class:
Expectations:
It is useful to go around and have each person introduce themselves with
Encourage people to ask questions, noting:
I usually put the following terms on the board and define them with the class: * Operating system * hardware * software
History of the development of Free Software can be useful. People may also want to know why we use it. Some reasons are:
Students should already be seated in front of the system they will take home.
Our goal is for adopters to know how to set up their systems on the own. As an instructor, you should take your time with this step. Take time to explain what goes where and point out the 3 plugs that contain pins that could bend or break.
Point out the following:
Some accessories to point out are:
Under Graphics, open and explain f-Spot Photo Manager
Skip Internet for the time being; we come back here later.
Under Office, please explore the Word Processor.
Suggested Discussion Topics: * Who has used a word processor? * What's it for?
Make sure they're comfortable with what's in front of them. Have them open up the word processor to show them ''title bar'', ''scroll bar'', ''maximize'', ''minimize'', etc.
OpenOffice.org is a lot like MS Office (so skills are transferable, whether they've used it before or not), and can be used to read & write MS Office-type files.
TIP: Show people how to go to File → Save As and save a document as an MS Office-compatible .doc file!
Encourage them to play around with it a little, and demonstrate spell-check, etc. As with anything, point out the help menu!
Bring them together to save a file; point out how to tell where the file is going to be saved, and how to select different ''file types''. This can also be used as an example of a dialog window. Save the file. Once saved, show students how to find their document.
Now is a great time for a BREAK
NOTE: IF YOU TRY TO ADD A SOURCE OR INSTALL A PROGRAM WITH UBUNTU SOFTWARE CENTER WHEN ITS NOT CONNECTED TO THE INTERNET, STRANGE BEHAVIOR MAY ENSUE -- JUST SHUT DOWN U.S.C. AND TRY AGAIN.
Use "Ubuntu Software Center" in applications to install programs.
Give students some time to look through and download a couple of applications.
At this point show students that they can change settings, like changing mouse to left-handed user, resolution, login window. Also, showing how to add a user might be helpful. Change background, screensaver, screensaver timing is always exciting..
Most people want to get on the internet:
Explain that shutting down is done by clicking with the mouse: System -> Shut Down, or on the "power" icon in the upper-right corner of the screen.
Based on:
A reference sheet of frequently-asked questions and ideas for what to do next with your new GeekBox!
Select Control Center(Wrench) -> Peripherals -> Keyboard
Select Control Center(Wrench) -> Peripherals -> Mouse
Commercial DVDs are encrypted to prevent copying -- to decrypt and play them:
Open a terminal window (Applications → Accessories → Terminal) and enter:
sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh
For users that want to have the system automatically log into a specific account:
Specifics on operational things, like this website.
This section is dedicated to how this website is setup and used.
This website is built with Drupal. The main reasoning for this decision was that most of the founding members of FGTC are involved in working with and developing Drupal. It is also a fleixble, open-source content management system that fits the needs of this website.
At the moment, there is no custom code used on this site. If a custom theme is added or custom modules written, please describe them here so that future maintainers of this site will have knowledge upfront about customizations.
The code for this site is stored in an SVN repository. If you have a username and password, you can check it out here:
At the moment there are the following roles. These probably need to be revisited.
Documentation for the FGTC internal network...
Please note: at the moment these are just the opinions of Brian Dunnette, not those of the group as a whole!
Free Geek Twin Cities needs a place to keep track of internal data -- namely:
There are several ways this could be accomplished.
Currently, we use Google Docs to store much of our information.
While this is flexible, and good for allowing work "off-site", it also ties us to Google (and their non-open-source software), and doesn't provide for good integration of our data.
We already have a functional website -- and, since Drupal has an ERP module (http://drupal.org/project/erp), we could simply integrate this into the existing site.
Advantages include:
Possible down-sides:
We could also use a specialized Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software package -- there are several open-source options, including OpenERP (http://openerp.com) and its more community-oriented/modular off-shoot Tryton (http://tryton.org).
Advantages:
Disadvantages:
At 2pm on Saturdays, new volunteers and others are welcomed to tour our space and learn about what we do and why. The following is a script that can be used for leading tours of the FGTC building.