November 14, 2017 Meeting – Seattle Community Technology Advisory Board
Topics covered included: Seattle CTO Michael Mattmiller report; Megan Bruce and Lieili Slutz on the Civic User Testing Group; Basel Action Network E-Steward refurbishing digital equity project with Bob Akers; Surveillance Ordinance advisory group update with Torgie Madison; reports on the Cable a& Broadband and Digital Inclusion committees; discussion of a board expansion proposal; discussion of a work plan for 2018; discussion on the December vote for new officers.
This meeting was held: November 14, 2017; 6:00-8:00 p.m., Seattle Municipal Tower, 700 Fifth Avenue, Suite 2750
Podcasts available at: http://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/CTTAB/podcast/cttab.xml
Attending:
Board Members: Jose Vasquez, Heather Lewis, Karia Wong by phone; Mark DeLoura, Steven Maheshwary, Torgie Madison, Amy Hirotaka
Public: Harte Daniels, Charlotte Lunday, Adam Owens & Carmen Arceo (Century Link), Rebecca Rocha (Oculus), Bob Akers (e-Stewards), Smiriti Chandrashekar, Charley Eaton, Mahir Kothary, Greta Knappenberger (isoftstone), Renae Culala, Likhitha Patha, Dorene Cornwell, Kuan Peng, Megan Bruce & Leili Slutz (Open Seattle)
Staff: Michael Mattmiller, Chance Hunt, David Keyes, Cass Magnuski
27 In Attendance
Jose Vasquez: Welcome, everybody, to the November 14 Community Technology Advisory Board meeting. I’m sorry I’m late. I just ran up the hill. We’ll start with introductions.
INTRODUCTIONS
Jose Vasquez: Thank you, everybody. The first order of business is approving the agenda. Has everybody had a chance to look over the agenda? Do we have a motion to approve the agenda?
Heather Lewis: I so move.
Mark DeLoura: Second.
Jose Vasquez: Thank you. All in favor? Agenda is approved. So, now we can approve the October minutes. Any suggested changes? Do we have a motion to approve the October minutes?
Mark DeLoura: I move to approve the October minutes.
Heather Lewis: Second.
Amy Hirotaka: I abstain because I wasn’t here.
Jose Vasquez: Approved. Thank you, and welcome back.
Amy Hirotaka: Thank you.
Jose Vasquez: First on the agenda, our Chief Technology Officer.
CTO REPORT
Michael Mattmiller: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good evening, everyone. As always, thank you for being here at the meeting tonight. Mark, I thought of you today. Did you see the article today about the [unintelligible]? A few updates this month. And I’m going to start with what I am sure is top of mind for everyone. We have a Mayor-elect. Jenny Durkan was elected, of course, last week. And right now in the City, we’re all excited to begin working with the Mayor-elect’s transition team, and begin to understand a bit about her vision for the City, and where technology fits in it. As you can imagine, there have been a lot of things said on the campaign trail, and Mayor-elect Durkan did articulate a few things around privacy and Smart Cities that has been generally aligned with some of the things that this group has been interested in on behalf of the members of our community. As we learn more, we will keep you up to date, as well as when there is the earliest opportunity to interact with the Mayor-elect and her staff, I look forward to bringing them to CTAB.
Outside of those things, a couple of notes about what’s going on with tech in the City. I was very excited last week to sign the WAVE franchise renewal, which will allow WAVE to sell cable television in the City for the next ten years. And I really want to thank CTAB for your leadership in articulating community benefits that was necessary to make that franchise renewal happen. In particular, not only offering their low income internet discount program, but the fact that WAVE is using the UDP criteria for the qualification is, I think, is an incredible benefit to the Utility Discount Program.
The Utility Discount Program is a City-offered program that allows an individual or a family to get a discount of their water bill, and their electric bill if it meets low income criteria. And that income criteria is generally a higher threshold than what we see for Comcast and Century Link using for their internet discount program. So, in other words, instead of poverty line plus twenty percent. This is thirty percent, or something like that. So more people can qualify. And not only are they using that higher threshold, they are allowing the City to do the qualification. So, instead of having a separate process and having to produce a separate documentation, the City’s approval process will suffice. That’s, I think, an incredible benefit to our community.
Outside of that franchise, I had the honor last weekend of speaking with Arita Borg’s Grace Hopper conference, here in Seattle. It was a great opportunity to talk about the equity work that we have going on in the department; David Keyes, the leadership of your team, and again, the great leadership from CTAB. And I invited all 800 people in the room to come join our meetings. So, if it gets a little crowded in here…. [laughs]
Yesterday, I was speaking at a conference with SC17, which is a name that no longer makes a lot of sense in modern computing, but it’s the high performance computing annual conference. There were 12,000 attendees. We were there to talk about quantum computing and parallel computing in scale; how computing has moved through the cloud and back out to the edge. Fascinating, in-depth academics, researchers, applied scientists, all very curious about how the concept of Smart Cities, all very interested in how this notion of IOT, computing at scale, can really affect our quality of life in cities, and beginning to think how their research can be applied in our environment. I know that CTAB will be working on its 2018 work plan at some point in the near future, and that you will be thinking of additional projects that you will want to focus on in areas of interest, as well as thinking about how to take the Council’s and Mayor-elect’s guidance in what you focus on, and I do encourage CTAB to be thinking about how to engage a wide array of stakeholders, not only in our communities, but also the researchers and academics to help envision some really great solutions.
So those are the things that are t op of mind for me this month. Mr. Chair, if there are questions, I’d be happy to take them.
Jose Vasquez: Thank you. Any questions?
Harte Daniels: I have a question. There has been a lot of discussion about municipal broadband. Yet again, it has resurfaced. If you would comment on how City Council is thinking about municipal broadband or what new developments there are on that topic?
Michael Mattmiller: Sure. I do have an opportunity during this budget season to speak with Councilmember Harris-Talley and Councilmember Johnson about the green sheets that they have developed, green sheets being adds or changes to the budget. Municipal broadband continues to be addressed. In other words, if the City were to offer a retail internet service option. I personally believe that internet service is a utility. In a perfect world, it would be offered by a central agency because it is like water, it is like electricity, it should be that common. The challenge we have is that we have studied becoming that retail provider for the past ten years, now, with eight different studies. We have not found a financing model that would make it feasible to get into that market. Capital construction costs would be $660 million would have to be financed in such a way that it would put the general fund at risk if we were not successful setting up that utility. And there are some state law reasons for that; there are some capital market reasons for that; but ultimately, that’s a pretty big risk. And the most recent data we have says that the cost model for the City to deliver that service is about $75 a month for data service, and marginally cheaper for non-data service. When we look at the competitive landscape–I don’t want to speak on behalf of Century Link, since you are in the room–but having seen that there is now essentially a promotion to get $75 speeds for life, and Comcast is a few bucks more than that; WAVE is a few bucks more than that, but not far. And, based on the conversations we have had with our telecommunications providers. one of whom has already announced that 5G trials are coming to Seattle next year, and at least two other provIders have put in their permit requests to start building and scale to 5G, LTE, advanced types of technology, and we do bring Google fiber to market–granted, it’s a web pass product, but they are now coming, we see a competitive landscape that’s about to explode. So, if the vision is that the City gets involved to drive competition, we see the market setting up to do that. So, the risk would be–let’s say Council had authorized the study to put together a business plan and go to get approval this fall, by the time we actually started putting fiber on poles, we would be competitor, potentially, number seven or eight in the market. And, really, our $75 price point would seem pretty non-competitive. What I try to discuss with the Councilmembers is we want the benefit but how do we get clear on the specific outcomes we’re trying to achieve? We know that 15 percent of our City today is not connected with a wireline broadband service. And we think that that’s unacceptable. Ninety thousand homes that need service. So, how do we close that gap? And to that end, Chance Hunt and David Keyes are working on the 2018 Technology Indicators Report. That will give us fresh data on the barriers we’ve seen to someone getting connected. We can talk about cost. If we think that one of the barriers is a $9 a month discount service is too expensive, what are the ways for we as a City to make that cheaper? One of the ironies of muni broadband is we would not be able to give away service for free because of the Washington State Accountancy Act. We would have to deliver it at cost, and even in the most optimistic way you could capture costs, we’d still be charging $26 to $30 a month. So, figure it out. And this is something that perhaps the Broadband Committee could help with, and get us crystal clear on the problems we’re trying to solve that we think a broadband utility would help with, I bet we would come up with some really innovative ways to move forward more quickly with less risk. That said, it would be cool to have us being a broadband provider, but we haven’t figured out the financing yet.
Harte Daniels: So you have moved to some Microsoft business production tools. 365, etc., there is a free resource, no sales involved. They will come on-site and help with workflow, improving work flow, production, and also project management from any of the departments. I can connect you with that person later, if you wish. As I said, there is no money involved and no future sales involved, because you have already made the purchase.
Michael Mattmiller: Is this a Microsoft resource?
Harte Daniels: Yes. Audrey Gordon. And if you’re interested in seeing what she can produce in just an hour [unintelligible] over the weekend and all day.
Second is that Seattle City Light is having problems with their billing statements, and it’s hitting the social networks. There are some high egregious billings that has been going on and the former –what’s another word for excuse? Explanation?–that was given at the beginning of the year, as well as the new one, is not panning out as people discussed it on social media. So, you may need to be aware of that, and maybe your project managers will be able to help you. I’ll give you one example. Since everything was estimated on an empty house, Seattle City Light charged, over the course of eight months, and were continuously told that there was nobody in the house, and no electricity being used, an $882 bill. All avenues were pursued and that’s just one example. So, there is a problem brewing and I just wanted you to know about it.
Michael Mattmiller: Thank you for highlighting that. To unpack that a little bit, I think the problem that cropped us recently that folks maybe heard about was in the transition to the new billing system, there was a blip where some people who had electronic billing, but manual payments, for whatever reason, the flag in the third party billing system delivered that email that says, here’s your bill, did not set, and in our billing system, we did not send you a paper bill. So, over the course of about one year, you can imagine that that results in some large balances for people. It was identified, has been highlighted, and City Light has reached out to the affected individuals. Unfortunately, we as a City cannot gift public resources. Whereas the private sector that delivers a utility perhaps could say, “Our bad. We’re going to forgive whatever.” We can’t do that. But what we could do and did do is we offered payment plans, to say we’re really sorry, we’re going to spread this out over time to give you time to pay it. That issue has been resolved.
Now, you’re also describing an issue which I don’t want to speak to with too much confidence because it is not my area, is that there is the practice where, for whatever reason, a meter reader cannot get to a meter, that City Light will estimate usage, so that way you can still get a bill, you can pay something, and it gets trued up later. If there are questions about that practice, I’m happy to see if we can get ….
Harte Daniels: There are multiple issues and examples. And even some who are on the low income plan that you’re talking about, and so I’m just bringing that to your program manager or project manager to look into the issues.
Michael Mattmiller: Thank you. I’ll do that and I’ll take that back to Tara Duckworth. But what I’ll also encourage those who have billing questions or concerns, the best thing is to get those to City Light so they can investigate. And if there is a potential issue where folks aren’t following up, you can certainly reach out to me and I’m happy to figure out how we answer that.
Jose Vasquez: Thank you. We have time for maybe one last question.
Harte Daniels: Just thank you for the complexity of work that has been done this past year. The issue of organizational change in management is always a ticklish one.
Jose Vasquez: I just want to remind folks, if you wouldn’t mind speaking up. We are recording the meeting for transcribing purposes and also uploading this to the CTAB web site later on for future reference, so please speak up. Thank you. Now we have a presentation on the Civic User Testing Group, Open Seattle. We have Megan Bruce and Leili Slutz. Welcome!
CIVIC USER TESTING GROUP
Megan Bruce: Hi, everyone. My name is Megan and I’m one of the co-organizers of Open Seattle. If you haven’t heard of Open Seattle, we are a group of people who work in tech and care about tech. We advocate for open data in civic-type projects. We meet out at Socrata on the fourth Wednesday of every month. If you’re interested in civic tech, and you want to get involved, swing by. Or talk to me. I’ll be around.
I wanted to talk to you tonight about a project that we are piloting, just starting now through May, called the Civic User Testing Group. Has anyone heard of this project? This is a collaboration between Open Seattle and the City of Seattle and the University of Washington information school. We’re getting started, and I just wanted to bring this project to your attention. I think you guys would be really interested in this project, just because it does involve residents getting involved in technology. I’m also interested in hearing any feedback about any engagement strategies that we might employ to get people to join this testing group.
I want to explain what the Civic User Testing Group is, explain the pilot launch that we’re doing, how we’re designing these test sessions, analysis and impact. I’ll show you the kind of results that are happening in Chicago, as an example, where they have also done this work. And our community outreach plan. I’m sorry, I should have introduced Leili Slutz, who is working with me, as well. She is a researcher and project manager, so she has a lot of experience with that.
So, I’ll talk about the community outreach plan, future goals, and then I’ll take any questions.
One of the specific user testing groups: This is a community of residents who are testing civic web sites and apps. A civic web site would be considered any technology meant to improve the lives of residents. An advantage of the Civic User Testing Group is that residents are involved. They get to express their views on these apps and web sites. They get to go through a test and provide usability issues that they see. It helps them to build some tech skills, and it also engages them most importantly in the creation of the technology that is intended to serve them. I really wish I could say that I came up with this, but I didn’t. But if it doesn’t work for you, it doesn’t work. I think that’s really accurate. It’s working on technology that can better meet the needs of Seattle residents, and thereby driving adoption of those products and better outcomes for everyone.
Successful models. I mentioned that they are doing this in other cities. Smart Chicago collaborated with a civic tech group. In Chicago, they actually wrote the book on this. And it’s like an 80-page novel about how to start a civic user testing group, down to everything at play. Here’s how much money you need, and here’s how you talk to people about it. They made it super-replicable, which makes it really easy to replicate here in Seattle. They have already held 30-plus testing sessions in Chicago. They published all of their results online. They’re getting really good traction in terms of these technology products, the next iteration actually involving resident feedback. They actually reach residents in all 77 community areas. We’ll talk a little bit later about a community outreach plan. but we really want to do something like that, where we’re reaching residents across the City, so we’re not simply getting people from downtown Seattle, who already work in tech, but we want people who live in Rainier Beach, and people who live in Northgate. We want them to be involved, as well. It really should include all residents.
They’ve inspired and there are civic user testing groups in Miami, Oakland, Detroit, and growing. So, this is something that is national level expanding to local areas. That’s why it’s come to Seattle.
I won’t go into detail here, but this is who we’re working with right now in the pilot. Emily, who is also an organizer with Open Seattle. I introduced Leili, and Nick at the University of Washington. He is key in our partnership with UW on this. And, of course, Candace, who is helping us to bring some projects for the pilot.
The pilot launch has three tech sessions from now to May. And I would mention that we are in the process of finalizing our contract with the City so that we do have funding to pay the residents who will be involved in this group. When I say the residents are paid, I should have mentioned that they receive a $20 VISA gift card for each session they attend. Our first session–and we have already started working on this–is with SDOT. We’ll be testing their winter weather map. The goal will be working with SDOT to understand what kind of feedback they want about this map, and then working with residents to understand if this is meeting their needs, if this is really helping them, if this interface is useful for them, if it’s giving them the information that they need. And then, SDOT can use that. They have said that they would like to use that feedback for the next iteration of their map.
Just a note on how the tech sessions will work: I mentioned Leili. She will be taking the lead in training the trainers. We will have a core group of facilitators who have experience with design and can work with these residents so they can understand how to successfully test. They will train other facilitators, probably a lot of people from UW since we have that partnership. We’re aiming for a ratio of two to three residents per facilitator. It’s not actually one-on-one, but very small groups. We are providing a lot of support to the residents there. We’re aiming to hold these locally. We don’t quite know yet what our member base will look like, but we want to make sure that we’re reaching them, and not telling them to come downtown. We would like to hold these sessions in local library branches, and community centers where the residents live.
And then the test results will be analyzed and delivered to the stakeholders. We will deliver a detailed report to SDOT with that feedback. We would also publish it publically online so everybody can see it. Obviously, we want to work with keeping everything open, but also having some accountability about what residents feel.
What kind of impact can this have? This is from Smart Chicago, one of their tech sessions, where they tested what is called Open Grid, which is sort of a map on open data which residents can use to find 311 call data in their neighborhood, or something like that. You can see here that one of the questions that was asked is how easy it is to find 311 service requests. And you can see that the residents said it was really difficult. So, the feedback here from Chicago is that they mentioned [unintelligible]. The next version of Open Grid actually addressed a lot of the issues that came from this, to specifically made it easier to find these types of service requests. Apparently, a lot of residents didn’t know that this existed, so this also helped to bring awareness to the people.
Another example: They tested the open data portal in Chicago. One of the questions they asked was how to help testers to find and use data. This is an example of how they synthesized. this is what we were willing to do, as well. But synthesizing that feedback and making recommendations based on the findings from that feedback that we can then provide to that stakeholder.
The Chicago Department of IT and Socrata are considering a new approach to open data, portals laid out based on resident feedback.
The community outreach plan — and again I welcome any feedback on this after I stop talking at you– I’m meeting with SPL this week. We want to get their input. We want to get flyers into library branches and community centers. The City has a list of all of those community centers, which is super helpful. Prior to outreach to community groups, I’m also referencing the social justice initiatives. They have community survey and their partners, so I thought that would be a good start. We’re reaching out to all of them. We’re working with the Department of Neighborhoods community engagement coordinators, and our goal is to recruit 100 residents. We want to keep track of the communities that they’re coming from to make sure that we are tracking whether or not we are accurately representing the Greater Seattle community.
Dorene Cornwell: Seattle winter weather map sounds like a good idea to me, but I’m a screen magnifer user, so I know that [unintelligible] does mapping information for users if a challenge anyway. I’m curious about your testing process. Are there any blind testers in the pool? And the other point is that if I come to the library, and I’m playing with it and I find the Seattle weather map, I might at some point just need a human to say, ‘I live in Ballard, and what is the weather map in Ballard for winter weather or whatever.’ If there is a training for the humans that are going to be the first tier of support about different things, that would sometimes solve problems that you sometimes can’t necessarily solve with current technology.
Megan Bruce: Yes, that’s good feedback. I do think that the way we are thinking about designing the sessions would be to ask questions like that. I would want to know, for example, if someone says, ‘I live in Ballard,’ and don’t know how to use this map to find…. [unintelligible]
Dorene Cornwell: [unintelligible] I’m just worried that using my Chrome book I might not be able to figure out something on the map.
Megan Bruce: Yes, and that kind of feedback is exactly what we want.
Just a word on future hope. I mention this as a pilot, so we’re only doing three tech sessions. But we really do envision this as being a service to the broader civic tech community. Assuming that the pilot goes well, we will be looking for more funding, which the stakeholders in other cities have done. Right now our budget doesn’t include transportation, and we realize that that was something that we really needed to include. We are actually going to try to use some of that funding that we have to get that, but that’s something we are thinking about. How do we get that sustained funding and really make this accessible for all residents. And then, continued recruitment, just to make sure that we’re getting more people, and we’re recruiting residents that represent the greater Seattle community.
Here’s some content information. We just launched our web site last week. It’s http://openseattle.org/cutgroup and that actually has our business target for residents. It has our sign-up form. there’s some information there about the group, as well. And there’s our email address, if you need more information. Any options or thoughts that you may have, I would love to hear them.
We’re working with Candace pretty closely. She has been working with the City. Since we’re contracted with the City for the pilot, we are working just on City projects. Candace has been talking to a lot of people about where the needs are for that kind of testing. For the pilot, we’re working to get projects on our radar. But there are other projects, once we are independent. Since I am coming from Open Seattle, our members are creating their own civic tech apps and things like that. So, the idea would be down the road when we have sustainable funding and can support more projects, Open Seattle members, when they’re building tech, they would also face the cut groups that they would be building for.
David Keyes: Are you going to be looking to recruit facilitators?
Megan Bruce: Yes, good question. We are looking to recruit facilitators among residents. We’re in the process right now of thinking about how we should recruit both of those schools of people. As I mentioned, the community outreach was more for residents for facilitators. I think we will probably be starting with the University of Washington students, but we also are talking about recruiting in the rest of the community as well.
David Keyes: We also would be happy to send out stuff through our community technology list. There are a lot of grantees who are running labs.
Megan Bruce: Oh, that would be awesome. Thank you.
Dorene Cornwell: I would encourage you to send it out to the Mayor’s Office for Senior Citizens list, as well, for a couple of reasons. Some of the people will be seniors, and some others with accents and other difficult stuff will get in the way.
Megan Bruce: Great point, too, that we make sure we use senior citizens.
Jose Vasquez: Also, along those lines — we are running out of time, but one last question. Do you have the capability of training people in different languages?
Megan Bruce: Yes. Another good question. I think for this pilot, we don’t right now. but one thing I have wanted was that we get Spanish translation on our web site and our flyers. That wouldn’t be something that we can do during our pilot period, but that definitely we would want to do once we get a little bit more support. Because, yes, that’s really important if we want to reach all residents.
Jose Vasquez: I definitely recommend reaching out to the people who have received Technology Matching Project funds, because they work with people who are sometimes hard to reach. Maybe train some of their staffs to become facilitators.
Megan Bruce: That’s a really great idea. Thank you. We can definitely do that.
Steven Maheshwary: We have digital literacy events coming up in community centers in north and south Seattle.
Jose Vasquez: Unfortunately, we’re out of time for this session. But during the networking break, please feel free to continue the discussion, if you can stick around.
Harte Daniels: I have worked for two years with Open Seattle. I would very much caution the board about working with them. I have a lot of reasons for that. And I would be more than happy to address this.
Jose Vasquez: Thank you. Now we’re moving on to the Basel Action Network.
BASEL ACTION NETWORK
Bob Akers: Hi, I’m Bob Akers with the Basel Action Network. Basel Action Network is an environmental watchdog group. So, I’m kind of the environmentalist. You guys left the door open and I creeped in through the back.
The e-Stewards program is certification. We make sure that the folks who are refurbishing and recycling machines do it properly. They don’t submit to places we don’t want it to go. We usually catch people doing some naughty things, and we call them out. Through the process of doing this, I felt that we could do a lot more community good. We have 115 facilities across the United States, refurbishing and recycling electronics. Most of this is coming from the corporate world. So we have a lot of good corporate technology coming out. And it seems to me, environmentally, and socially, it’s a stupid thing to grind it up, destroy it and send it off. We have a lot of corporations that have an ITAM/ITAB model. So, they’re developing revenue off of this stuff for resale through our network. What we’re doing with our new program, is we’re going out and trying to convince the corporations to give up some of that revenue and let us convert some of those machines into digital inclusion programs across the country. I piloted this in Kansas City, starting in 2015, and again, I was the environmentalist, just trying to make sure nobody was jacking up. And I found myself sitting in the Mayor’s office with people much smarter than me who kind of turned me on to this whole digital inclusion program.
I’m really just a pasty, pale, white dude from the suburbs, so going to community centers, going to public housing wasn’t really on my radar. I didn’t know what I was going to see. When I went in, the first thing I noticed were a lot of machines that were just a hodge-podge collection of machines that people were trying to deploy that weren’t well supported. And we started trying to think about how can we do this. How can we gain the trust of the people we’re trying to serve? One of the best ways we were able to do that was to get the corporate gear that’s only about two years old, refurbish it to a standard. It’s a tough standard. You have to abide by international law. You have to refurbish to the standard, as well as recycle to the standard. And if you don’t, we call you out. Because you should be called out. If we get this equipment and we refurbish it to the standard, and we redeploy it into low income housing units or to low income families, we give those people the tools they need to finish education, apply for jobs, to do job searches, to just better their lives. We’ve got a large part of our population that can’t participate in our society. There’s a lot of talk about the ‘glass ceiling,’ well here’s a ‘cast-iron ceiling.’
When I was running the program in Kansas City, I had a lot of kids coming in from public housing that we would train. And they were our de facto IT support group at public housing after hours when we weren’t there. When you would talk to these kids, a lot of these kids said when asked, ‘What do you expect out of life?’ And they thought that maybe $10/hour would be the best that they could ever do unless they do other things. I didn’t want to ask what other things are, but I have a good imagination. So, we were able to take these young people in. Some days, I feel like I should dance and have a celebration, and other days, I want to kick a table over when I throw this out. But we had four kids on that program who got CISCO-certified. And when I left Kansas City, they were making $35/hour. These are the kids that go back to public housing and they’re the heroes. They’re the new rock stars. They are the kids that the other kids look up to. They’re driving cars. They have clothes. They’re not doing ‘other things.’
So, with that in mind, I started looking around. We have another pilot program we did in Madison, Wisconsin. At the moment, I’m talking to the State of Rhode Island, the State of Florida, San Francisco, Portland, Renton, St. Louis. Of course, Kansas City is still going pretty strong. And we’re just trying to slowly expand this thing out. And we’re doing it by really working to build coalitions in each one of these cities. Because we know that cities can’t do it all, but the cities that provide us a framework, we can go in and we can do a lot of good.
I was talking about Rhode Island. Two companies in Rhode Island will refresh their IT and give us in excess of 4,000 machines to redeploy into low income families. With 4,000 machines in Rhode Island, I might have just taken care of all of Rhode Island. That’s a lot of machines. If you start looking at larger centers, with more corporate power, they’re refreshing their machines; we take those out; and we refurbish them. What we’re telling the corporations is let’s not disrupt your revenue flow. Let’s not really go after your ITAM/ITAB model. Let’s let you make the revenue, but let’s get a portion of those going towards the problem. And the more corporations that get involved, the easier it is. In Kansas City, in three weeks, I had 1,480 machines that I got in from corporations that I was able to redeploy. For Kansas City public housing, I only needed 1,900. I was able to do that, and then I was able to put up five community learning labs rght down the spine of the inner city. I was able to do that because we developed a really strong coalition. So, you’re going to hear me say coalition a lot, because that’s really how we solved the problem in Kansas City. It’s how we solved or are solving the problem in Madison, Wisconsin. It’s what I’m proposing in St. Louis. St. Louis is now going to be mentored by Kansas City. They’re both in the middle of the country, so it will all work out. It’s a great way to go.
We have an abundance of machines. We have the ability to go to corporations now , and not only talk to their sustainability officers, but we can talk to their corporate social responsibility officers. Our story of screaming about the environment sometimes with the corporations has gotten a little bit thin, and they’re not paying as much attention to us as they did five or ten years ago. Unless they swallow one of our little GPS trackers and say, ‘yeah, you might be a news story,’ then they might pay attention and let us come back in and talk to them. But it’s a lot more fun to talk to a corporation and say, ‘why don’t you do something good for your community?’ Why don’t you have a nice story you can tell? Why don’t you work with your city government, and see yourself getting pushed up to a better level? Be seen as somebody who really cares about your community.
For corporations, if you’re talking about the future, if you own an airline and you have people who can’t make a living, they’re not going to buy a ticket. If you own a resort, they’re not going to buy a ticket. If you’re producing something and you need skilled labor–and we’re shrinking our skilled labor pool down because of educational issues–you’re going to pay more money to find skilled labor. We can address all of that.
Jose Vasquez: I’m sorry, I have to interrupt. I want to leave some time for questions.
Bob Akers: Yes. I’m done. Thank you!
Jose Vasquez: Quick time for one or two questions?
Steven Maheshwary: Yes, Specifically, have you seen leveraging this group or speaking more specifically, what kind of framework or coalition do you see in Seattle that would help enable this program?
Bob Akers: Sure! The way we’ve done it in the past, and I think the way it will work in just about any city, we have to work closely with digital literacy folks. We have to work closely with the City to find the targets. We have to work with digital literacy groups to find or create a delivery system. Being introduced to the right people in the corporate world. I do some of that myself. I’ve been called a force of nature sometimes when I get on a roll. I’m trying to do some things here in Seattle. A lot of it is communication. I have e-stewards in Washington State. I have e-stewards in the Seattle area, communicating with digital literacy groups and really help us figure out how they work together. I’m in a different position because I’m not running one of these things now. I’m sort of above it. But my phone is on, 24-7. I will go anywhere now.
Heather Lewis: For those of us who work in corporations, do you have contact information?
Bob Akers: Yes. http://e-steward.org
Question: When you receive these machines, how do you ensure that corporate data is not retained.
Bob Akers: Yes. We haven’t seen the E-Storage, it’s about 80 pages. A good four or five of those are just data security. Our folks have to go through and tick off every one of those things. So, when we talk to corporations, the corporations are well aware of what an e-storage standard is. When we go to a corporation, we address risk, liability, and data security, as well as the environmental issue. You’re not going to find your stuff in the territories of Hong Kong.
Jose Vasquez: Now we are in the Public Comment and Announcement section. So, if somebody wants to ask a question as a public comment?
Harte Daniels: As most of the people on the board are aware, there is already Interconnection, which is working with this. How can we amplify or conflict with Interconnection?
Bob Akers: I’m actually talking to Interconnection and I’m trying to bring them over to our side.
Harte Daniels: Which means there’s a conflict.
Bob Akers: No, not really. I guess it’s public knowledge. Interconnection got caught with one of our GPS trackers, doing stuff where they shouldn’t. So, I’m trying to convince them that they should be certified to our standard and not do that anymore. We’re having very nice conversations with Interconnection, so I think we’ll have that straight.
David Keyes: But they did change their vendor after that. I think a question of whether what is required, having talked to Interconnection, and what’s required for them to become an e-Steward. Is that process achievable and affordable and something that they want?
Harte Daniels: There are people already doing this. How the amplify or conflict would be something to answer to the board members more fully at a later time.
Jose Vasquez: My recommendation would be that you become part of the Digital Literacy Coalition. I think that’s the space where we can have these conversations on how to collaborate more instead of compete/
Bob Akers: There’s plenty of good to do. We don’t have too much.
Dorene Cornwell: You didn’t mention in your list of coalitions low income housing providers or low income housing residents.
Bob Akers: Oh, we do. We work with the housing authorities in every city. I put all of that under the heading of ‘City.’
Jose Vasquez: One last question on this topic, and then I want to open it up to general public comments.
Question: I was wondering why limit this to just corporations? Why not expand this program to the residents of the city, especially a city like Seattle. There is a huge tech population and a lot of people have technology that they would like to recycle.
Bob Akers: Every city is different. The logic behind what we’re doing is really applying financials within the organization. If we’re bringing in everything from a corporation, we’re going to have a bunch of really matching equipment. And the technicians working through it are going to be able to move through it quicker. If they find failures, they’re going to be able to create an inventory of spare parts that will go back to the equipment they’re working on, and it’s all going to be of the same vintage. So, it’s a little bit easier for the technicians when they’re working on it. If we come up short, of course we will look for other ways to get machines.
Chance Hunt: The City of Seattle is in contract with where City surplus is going. So, there is another non-corporate entity. Also, any citizen, anyone who owns a computer, can take it to a refurbish place and donate it or leave it there. I think the opportunity with working with the City is we can help amplify your options as a computer owner. What happens at the end of life? How do you protect your security? Those kinds of issues. And what we think is that’s actually another framework, another piece, of the digital literacy skill development. So, what do I do as an owner, or as a responsible user at the end of life in dealing with that. That’s also part of the process that they also deal with. It really covers a full range of interest, but individuals can provide that computer any time they want.
Jose Vasquez: Thank you. Now I’m going to open it up to general public comment and announcements. If anyone has any announcements, celebrations, comments on any issues or topics? Now is the time.
PUBLIC COMMENT AND ANNOUNCEMENTS
David Keyes: Dan sent me some announcements. I did print out some copies of the listing of events and things. If folks want to grab that, I have some copies here.
Harte Daniels: There’s a celebration by year 2016 TMF recipients of overlooked minorities. Since this is their month of recognition, I put some facts down on their educational programs. There are classes for people on how to teach STEM. There is also a resource that I feel that most nonprofits and other people that work with diverse groups inside Seattle should become aware of and that is the medical study called Basis. You can read up on it from that. Additionally, I’m a proponent of Bottom Up, and I would like to see the board and the City use some of that money from the residents themselves developing these programs, as opposed to having a big brother, top down approach. And I think that a bottom up approach will also help in this turbulent time where people do not trust their government. This is a basic management concept going to one-on-one with people.
Jose Vasquez: I do want to open the floor to any other public comment. I do urge you to have this conversation with the Digital Inclusion Committee, or the TMF review guidelines.
Harte Daniels: There needs to be a government committee. Because we’re talking about groups of people coming with their hat out to the City budget. We have to recognize that some of the residents come here….
Jose Vasquez: I do want to open the floor to other people who haven’t had the opportunity to speak up. We do appreciate you sending out a list. If anybody does want to see a summary that Dan has brought up–and they are great. I do encourage you to take a copy, because there are some really cool events coming up. Any other announcements?
Charlotte Lunday: Yes. Just an update. The FCC has, on October 26, put out a number of things, including Indivisible’s comment that would affect the Lifeline program, that specifically designates eligible telecommunications carriers. I haven’t done much reading into it, but I do have the Docket numbers, if anyone wants to look into it.
Heather Lewis: Would you mind providing that for the record?
Charlotte Lunday: Yes. The Docket numbers are WC 17-287, and then there’s 11-42. And then there’s 09-197.
Heather Lewis: Can you repeat that one more time?
Charlotte Lunday: Yes. The Docket numbers are WC 17-287, and then there’s 11-42. And then there’s 09-197.
Jose Vasquez: Thank you. One last announcement. Latinos in Tech has a happy hour scheduled for this Friday. You are all welcome to join us this Friday from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. down at the Level Office. 600 First Avenue, to meet some Latinos in tech. Not just for Latinos. Everybody is welcome. Before I move forward, David Keyes kindly reminded me that there is a sign-in sheet somewhere–maybe it’s going around. Please be sure to sign in if you haven’t had a chance already. We can send you the minutes, so you have a record of this meeting.
David Keyes: There was a recent blog post on the Baton Rouge Foundation site about some of the FCC proceedings on the Lifeline program. http://baton.org in their blog has a post about that.
Jose Vasquez: Thank you. Now we have an update on the Surveillance Ordinance.
SURVEILLANCE ORDINANCE UPDATE
Torgie Madison: I’ll probably be able to get you some of your time back. It’ll be pretty quick. Ginger Armbruster and a bunch of other selected members from the City of Seattle were meeting to basically go over the Surveillance Ordinance request to the standing committee for process for reviewing all existing or new technologies that are proposed by departments. So we’re getting a review process to make sure that they don’t disproportionately impact certain people or neighborhoods. We met four times. The scope and definition of exactly what the City was looking for changed throughout that process. But, basically, Ginger was able to settle on instead of standing up a group that would be permanent, sort of changed that process. She created a draft, got it reviewed by Michael Mattmiller. So, we’ll probably have more on that in next month’s meeting. I don’t think there is going to be any more activity on that moving forward. It seems like we have had this discussion, and talked about engagement. The Department of Neighborhoods was a big resource there in reaching a conclusion, getting it finalized, and that should be that.
Jose Vasquez: Thank you. Will there be a report specifically on what CTAB’s role would be?
Torgie Madison: Yes. We should be getting a final draft of that soon. But CTAB will be involved basically if there is a need for public comment, or if there is a specific technology that we have a focus on, we could give feedback to this group. That would be our participation. So instead of having a member that is on a permanent board, or committee, we would work within the process as a whole. But yes, CTAB was definitely included, and will be important to that going forward.
Jose Vasquez: Thank you for that. Good summary.
David Keyes: Torgie, just a quick question. Is there a product coming out of that that would be useful to report back?
Torgie Madison: Yes. I don’t know if I can share it yet, because it’s still getting approved and reviewed. But they should have something printed by next month.
Heather Lewis: Torgie, there are a lot of new people here today. Would you mind giving a quick overview on what the Surveillance Ordinance is?
Torgie Madison: Yes. The Surveillance Ordinance was proposed by City Council and the idea is that there was a need identified for reviewing technologies that might disproportionately surveille or spy upon certain groups of people, people of certain socio-economic status, or people in certain neighborhoods. As part of the Surveillance Ordinance, there is a clause that said that any new technology this is proposed by a department, if it meets certain inclusion criteria and isn’t on an exclusion criteria list, needs to have some sort of review process. That was what Ginger was trying to formalize with what her review process looked like, and who was going to be involved. I was CTAB’s representative to make sure that we were involved in that discussion and could remain involved going forward. The tricky part is it said any new technology or existing technology–and that includes having every department go through and review every one of their technologies that they have ever proposed to see if it meets this criteria, and if it does, reviewing it somehow. So, that has added up to something like 300 different technologies. The idea was that they would have a cadence of about one technology per department per month, and go on this year-long journey of reviewing technologies. So, it’s a huge undertaking. I think that’s the summary.
Heather Lewis: Yes. Thank you for taking that on.
Torgie Madison: Ultimately, that list of that set of technologies will go to City Council for their final review. That’s where this is all heading eventually.
Chance Hunt: So, it’s not just an internal departmental review, but to Council. And that is how the process you were just describing can even be created. How is that all going to happen.
Jose Vasquez: Thank you. So, now we’re on to our networking break. I might cut it short by one minute if people don’t mind. We will come back at 7:10.
BREAK
Jose Vasquez: All right. Welcome back, everybody. Let’s get the agenda back on track. I’m going to propose that we do a real quick change to the agenda, if people don’t mind. Amy has to leave pretty soon, so in order to keep the quorum for the vote, I’m going to move up the board expansion proposal up next.
Heather Lewis: I second the motion.
Jose Vasquez: There is a second. All in favor? Motion carries. Next, we’ll go on with the expansion proposal. We will do a quick update on the conversations we’ve had?
BOARD EXPANSION PROPOSAL
Heather Lewis: Sure. The CTAB members had an opportunity last Tuesday to have a conversation about priorities for 2018 and the work that was accomplished in 2017. A big part of that was looking forward and looking at the proposed goals of Seattle IT, Seattle City Council, and the Mayor-elect. Just looking at what we hoped to do, and get aligned with them. And we had a conversation about the size of our board. Currently, we have ten members. Historically, we have had 15 members. The thoughts were that we would be much more successful in achieving our goals if we were able to expand the size of the board. With that, I’ll hand it back over to Jose, who put together some language.
Jose Vasquez: Thank you. The official language is we’re going to make a motion that where we currently have the ten members, we have nine members with two-year terms, that are appointed by either the Mayor’s Office or City Council, and we have one Get Engaged member, which is a young adult member with a one-year term. Right now, it’s Steven Maheshwary. That’s according to Ordinance No. 124736, subject to approval by City Council confirmation. As our City continues to grow, and interest is growing here from a lot of community members that have been participating in our meetings but are not official board members. We are calling them super volunteers. There is especially a lot of interest in Get Engaged in particular, to talk about these many technology issues. As the City grows, technology is quickly changing and really impacting everybody’s lives, this board has definitely taken on a lot of issues and policies to recommend for City Council and the Mayor’s Office. With that, we also want to provide leadership opportunities for those community members that are here and show up on a regular basis and want to be more engaged, and have that official voting power as a board member. Because, with that comes not only responsibility to be the voice for the community, but also be the ones to engage with our local elected officials, our local policy makers around the many issues we cover. So, with that we do want a motion to make our request to the Seattle City Council to expand the size of our board to 15 members in 2018, and then we have a proxy vote–well, first, I’ll make the motion. The motion is to propose by CTAB to request to the City Council to expand the size of our board to 15 members in 2018.
Amy Hirotaka: Second.
Jose Vasquez: Thank you. All in favor. We have four proxy votes who couldn’t make it. Eliab Sissay, John Krull, and Chris Alejandro read the summary and the proposal prior to this meeting. Oh, and Karia Wong, who is not on the phone yet, but she did proxy vote, right? So, I guess we’re all in agreement. Motion passes. The next step is working with David Keyes and the City staff to make this recommendation to City Council.
David Keyes: Yes. I’ll just put it in a policy memo form, to go to Michael Mattmiller, the City Council, and Mayor. Then we would head into the particular legislative code changes.
Jose Vasquez: This motion has to go through an actual law policy change, which is its own process within itself. If you want to find out more about that, definitely reach out afterwards. That’s a very interesting process within itself. I encourage people to learn about those processes.
David Keyes: And if the board wanted to suggest particular wording, other than just the change to 15 members, then you could look at the code and make specific recommendations for that.
Heather Lewis: I understand that these things can vary is terms of the time they are likely to take, but could you give us a ‘guesstimate’ in terms of when we might have an answer from City Council?
David Keyes: Well, that totally depends upon what City Council wants to do with it. So, I can’t make a statement about that. The process is either the Mayor and department can recommend legislation, or the City Council can recommend legislation. Typically, what they would do, then, is they would propose the legislation. It would go to a committee, and in this case, it is what is currently the Equity and Governance Committee that is chaired by Council President Harrell. The committee structure could change next year. That’s one of the things that will happen in early January, when the new Council member is seated. The Council will decide also if they will keep the same structure, or if they will change their committee structure. But whatever committee has technology will have that section of the code. So, it will just be introducing legislation, having a public meeting to discuss that, and then it could go to the Council.
Heather Lewis: Do you think it’s likely to be heard in 2018?
David Keyes: I would think so. It’s not my decision to make. It’s their decision. Obviously, it was brought up by Council also this past year, and with Council President Harrell asking you guys for a recommendation, we know that there is interest there in something that would move forward. The other question would be when that exactly takes effect. Does that take effect for positions starting in the beginning of 2019, and do the five new members get phased in? So that you have a cycling of not all CTAB members turning over at once. That’s another piece that would be in that kind of legislation. Functionally, that would be for new members, if you added five people at the beginning of 2019, will all five get seated and two or three of them serve a one-year term, and the others serve two-year terms to start a rotation. Or do a two-year and a three-year term. Those are the kinds of details in that order.
Jose Vasquez: Thank you. We’ll work together to develop that memo and then we’ll share it out with the board for feedback. We’re excited to work with Council. And maybe that’s an opportunity for us as individual board members to advocate to our Council representatives and remind them why our work is so important. We need all the help we can get. Thank you, everybody. That’s exciting. Do we have Karia on the line yet? If not, we’ll move to the Digital Inclusion Committee, while we wait for Karia. Mark DeLoura, were you going to give the update?
DIGITAL INCLUSION COMMITTEE UPDATE
Mark DeLoura: I wasn’t, but I can. It seems the thing to talk about is the Digital Literacy Network meetups. The first meetup was yesterday and 15 people showed up. Great discussion. Very interesting people. Definitely a lot of energy the idea of coalescing as a community and finding ways to use each others’ skills. The second meeting is tomorrow in West Seattle. And the third meeting is virtual on Friday. Please spread the word.
The idea of the Digital Literacy Network is essentially that there are so many people around town who are interested in improving the technical education of the citizens of Seattle, from the ability to access email, use Office to write their resumes, things like this, all the way up to the whole span of skills. There are so many people who are involved in it in one way or another, but for the most part, it feels like they don’t know each other. We are trying to accelerate the network and get underneath it.
Steven Maheshwary: Were there any TMF grantees at yesterday’s meetup?
David Keyes: Yes. Urban League, Multimedia Resource Training Institute, Literacy Source. I think there were a couple of others. I’d have to go through the list. Tomorrow, it is at Delridge Community Center at 10:00 to 11:30 a.m. and we have 17 people signed up for that. And then we’ve got 23 signed up right now for Friday’s online session. So, that will be like 45 to 50 people. Again, just to refresh, this is our goal, just having people to network and share resources. In Monday’s session, there was a lot of really good trading back and forth, and also even some projects that people identified to start working on together. I think interest curriculum standards, interest in how to market programs, thinking about the pathways between different programs, how do people approach curriculum for different audiences, for different immigrant refugees, and so on; and coding and what is the integration between those. So it is a good starting discussion.
After this, at our Digital Inclusion Committee meeting, we’ll talk about how what we’ve heard from some of these and bring that back, as well. One of our goals with the committee here, then, is how to take that feedback and send it back out for people to then come up with what project ideas they are interested in working on and prioritizing that. So, you started that discussion and will have the benefit of agreement. Charlie Eaton was at the one yesterday. Do you have anything to add in terms of that?
Charley Eaton: No. That’s about it. If you haven’t had a chance to go to one, they’re a lot of fun. And it’s a great network.
Jose Vasquez: Thank you. Just to wrap this up, the next Digital Inclusion Committee meeting is on Wednesday, November 29, 6:00 to 7:30 p.m., at the Sitting Room. The address is 108 W Roy St, Seattle, WA 98119. Chris Alejano sent me a summary. They’re going to be at the Digital Literacy Network meetups, to figure out next steps for CTAB. They’re going to start talking about TMF for next year, so if you want to be a part of that, definitely attend that meeting and I encourage you help us make some funding decisions next year. Karia, are you on the line?
Karia Wong: Oh, hi!
Jose Vasquez: Welcome. So perfect timing. We’re just getting to your Cable and Broadband Committee meeting update.
CABLE AND BROADBAND COMMITTEE UPDATE
Karia Wong: I thought you were going to do it for me, right? [laughs] I’m not sure whether Adam had a chance to update the Internet Basics at Century Link?
David Keyes: He’s sitting in the corner of the room here.
Adam Owens: I have actually not provided the update, but I know we have a meeting on the 27th of November to discuss the possibility of this program being relaunched back, changing it around and making it a little more robust. So I will hopefully have some updates after the 27th.
Karia Wong: I got an email from someone [Percy?] at CenturyLink saying that Internet Basics is back for another six months.
Adam Owens: Those details have not come to me yet. So I will have to check with him on what information there is, because it is still being discussed.
Karia Wong: I just got it this morning.
Adam Owens: Okay. I’ll check with them, because it has not been fully made public yet.
Karia Wong: I can forward it to you.
Adam Owens: Okay. Yes, please. That will be great.
David Keyes: Just so folks know for context, Century Link has had the Internet Basics low income program, and they announced recently that they were suspending that program, not allowing any new subscribers to that low income program, but were honoring those that were already subscribed who could stay for a total of five years under that program. We had asked Century Link about that and were surprised that that was happening. They were no longer under the FCC agreement to provide that. Obviously, there is discussion going on to continue to provide something.
Adam Owens: We’re definitely trying to look at trying to make it a little bit bigger and better than it was. But it just depends on what was discussed at that meeting.
Jose Vasquez: Karia, any other updates about the Cable and Broadband Committee?
Karia Wong: Here are a few things that I would like to update: Number one, we had a meeting last Monday, and Tony Perez joined us to give us an update on the WAVE low income program. It’s going to happen sometime between the end of this year and early next year. The draft application and enrollment structure is on the way and it’s expected to be done by the end of November. The speed will be 10MB. Meanwhile, a new company took over WAVE, and they are undergoing a lot of processes. I think for WAVE, the people who want to apply for the WAVE low income program is the same for Comcast and Century Link. So existing customers are not qualified for this program. These are the things that we know so far. I will keep you guys posted if we get an updates from the Cable Office or from other sources.
The other thing that I would like to update is the work we have been doing for the Broadband Committee is we are trying to create evaluation tools to evaluate internet programs available for low income families in Seattle. So far, we have identified a few categories that we would like to work on in addition to the speed and the price, we are also looking into the enrollment process, customer service, and tech support. Hopefully, with these evaluation tools, we’ll get a better picture of how affordable and accessible these low income broadband programs available in Seattle.
If you are interested, please join us. Our next meeting will be on November 28, 6:30 at the sixth floor of the Municipal Tower.
Dorene Cornwell: The 27th is Monday, Karia.
Karia Wong: I’m sorry! The 27th of November is correct. The last Monday of the month.
Jose Vasquez: Thank you, Karia. Now, we will move on to the Workplan for 2018, and a summary of 2017.
WORKPLAN FOR 2018; SUMMARY FOR 2017
Heather Lewis: Sure. I mentioned briefly that we had members of CTAB, or at least the majority of them had the opportunity last Tuesday to have a conversation about the work that was accomplished in 2017, and start looking at what we want to accomplish in 2018. I think part of that conversation was about the potential to bring on new members. But also, looking at our existing committees to see if they were still committees that still make sense, and if the work that we hope to accomplish in 2018 would fit nicely into those existing buckets, or whether we should be looking to create new committees, or merge committees. That conversation is still ongoing. And that would be something that we’d like to share and certainly hear from the broader CTAB community in December. So, we will have some notes put together and a couple of slides for December to kick-start that broader conversation. But we certainly look forward to hearing from you and sharing what it is that we put together so far.
Jose Vasquez: Thank you. Questions?
David Keyes: Just wondering, do you want to take a couple of minutes to just talk about what was accomplished in 2017?
Heather Lewis: We had hoped to include Karia in that conversation, and we haven’t had a chance to get her feedback on what happened in 2017. And Joneil Sampana also wanted to weigh in. The hope was that we could push that to December so that they can be included.
David Keyes: I’ll email something out because our Seattle IT is also working on their 2017 annual report, and trying to get that finished by the end of this week into early next week, before the December meeting. So, it would be great to try to get that list and our public information person said that she looked at a letter from CTAB in the Seattle IT annual report and had some references to CTAB this year. She’s working on that right now.
Heather Lewis: We have that information compiled. How about we contact Karia and Joneil, so they get added? We’ll get that up this week. And then we can report out and solicit feedback in December.
David Keyes: Okay.
Jose Vasquez: Thank you. Some administration updates: At the December meeting, we’re going to be voting on officers. If you are interested in stepping up and running for chair for next year, December is the time to be here. Also, please be here so we can have a quorum to vote on said officers and vice chair. We will use the same process as last year, which is a traditional process. Little slips of paper, anonymous votes. We’ll get it sorted out. And I can send out that process to the board membership to give a quick refresher on what that official process is. If you have any questions about serving as chair or vice chair, feel free to reach out to Heather or I, and we will be happy to talk about our experiences. Also, Amy Hirotaka. We are fortunate to have Amy as a previous board chair. You can get different perspectives about that. And Joneil. Lots of leadership here. We’re always looking for more emerging leaders. We’ll have that at the December meeting. Wear your best outfit.
Cass Magnuski: Your best t-shirt.
David Keyes: Your holiday sweater.
[laughs]
Jose Vasquez: Don’t put that in the record.
David Keyes: Just a reminder that we have a chair and a vice chair position. The board can determine if they want additional officers. One year, we had a second vice chair. If you want, I can send out the basic guidelines from our bylaws. It’s up on the web site, but I’m happy to send that out.
Jose Vasquez: That would be helpful. Thank you. I guess that’s an opportunity for us to discuss whether we do want a second vice chair. That is an option. If anybody is interested in having that conversation offline, I’m happy to participate. Great. Now we’ll do a brief wrap up, a summary of the meeting, and next steps.
WRAP UP AND NEXT STEPS
Jose Vasquez: Sorry, my notes are all over the place. Do we have a summary of decisions that we need to take moving forward.
Heather Lewis: We voted on the proposal to bring on new members, and we will follow up with at least language that we’ll need to submit it.
David Keyes: I’m going to send out to the officers a piece and summary of accomplishments. Sounds like you’ve already collected a lot of that, though.
Heather Lewis: I will send you what I have.
David Keyes: Okay.
Jose Vasquez: Thank you. We flew by that second portion of the agenda. Without further ado, that wraps up our November CTAB meeting. Thank you all for coming. Meeting adjourned.
MEETING ADJOURNED