Attachment D
Operations Vice
President Report
Archivist Report
Audio-Visual Committee (Slides) Report
Audio-Visual Committee (Video) Report
Cave Files Committee Report
Headquarters
Facilities Committee Report
Internal Organizations
Committee Report
Information Technology
Committee Report
Office Automation Report
Market Analysis Committee
Report
NSS Library Committee Report
NSS Operations Manager
Report
Photo Archives Committee Report
Speleo-Museum Committee Report
Colin Gatland
1151 Crestwood Hills Drive
Vandalia Ohio 45377
937-890-0339
cgatland@woh.rr.com
The Department of the Operations Vice President consists of 11 committees, plus the NSS Operations Manager and the NSS headquarters in Huntsville, Alabama. In this report, I provide the names, addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses of the chairmen of each committee or organization, followed by their reports. The committee and sub-committee chairmen have provided the information in this report, although I’ve made some spelling, formatting, and minor editorial adjustments.
Plans:
Get the second server up and running for Paul Stevens and his
on-line library project.
Start to revamp the NSS on-line bookstore website when the issues with the hosting company/server calm down.
Keep an eye on the on-line Speleo-Museum and it’s progress to ensure that this does in fact become a reality.
Progress:
We completed the Bats and Fragile Underground reprints without a
hitch. We have also reprinted the Lava Tubes brochure and have
plans for a reprint of the NSS Membership brochure later this
year. These stocks should be enough to hold us until the next
fiscal year.
We have changed hosting companies and now have server space of sixty gigabytes compared to one gigabyte with Xeran. Kelley has researched the second server that will be dedicated to Paul Stevens’ online library project and which will also include various NSS pubs. This second server is also sixty gigabytes. Paul will be moving the current online pubs and pub related material to the new server. This will keep pubs and related material to one dedicated place. We will be purchasing Adobe Content software that Paul will be using for the online library.
With the new server and the new space a unique problem has come up. How can we provide more for the membership that uses the web space for their web pages? We decided to basically more than double the basic space that we offer to IO’s and members and not charge any more than we had been. Now the IO’s and members can get 25 megabytes of space per year for $12 and $15 respectively. We will see how this goes for now, but would like to increase that space number even higher in the future.
The NSS Discussion Board has had a major facelift and upgrade. It is a much faster and powerful discussion board, and appears easier to use and navigate.
The on line Speleo-Museum is apparently just starting to possibly happen. Meredith Hall Johnson has agreed to help make this a reality. She has been in contact with the IT Team, so we see how it progresses from here.
The Office Automation Committee is no longer a part of the IT Committee and will focus on support for Stephanie and her current Office Databases.
Problems:
The server/hosting company change did not go well at all.
Many problems not caused on our side went wrong. The IT Team was
stretched to well beyond what should have been expected of
non-paid volunteers. Everyone that was experiencing a problem
with their particular web site that was associated with the NSS
site seemed to exhibit a "me, me, me" first and to heck
with everyone else attitude. That was quite an eye opener and
knowing the amount of work that the IT folks were putting into
getting things where they should be, it was somewhat disturbing.
People seemed to conveniently forget that those working to fix
the problems are unpaid volunteers with lives that in most cases
do not revolve around the NSS.
General Membership Update:
As of the end of May 2004 we currently have 958 General Members
this is an increase of around 33 since January 2004.
J. Reynolds Duncan, Jr.
153 Atria Drive
Toney AL 35773-9515
256-852-4522
Archives Committee Report
June 1, 2004
Plans:
Continue with the sorting and integration of Archives
material.
Progress:
Responded to several requests for information.
Problems:
None
Submitted By: Reynolds Duncan
Chairman, Archives Committee
Timothy C. White
2505A Toll Gate Road SE
Huntsville AL 35801
256-508-1908
kd4goc@bigfoot.com
Roswell "Jonsey" Jones continues to scan and archive slide shows to CD.
Ray Cole produced the copies of the 2003 NSS Convention Kodak Photo CD.
David Socky
6572 Woodbrook Drive SW
Roanoke VA 24018-5402
703-989-7693
sockydr@cox.com
May 2004 A/V Library Report
May 20, 2004
Plans:
Produce New educational video
Tray Murphy has expressed interest in helping with an
educational video about caving for children.
Convert more VHS programs to DVD format
DVD is becoming the format of the future. More and more
people are requesting programs on DVD.
Progress:
PDF Library catalogue
Produce a "downloadable" PDF catalog of the slide
and video library.
No progress
Update descriptions in library
Most of the descriptions for the video and slide selections
are very terse, and not very helpful. Programs need to be
reviewed and better descriptions written.
I have updated a few programs, plus new entries are getting complete descriptions right away. Still need to make sure the library has all the programs it should have.
Work with the TV/Video production Committee
Roberta Serface was recently selected to be the Chairman of
the TV/Video Production committee. I am a part of the committee
and plan to work closely with Roberta and others as much as
possible. This relationship can help both the TV/Video Production
Committee and the NSS AV Library.
No progress.
Problems:
None
Cave Files Committee:
Richard Blenz
8070 W Eller Road
Bloomington IN 47403
812-825-2345
rblenz@indiana.edu
June 2004 report of the cave files committee of the national speleological society. Assembled at Bloomington, Indiana.
Plans:
To keep going as usual til death do us part.
Progress:
The total number of caves to which the files can refer has just
reached 37,000. Also a quest for some grottos to send me
newsletters paid off. It was surprising to find groups who
never got word that two copies of newsletters should come to me
as well as Huntsville.
Problems:
I wish editors of newsletters would EDIT. With the general level
of education in K-12 as it is in this country, I would expect to
see some poor writing in newsletters but also expect editors to
make corrections, not so much with the language, but a lot with
content. I get perfectly good cave maps sometimes without a cave
name or state/county location given. The maps almost always have
a list of the surveyors of the cave but usually omitting the
cave's length and county. I run DeLorme's Street Atlas
simultaneously with my 37,000 cave list so when someone describes
a cave they found on Po Dunk Mountain, without state or county,
maybe just maybe, Atlas will have the mountain showing on map.
Then I find that the county line runs through the mountain and I
still don't know anything. It's fun, however, being the detective
in these quests.
Have fun and cave softly,
Dick Blenz 5671LF
NSS Cave Files Committee
Jim Hall
623 Larry Place
Madison AL 35758-1118
(256) 772-9829
jimehall@compuserve.com
Office facilities Committee nothing to report.
Jim Hall
Evelyn Bradshaw, Co-Chairman
5713 Castlebridge Rd Apt 226
Fredericksburg VA 22407-6044
540-785-5361
ebradshw@staffnet.com
Keith D Wheeland, Co-Chairman
2191 Mountain View Ave.
State College PA 16801-7214
(home) 814-238-2057
(e-mail) kwheeland@psualum.com
I/O Committee Report – May 16, 2004
Submitted by Keith D. Wheeland with input from the Committee
members
Progress:
Changes to I/O Status.
The Fort Knox Grotto (264) was reactivated 3/11/2004
The San Joaquin Valley Grotto (062) was reactivated 4/8/2004
The Juniata College Grotto (288) was reactivated 5/5/2004
The South Jersey Grotto (397) is temporarilly inactive
(2/14/2004) until they get some internal problems resolved.
The Shady Grove Grotto (443) was declared inactive 2/17/2004
The Rock Creek Grotto (437) decided to become inactive 2/15/2004
The Buffalo River Grotto (374) was declared inactive 3/16/2004
I/O Information on the Web.
The I/O web site at www.caves.org/committee/i-o/
is kept up to date. The information for regions, sections, and
surveys on the NSS website is updated manually by Gary Bush. He
is up-to-date with changes.
Annual Reports.
Today there are 233 active grottos, regions, and sections.
Here is the final status of how they submitted their annual
reports.
2003 Reports:
Submitted via the web 215 92.7%
Submitted by e-mail 8 3.4%
Submitted by USPS 9 3.9%
Total 232
Juniata College Grotto 1 (Reinstated after reporting period.)
Total 233
Dave Taylor processes reports from Surveys.
Liaison with Members Manual Committee
This year, using the I/O e-mail system, we alerted the I/Os
that the Members Manual was going to press, and gave them
sufficient time to make any corrections. We also posted an online
version of the I/O portion of the Members Manual on the I/O
website, and encouraged I/Os to review it and make any changes
prior to printing. We hope this action reduces the number of
inaccuracies in the printed version.
Plans:
Continue to be proactive in making improvements to the chartering
procedure, annual report procedure, and resolutions of issues
brought to the attention of the I/O Committee.
Problems and Issues:
Dropdown Box on NSS Website not Functioning
Since the NSS has changed servers, the I/O portion of the
online Members Manual has not been functioning. That is, the
dropdown box which allows a user to select a state. When they
select a state the action is designed to display all the grottos
for that state. Kelley Prebil is aware of the problem.
(Note: This problem was resolved by the IT Team…Colin )
Co-Chairmen: Keith D. Wheeland and Evelyn Bradshaw. Members: Gary Bush, Eric McMaster, Esty Pape, and Dave Taylor.
Kelley Prebil
PO Box 117472
Burlingame CA 94011
Mobile: 650-520-3150
webmaster@caves.org
Submitted by: Kelley Prebil
Progress:
Switched from Xeran to ValueWeb for a dedicated server. Still
need a Windows server for Paul Steven’s NSS Library site,
which will also host the NSS News and Journal.
On the new server, trying to get issues resolved with the PHP and Perl search engines. Perl search engine problem is most likely a problem with the cgi-bin configuration.
My friend, Josh Bailey, has helped us tremendously with configuration problems with the new server, including the Perl problem.
The membership forms were taken off of the NSS site and placed on my personal shared SSL certificate. This was done when Xeran killed our secure server account with them, which they never cared to tell anyone they were taking that server offline. After much frustration, Stephanie Searles was finally able to get them to give us our files off of that old server. Again, Josh helped out on getting the Perl scripts working on my third-party account.
I got a response to my posting for an IT Committee Assistant. Mike Dowden has volunteered for the position as he is willing to help filter incoming e-mails to the appropriate parties involved. Several e-mails have been sent directly to me in the past few months that I have had to spend time forwarding to those who can actually take care of the issues, greatly reducing the time I can spend fixing problems with the server.
Dave Olsen has volunteered to help out with PHP/MySQL stuff. I have him currently working on getting the PHP search engine working again for the IO look-up. He is also interested in working on a searchable members’ database that Colin Gatland first ran by me some months ago, which I did not and still do not have time to implement. Dave is going to come up with a sketch of what he has in mind. I have e-mailed Stephanie Searles and Colin Gatland to find out more information for Dave on the current method of organizing members and how this application will be used.
We have a new discussion board for the NSS using vBulletin’s technology. The old board was running off of text files with Perl scripts. The new one runs on a MySQL database and PHP scripts. There has been a dramatic difference with the speed of the board as MySQL has been optimized for use on the web and also, hey, it’s a database of course it’s faster than opening/closing several text files. I have been steadily adding moderators to the board in respective categories.
I created the FTP accounts for the new server. Doug Marchant has been e-mailing them out to people. Josh Bailey created the Perl script used on the command line to create the FTP accounts. So far this script has worked perfectly.
I registered www.nsspubs.org for Paul Stevens for the Windows server that we will hopefully have in the near future.
I ordered a new SSL certificate for www.caves.org I am currently waiting for authorization for the account with www.instantssl.org so we can get the certificate working for the domain. This will hopefully happen ASAP.
Doug created all the e-mail accounts and sent those out to people.
Plans:
Need a new design for the NSS site and also a custom skin for
the discussion board. These things will hopefully happen this
summer. I still need to find a home for www.nsspubs.org which
will hopefully happen sooner than later.
Problems:
Too many e-mails from people all telling me that something is
not working. Hence the reason why I searched for an IT Committee
Assistant to handle the flux of e-mails.
Doug did not quite understand the use of permissions and ownership in UNIX and overwrote the ownership of every single directory on the NSS site. I fixed this after my mild heart attack. From now on, I will be creating the FTP accounts while Doug hands them out and takes requests for them.
The sub-domains still are not working. The problem has been narrowed down to a DNS problem, which hopefully ValueWeb tech support can help us out with.
Phil Winkler
816 N Washington Street
Wilmington DE 19801-1510
302-571-1156
pwinkler@plmconsulting.com
Plans:
Provide a GUI (Graphical User Interface-Windows) front-end
software over selected tables in our NSSTrak database to increase
data sharing with other Windows programs. This may incur a
one-time cost of $695.00, but the provides both DDE and OleDB
capabilities to our data.
Progress:
Created a few new reports for the Office Manager, Stephanie.
Problems:
None
Phil Winkler
Office Automation
Debra Young
551 Homestead Ave NE
Palm Bay FL 32907
321-984-0228
suzyoung@bellsouth.net
Plans:
Still waiting for our first assignment.
Progress:
I have one solid volunteer, Jessica Gribble in Colorado. She
works in the marketing department of a publishing company. Her
husband has also volunteered. I believe he is a physicist. I did
get to meet them when I was vacationing in Colorado a couple of
months ago and they seem very capable. I also have one tentative
interest in Texas right now. I think he will not take much
persuasion. This is good for a start.
Problems:
None so far that I can foresee.
Debra Young
Richard Downey
380 N 600 East
Orem UT 84097-4843
801-224-6678
cavediva@msn.com
Plans:
I have been watching closely the local community college, which
has increased enrollment 200 % in the past 3 years. They are
looking at Electronic library options to compensate for space and
budget concerns. Although their problems are different than
ours, the way they address copyright issues would be similar. I
have worked with two of the librarians to extent in the past and
will be monitoring the progress they make to see if there are any
applicable items we could use.
Progress:
The wheels are still cranking slowly.
Problems:
No problems at present.
Richard
Stephanie Searles
National Speleological Society, Inc.
2813 Cave Avenue
Huntsville AL 35810
256-852-1300
manager@caves.org
Progress:
Micca, our p/t bookstore assistant, has a new, HP 1150 laser
jet printer with a parallel port.
In March, I prepared the letters and Bill mailed out the 25-, 35-, and 50-year pins to members reaching this milestone so that they’ll have them in time for Convention 2004.
March 30, the "Hidden World of Caves" Special 2003 NCA Convention orders were shipped. Micca took the initiative and e-mailed the caverns that had not placed an order to remind them of the special offer.
The following NCAs were shipped their order:
Crystal Caves – Kutztown, Penn.
Forestville/Mystery Cave State Park – Preston, Minn.
Mystic Caverns – Marble Falls, Ark.
Sierra Nevada – Vallecito, Calif.
Squire Boone Caverns and Village – New Albany, Ind.
Mammoth Cave NP – Mammoth Cave, Ky.
Diamond Caverns – Park City, Ky.
The combined orders brought in $1,200.00 in sales.
Since the Cave Minerals of the World price reduction (June 2003), total copies sold January 2004 – April 2004 = 79 vs. January 2003 – April 2003 total copies sold = 27. 52 more copies sold this quarter vs. last quarter.
The 4th Membership Renewal Special Flyer (10% discount on advertised NSS items for those members that renew their membership and purchase any item from the flyer) began in December 2003. Total sales to date = $1,345.00. I think these are sales we might not have received if we didn’t keep the bookstore in the minds of the members.
The office staff completed the bookstore inventory count on May 5th along with an auditor from Mercer and Associates. It’s a lot of work but everything went well. And there were no large discrepancies.
Dave Irving (and Karen) arrived on May 10th. Dave and I began the task of closing fiscal year 03 / 04. Ted Kayes arrived two days later for training on how to close the fiscal year. It’s hard work but everything went smoothly. Dave left the following Monday after a full day of work. The good thing is we ended up with a surplus on the books.
GOOD NEWS – "Taming of the Slough" arrived at the office on April 15th. Unfortunately, the printers sent half our copies to CDS in Florida, but that’s all been worked out and we now have all of our copies.
I notified all of the Speleo vendors.
David McClurg forwarded the paperwork for me to fill out to get "Taming" in the door at Quality Books. So far, they’ve ordered 30 copies.
I sent McClurg 21 promo copies for promotional mailings.
I was able to get "Taming" in the doors at Amazon.com. So far, they’ve ordered 17 copies.
We’ve sold over 200 copies of Taming of the Slough.
| NSS Book Store Sales 1st Qtr 2004 Comparsion 1st Qtr 2003 | ||||||||
| Month | Orders | Prd $ Total | Month | Orders | Prd Total | Order Variance | $ Variance | |
| Jan 2004 | 155 | 9,718.47 | Jan 2003 | 169 | 7,583.82 | (14) | 2,134.65 | |
| Feb 2004 | 111 | 9,863.67 | Feb 2003 | 125 | 8,934.34 | (14) | 929.33 | |
| March 2004 | 138 | 6,131.07 | March 2003 | 147 | 7,775.01 | (9) | (1,643.94) | |
| Qtr Total | 404 | 25,713.21 | Qtr Total | 441 | 24,293.17 | (37) | 1,420.04 | |
May 20th – 23rd, Avis and Jim attended SERA in St. Clair, Tennessee at Camp Davy Crockett.
SERA 2004 Sales = $1,274.00 vs. $1,558.00 for SERA 2003.
There were 380 registered cavers at the event.
2004 Convention Pre-Planning:
Hotel room reserved
Booked flight and received airline tickets
Reserved rental car.
Plans:
Consult with Phil and/or Les at PLM regarding the laptop settings
to avoid any corruption of files when we return from convention
and load the data from the laptop to the network.
Purchase new office scanner to replace the broken one so we can continue to scan book covers for the website.
Continue to train Micca on several of my essential job duties; therefore, when I take maternity leave in late October or early November the office will continue to run smoothly.
Problems:
Phil Winkler has resigned from the I/T Committee; therefore, I
have no programmer to assist me with database matters.
(Note: Phil Winkler no longer has ties to the IT Committee, his sole goal now is to offer support to Stephanie with database issues that may come up with the current Office software…Colin)
Karen Kastning
PO Box 1048
Radford VA 24143-1048
540-639-4666
karen@skyhopper.net
Summer 2004 Report of the NSS Photo Archives Committee
Submitted by Karen M. Kastning
(additional committee member, Ernst H. Kastning)
Plans:
Long-term plans: To establish a detailed
database for research purposes. A slight bit of progress on
this during this past spring: Primary activity is in cleaning of
old negatives that were received by the archives in VERY dusty
and often mildewed condition. Work is quite slow due to the
need to wash each negative/strip one at a time while taking care
not to scratch or further damage the work.
Short-terms plans and activity: Same as last time: work continues to progress (slowly) at putting sleeves on the large-format prints, sorting them into appropriate categories, and filing them.
Progress:
As mentioned in the plans section, some progress in
reconditioning (primarily B&W negatives) and storage
activities (large format prints). I have obtained some
additional supplies including negative and slide cleaner and
cleaning pads, recording pens, 2 x 2 slide mounts (both with and
without glass), protective sleeves for stereo mounts, and 5
albums with slip cases for light-tight storage of slides, photos,
and negatives.
Problems:
Same as last fall: I have not obtained any new photos directly
from any cave photographers this year. On another note, I
still need a HIGH QUALITY slide/negative scanner. It might
make some of my reconditioning work easier, as some of the
repairs may be tackled easier with photo-editing software/tools.
Craig Hindman
7600 Pindell School Road
Fulton MD 20759
410-792-0742
ctider@us.ibm.com
Progress:
Acquired three waterproof storage containers 6 feet tall on
wheels through Tom Lera.
I have identified an IT/Database volunteer, Meredith Hall-Johnson, who will be assisting me catalog the NSS Museum in preparation for the on-line Speleo Museum. We have scheduled our first meeting for early June.
Plans:
Temporary displays may be getting set up at Grand Caverns VA in
conjunction with the living cave display donated to them by CCV
and in the new museum at Organ Cave, WV—pending securable
display space.
Problems:
The 2004 group has yet to identify a securable space for a Museum
display at convention.
6/21/04