HomeMy Public PortalAboutCable Television Advisory -- 2010-02-02 Minutes Minutes of the meeting of the Brewster Cable TV Advisory Committee scheduled for 7:00 pm on
Tuesday 2 February 2010.
The meeting is called to order at 7:02 pm on Tuesday 2 February 2010 by Larry Greeley.
Members present at this time are:
Larry Greeley
Norman Adams
Larry Bugden
Janet Husband
Walter Powers
In the audience area tonight are Kathy Lambert,who is the information technology person for the town of
Brewster, and Steve Lipman,a resident of Brewster and the president and CEO of Cape Cod E-Com, Inc.
Norman Adams distributes copies of the draft minutes of the meeting of Tuesday 1 December 2009 as
well as copies of the approved and subsequently filed minutes of the meeting of 3 November 2009.
Larry Greeley moves and Janet Husband seconds a motion to approve the minutes of the meeting of 1
December 2009 as presented. The vote to approve is unanimous.
Steve Lipman is at this meeting by invitation of Larry Greeley because Steve's company provides services
to the Town of Brewster and has a number of additional services some of which the Town of Brewster
might find useful. Tonight Steve has brought with him a laptop which(with the help of Kathy Lambert)
he has connected to the Town of Brewster network in this building. This network is connected to the
internet via a moderately wide bandwidth link supplied by Verizon. To his laptop Steve has connected a
projector which makes a visible image of the screen on a suitable wall of the meeting room.
A topic of discussion is use of the facilities which Steve can supply to achieve on demand distribution of
collected(in effect archived)recordings of meetings of a specific set of Brewster boards and committees.
At present events being broadcast live over the Brewster government channel pass through the Brewster
government channel control room electronics to the modulator feeding the uplink to the Comcast headend
in Orleans and reach Brewster Comcast TV customers as TV signals.Recorded material can reside on
internet-linked storage servers and can pass through internet-linked streaming servers as internet signals.
In this way people anywhere(not limited to those in Brewster)can access the available Brewster materials
via an internet connection.
Live material could be transmitted out to the internet by use of Steve's services and thus would become
available over the internet.
Steve uses a link to the Brewster town office building network to connect to the internet to show live
internet material on a wall in the meeting room displayed using a projector connected to his laptop.
After a short demonstration Steve takes apart his setup and leaves at 7:23 pm.
In the discussion that follows it emerges that the upstream connection from the town network in this
building to the internet costs$69 per month but is not really fast enough for some of the uses anticipated
in the near future. It looks like an increase in speed to a satisfactory level would cost an additional $21
per month for a new cost of$90 per month. ,
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The discussion turns to a consideration of the less than optimal structure of the ethernet network in this
building,which has grown spasmodically over the years with the relatively frequent identification of new
requirements(such as jacks in new places).
Eventually Larry Bugden formulates the following motion:
That this committee supports improving the ethernet network in the Brewster Town Office Building for
an expenditure of up to$10,000.00.
This motion is proposed by Janet Husband and is seconded by Larry Bugden. The vote to approve is
unanimous.
The discussion then turns to the Town of Brewster website. There is general agreement that it would be a
good idea for us to look at websites of other local governments.
At about this point Jillian Douglass arrives in the audience area.
We then discuss the job description for the "Digital Services Coordinator" in considerable detail,with
both Jillian and Kathy being heavy contributors to the discussion.A number of possible changes to the
job description are suggested. Eventually this discussion winds down. Jillian leaves at about 9:25 pm and
Kathy leaves at about 9:32 pm.
There are lingering imprecisely defined feelings among the members of this committee along the lines
that the rapid enlargement of technical capabilities in internet services combined with the rapid increase of
expectations by internet users will provoke a need for frequent review of such job descriptions as that for
the "Digital Services Coordinator".
Larry Bugden states that it is his intention to resign after this meeting, in part because of anticipated
personal commitments which might well lead to conflicts of interest with service on this committee.
There is general agreement that the next meeting of this committee should occur on the standard schedule,
to wit,on the first Tuesday of March at 7 pm.
The meeting seems to be out of other business to be taken up tonight. A motion to adjourn is made by
Janet Husband and seconded by Walter Powers. The motion is passed unanimously.
The meeting is adjourned at 9:49 pm.
Submitted by Norman Adams,Clerk, Brewster CTVAC