A History of BoyChat by Alexis(Steering Committee)

News From The Steering Committee BoyChat is administered by an ad hoc Steering Committee formed by volunteers on May 10, 1997, when BC's old host pulled the plug and forced an emergency reorganization. The host and owner of BoyChat is Sean007, but much of the day-to-day administration is now done by Jimf3 and other committee members. Here are the nicks of the Steering Committee members: Sean007 (webmaster@ivan.net) Jimf3 (Jimf3@worldnet.att.net) Accord (boylinks@hotmail.com) Bonzo (bonzo@nym.alias.net) Encephalon (encef@hotmail.com) not (not@inorbit.com) Sensitive Stephen (sensitiv@freenet.hut.fi) Alexis (alexis@mrpost.com) Kalos (kalos @odyssee.net) GB (grpabl@hotmail.com) Anon Anon Weekly Status Reports First report: 6/23/97 Okay, this will be the first weekly report from the Steering Committee. We've been working hard on two things: first, purchasing a server and finding a site that will host it, and second, forming a nonprofit organization to administer funding the server, protect committee members from liability and possibly contribute to other boylove issues such as education and legal defense. We are currently debating whether to purchase an Intel box or a RISC machine. It looks likely that we will then "co-locate" it, which means paying an established service provider a monthly rental and maintenance fee in return for hardware upkeep and access to a good redundant link to the Internet backbone. Current estimates for the hardware range from $3000 to $5000 or slightly more. Current estimates for the co-location fee range from $200 to $800 a month. BoyChat members contributed nearly $3000 when Digiweb cut off service. Some of this money has been used to reestablish BoyChat at our new host, XtatiX. A full accounting of the remaining money is forthcoming. (Most of it remains.) We hope to have a budget for our new plan by early next week, and we will then begin a fund drive to raise whatever we need to purchase our server and pay co-location fees. Each committee member is pledging as large a sum as he can afford. We hope to call our nonprofit organization Free Spirits, after the original site that hosted BoyChat back in 1995. We hope to register it shortly. We are currently researching the fees and procedures for registering nonprofits in the state in which we wish to register. Once registered, all donations will be kept in a Free Spirits bank account and tracked with our monthly books. Free Spirits will also own the webserver, and will engage in "reselling" web space at monthly charges in an attempt to recoup some of the costs of keeping up the server. We hope at the outset that the Free Spirits server will be host to: 1. BoyChat 2. BOYLINKS 3. BoyWrite (soon to return) 4. FPC (Free Boylover Homepages) Other opportunities will be discussed as they come up. notes by Alexis (feeling more like a Secretary every day) Back to History of BoyChat