Meeting Date
PAVA Meeting Minutes
March 19, 2008 7:00-8:25 pm
Susan Susan Rollins Gehring, President, presided.
Candace Ripoli spoke about the Museum of Fine Arts parade coming up this Saturday, March 22, to celebrate the opening of the new wing. PAVA will be representing "Sea of Grass-Sunset" painting. The parade will be three blocks long. Check-in time is 10:00 am. The parade starts at 12:00.
Susan Rollins Gehring introduced topic of Imago fire and how we as artists can be more prepared in future for catastrophic events.
Denis Gaston, one of the Imago artists, spoke about need for insurance for artists. He has looked into emergency assistance grants and noted that there is money out there if you are willing to go through the work required. The Division of Cultural Affairs, Pinellas Arts Council, has lists of organizations that give financial assistance and grants to artists. Also it's important not to procrastinate; get slides on digital, computer; also keep records.
Discussion continued from various members about keeping work and copies in different places in cases of catastrophies, including hurricanes. There are commercial on-line companies which are safe and reasonable that offer backups. Take photos of art and equipment to keep track. Art work may have to be appraised by art appraiser to be covered by insurance. Work is judged by how much your own similar work has actually sold for.
Barbara Kampe Hanson spoke about the need for artists to back up websites and log-in sites. Discussion followed with the following points: Make sure you have an access code to your own website and know who owns your domain name, that is, whose name is on registration. It could be owned by whoever does your website. Go to whois.com with your website name and it will tell you information about all registrations. Don't let your domain name lapse, it can be taken by someone else.
Barbara talked about the Members Show at Ruth Eckerd Hall. It will be June through August. Receiving date will be announced soon. Artists will be able to submit three, guaranteeing that two will be hung. There will be monetary prizes for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and Best of Show. PAVA will be getting half of the hall, on the west side downstairs and upstairs. We will be sharing the space with the Service Design Guild. There will be a reception with food and cash bar handled by Eckerd so the entry fee will reflect price for that. No nudes; sensitive pieces should be hung upstairs. Currently Eckerd does not take a cut of sales. Will find out if they will allow a works list. David Lawrence suggested setting up a webpage of works in the show, like an online catalog, with thumbnails for the public. He volunteered to look into setting up this page.
Elizabeth Minor talked about the Jazz Holiday Org. in Clearwater organizing the first annual Jazz 'N Art Walk. It will be Oct. 18 and 19 in the 400 block of Cleveland St. It will be an outdoor show where artists can put up booths. There will be cash prizes for the top 3 artists. She passed out rules and application instructions for the event.
Susan spoke about an exhibit opportunity in Palm Harbor at the Reba Sutton White Hall. They are offering one week space to interested artists. Artists have to hang the show and provide wall tags, but they provide all else for the reception. Contact Palm Harbor Main Street online if interested.
Meeting adjourned.
Respectfully submitted,
Jenna Star Friedman
Additional information on "Domain Names"
A topic discussed at the meeting by Barbara Kampe Hanson.
by Russell Dickson, PAVA webmaster
Anyone who uses or may eventually use a domain name should read this information completely. The future of your domain name, including its loss, may depend on it.
First, to avoid confusion, a fully qualified domain name (FQDN), discussed here, is a name without periods followed by a .com, .net or other dot extension (TLD). A free website at Yahoo, for example, with an address like yahoo.com/stores/myArtSite is not a domain name. The domain name for that address is yahoo.com. The "www" is not part of the domain name, it's use creates an alias. If your home page address requires a slash (/) and something, it is not a domain name, just an address.
Ownership of a domain name is the name of the "Registrant" on the domain's DNS record. In some cases, the person registering the domain for you, usually your web designer, will register it in their own name. There are several reasons for this which we will discuss shortly. And, I'll tell you how to find out if you are the registrant.
If you don't own your domain name, there is some reason for concern, but don't panic. If your designer, other person or company ever dies or goes out of business (it happens), you may loose your domain name because you have no rights to it.
When you acquired your domain, if you were told that you were buying the name, you should be the registrant, but still may not be. You wouldn't buy a car and register it in the salesman's name. Situations exist when your domain name is included with your web hosting and the host neither tells or implies that you are buying the name. In this case, tell them you want to buy and own the name. Your results may vary.
Some designers register customers' names to themselves for a couple of reasons. One is they want to control the domain and possibly use that control to retain customers. The second reason is they are not actually a registrar and purchased your domain from a first or second level registrar in their name.
If you bought your domain name directly from a first level domain registrar, such as Domains.com, eNom, GoDaddy, Network Solutions or others, then you do own your domain, or again maybe not. You should have a record of the purchase and maybe access information to control it. If you got a "great" deal, less than $6, you'd better check who owns it.
Second level registrars are okay too. I am a second level registrar and pay a wholesale price for domain names. Those names are sold to my customers with them listed as the registrant, and in most cases, also listed as the admin contact. If I die, provisions are made to continue my business and protect customers. If that were to fail, customers would still not loose their domain names. That is the way it should be done, as many do.
If you are not absolutely sure, you should do a "whois search" to see the record. Not all sites with a whois search will give full information, some only show availability to purchase. You can one of the sites below.
First go to one of these sites:
Network Solutions
Sam Spade
DNS Stuff
Put in your domain name, click the button and your information will appear. In the upper area you will see the "REGISTRANT". This is the real owner of the domain name. Then look farther down the page to find the date the record was created (first registered) and the date the record expires. Also, if you are the owner, note if the contact information is up to date. That is very important!
A note about the record's expiration. This is the renewal date before which payment MUST be made. There are no grace periods or nice guys at that end. If you do not receive a notice to renew at least a month prior to the expiration, contact your registrar. Pay your renewal promptly and don't take chances. There may be a short recovery period after the expiration date but it is very expensive.
If for whatever reason you are dissatisfied with your registrar, you can transfer to another. This is done by going to the new registrar to initiate the transfer.
Please, if you do not understand the information above, get with someone who does. Loosing a domain name is catastrophic, your site could be down in a few hours, permanently. Or, you can pay several hundred dollars to recover the name, or more if you wait. This is not a scare tactic, the goons are out there to grab your name.
That said, there is an alternative for renewals. Some registrars allow you to file a credit card for automatic renewal. Keep that up to date too! For my customers who are in good standing and have both hosting and a domain name registered with me, the domain will automatically renew via my payment. Check with your registrar for such a situation for you. Others have similar arrangements.
Finally, some common sense on domain names. Domain names are not expensive, yet many people will look for the cheapest price on the web and never wonder why the difference -- there are reasons. Your best bet is to pay a modest, reasonable price to a known good registrar. I don't recommend the high volume low price registrars who are selling below cost or slightly above without enough profit margin to cover their costs. These guys do occasionally sell out or go out of business. Even with automated selling, it cost more than a dollar per year for them to operate. They pick up the loss somewhere else. There are continued costs for the registrar after the sale, but that's technical and another story.
This article was written in the interest of whatever help it may be. I am not soliciting nor do I want domain name only business. Fact is, I register domains only for the convenience of my hosting and design customers. I am not automated for volume name sales and there is no profit in my name prices.