Meeting Minutes Published - August 6, 2009

[Brian Cameron]

The meeting minutes for the July 15th and July 23rd board meetings
is now public.  Refer here:

   http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoardPublic/Minutes/20090806

Highlights:

* Zeitgeist hackfest in Bolanzo, City of Largo hackfest, and GNOME.Asia
   Summit planning is underway.
* Consider getting involved with the Festival Internacional de Software
   Libre 2009 Chiapas Mexico.

Also note that I sent the announcement of the meeting minutes for
July 3, 15, 23rd meetings to foundation-list, but not to
foundation-announce.  Apologies.  You can refer here to see past
minutes:

   http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoardPublic/Minutes

-- text of the latest minutes follows --

Minutes for Meeting of August 6, 2009

Next Meeting

August 20, 2009

Attendance

     * Behdad Esfahbod
     * Brian Cameron
     * Diego Escalante Urrelo
     * Germán Póo-Caamaño
     * Lucas Rocha
     * Rosanna Yuen
     * Srinivasa Ragavan
     * Stormy Peters
     * Vincent Untz

Minutes

Recurring Items

     * Review past action items.
     * Approve and make sure that minutes of last meeting were sent.
     * Make sure to start up the gobby server for better note taking.
     * Sysadmin hiring - waiting for funding.
     * Update foundation.gnome.org website.

Old items

     * None

New items

     * GCDS press release is out, so we can now publish the minutes for
       the two previous meetings.
           o ACTION - Brian to publish meeting minutes.

     * Finalize and approve plans for OSiM.
           o OSiM is the Open Source in Mobile conference which will be
             from September 15-16 in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
           o http://event.osimworld.com/
           o The board approved paying for Dave Neary's hotel fees.
             Vincent will also attend, but his expenses will not be
             covered by the Foundation.

     * Stormy compiled feedback from her discussions with advisory board
       members, and will send out a summary of this feedback to the
       foundation-list, with a small introduction. The document is
       currently in draft form and will be made public as soon as it is
       finished.
           o ACTION - Stormy to email feedback from advisory board
             survey.

     * Stormy will take care of making the GUADEC survey results public,
       with an introduction to highlight it was a survey and not a vote.
           o ACTION - Stormy to make GUADEC survey results public.

     * The Free Software Foundation invited the GNOME Foundation to do a
       joint outreach program to promote women in open source. The board
       is supportive, but we need to find volunteers to run the program.
           o ACTION - Diego will send an email to the gnome-women
             mailing list and otherwise try to find people to help
             organize.

     * The GNOME Foundation will do a joint FSF announcement to support
       diversity. The FSF is working on a first draft. This should not
       block the decision about whether we do a joint outreach program,
       as mentioned above.
           o ACTION - Stormy to keep following up with FSF.

     * The Foundation insurance agent recently asked the board if we
       would like to do automatic renewal. The board decided no.

     * There was discussion about doing a Zeitgeist hackfest in Bolanzo.
       We received a budget from Daniel Siegel with proposed dates
       (November 9-12) and list of attendees. The board decided to pay
       for the event even if we do not find any sponsor.
           o ACTION - Vincent will contact advisory board members to see
             if they will sponsor.

     * Dave Neary sent the board a proposal to partner with the Mobile
       User Experience conference in London November 17-18th,
       www.userexperienceconference.com. This was approved.
           o ACTION - Vincent will ask Dave if he can take
             responsibility for the GNOME parts and make sure someone
             from GNOME can attend, perhaps Paul Cooper.

     * Discussion about printing the annual reports.
           o ACTION - Lucas will look into the costs of printing the
             annual report and how many annual report copies should we
             print, and report back to the board. Lucas will also check
             with Rosanna to find out how many copies were printed and
             left over from last year's printing.

     * City of Largo hackfest update. Lucas had a meeting with Dave
       yesterday, and will send out the minutes from that meeting to the
       board tomorrow with the details. Wondering about whether one
       topic vs two topics would be best (gnome-shell & deployments are
       candidates). We can do both if all attendees are each on one
       topic. Else, we probably want to focus on gnome-shell since it is
       more urgent for the community.
           o ACTION - Lucas to send out minutes from the Largo hackfest
             meeting.

     * Discussion about doing next year's budget.
           o ACTION - Lucas to work on budget since he is now
             vice-treasurer.

     * Find a good time for the next meeting - For now we will keep the
       meeting at the same time. (Thursday, 17 UTC, and the board will
       check again in 2 months after Germán gets more free time)

Action Items

Completed Actions

     * Brian - Publish past board minutes. Done.
     * Brian - Find out status about GNOME.Asia Summit this year. There
       was an IRC meeting between the organizers in Vietnam, the
       organizers from last year's event in Beijing, Brian, and Stormy.
       Much of the preliminary details for arranging the event were
       discussed. They have three options for venues in Ho-Chi-Minh-City
       which will provide the space at no cost, but in exchange for
       making them a sponsor. Current proposed dates are November 20-22.
       They need to work on a budget, and to get the website updated. A
       follow-up meeting is planned.
     * Lucas - City of Largo, Florida hackfest organization. Planning an
       IRC meeting next week and will let the board know when the IRC
       meeting will happen. The IRC meeting has happened, but Lucas
       still has an action to publish the minutes.
     * Lucas - Send KDE & GNOME board minutes to the KDE board to be
       reviewed before they are made public. The KDE board provided
       comments and the updated minutes were published by Brian.
     * Stormy - Putting the 401k program for Foundation employees is
       still in process. Document reviewed by SFLC and signed. To be
       mailed tomorrow morning.
     * Stormy - Setup Google Adwords. Done.
     * Stormy - Compose the GCDS press release. Done, published by
       Vincent.
     * Vincent - Check to make sure that gnome-legal is still alive
       since Luis is not going to be able to focus so much energy on
       this. Done: it is alive. Luis will review the list of subscribers.
     * Vincent - Find people to help organize the next GUADEC. Done
       during GUADEC: Vincent pushed a few people.

Old Actions

     * Behdad - Tasked with scrubbing the GnuCash file so it can be made
       public. Still pending.
     * Brian - Get information about what should be in an "Employee
       Handbook". Still pending.
     * Brian - Since there was little interest on the foundation-list
       about getting international general liability and accident
       insurance, the board decided to not pursue getting such coverage
       at this time. Brian agreed to follow-up with the lawyers to find
       out what sort of text we should include in the travel subsidy
       agreement to ensure that people who receive subsidy understand
       that the Foundation is not providing coverage. An email was sent
       to the GNOME legal team, awaiting response.
     * Brian - Follow-up on legal-private@... to ensure that Luis'
       old items are being managed. An email was sent to the GNOME legal
       team, but waiting response.
           o Review of charter and bylaws and work towards a new draft.
           o Address GNOME logo trademark issues.
           o Should the Foundation endorse the Franklin Statement on
             Freedom and Network Services:
             http://autonomo.us/2008/07/franklin-street-statement/
     * Diego - Contact the sysadmin team about account creation. Talk
       with Bruno about who needs accounts. Diego has done a lot work
       contacting people about this, and is close to completing this
       task, but is still pending.
     * Germán - Put together a proposal for how to address board members
       who become inactive. Still pending.
     * Germán - Take over J5's previous task to propose new obligations
       that people who receive travel subsidies should be asked to do in
       return.
     * Germán - To send an apology email to the journalists from LWN and
       Ars Technic that we did not end up flying to GUADEC. Still
       pending, priority #1.
     * Lucas - Work with Andreas for the donation ruler. Try to put $15k
       in the ruler in "yellow" ($10k for Canonical, $5k for Google) to
       indicate that these funds are matching.
       http://www.gnome.org/friends/drive/
     * Lucas & Alberto - Set up a Euro bank account.
     * Rosanna - Research the GNOME Guidestar website and update if
       necessary. Rosanna sent an update about the status of Guidestar,
       but work is still needed. Need to find someone to keep the
       website up-to-date.
     * Rosanna - to send check to pay 401K setup fees.
     * Srini - Ping J5 for status about importing Paypal data into
       GnuCash. J5 was pinged, but no response yet.
     * Srini - Put out call for GUADEC hosts. First check with Stormy
       what questions the bidders should answer so that we can take an
       informed choice. Draft completed, but still under review.
     * Stormy - GNOME Foundation needs a CRM. Dave Neary agreed to set
       up one, he just needs to be told which one. Stormy will research
       over the next week.
     * Stormy - Should the GNOME Foundation buy a blanket LWN
       membership. Very low priority. Will bring it up with Jonathan
       Corbet when they next meet.
     * Stormy - Start discussion on marketing list for our plan for
       activities for next year, including raising fees.
     * Stormy - Contact advisory board members about raising fees. Will
       do this after the discussion on the marketing list, probably next
       week.
     * Vincent - Check with Luis about Franklin St.
     * Vincent - Implement an automatic reminder email for meetings.
       Still waiting for the time of the bi-weekly meetings to be
       settled before doing this.

New Action Items

     * Brian - To publish meeting minutes now that the GCDS press
       release is done.
     * Diego - Will send an email to the gnome-women mailing list and
       otherwise try to find people to help organize.
     * Lucas - Will look into the costs of printing the annual report
       and how many annual report copies should we print, and report
       back to the board. Lucas will also check with Rosanna to find out
       how many copies were printed and left over from last year's
       printing.
     * Lucas - To send out minutes from the Largo hackfest meeting.
     * Lucas - To work on next year's budget and annual report since he
       is now vice-treasurer.
     * Stormy - To email feedback from advisory board interviews.
     * Stormy - Will take care of making the GUADEC survey results
       public, with an intro to highlight it was a survey and not a vote.
     * Stormy - To follow-up on the joint FSF announcement to support
       diversity.
     * Vincent - Will contact advisory board members to see if they will
       sponsor the Zeitgeist hackfest in Bolanzo.
     * Vincent - Will look into who the GNOME Foundation should send to
       the Mobile User Experience conference, perhaps Paul Cooper.

Discussed on board-list

     * Stormy has found a volunteer to lead our customer case study
       effort.
     * Further ongoing discussion about the best way to respond about
       the fact that some people at the GCDS were offended by Richard
       Stallman's keynote. The board is seeking advice from appropriate
       persons and waiting response.
     * Got approval to publish the minutes of the GNOME/KDE boards
       meeting during GCDS.
     * Open Source America went live: the GNOME Foundation is now a part
       of this effort.
           o http://opensourceforamerica.org/
     * Rosanna succeeded in getting a non-profit rate in Paypal (charges
       are now 2.2% + $.30 instead of 2.9% + $.30)
     * Forwarded a trademark infringement issue to the legal team.
     * Discussed sponsorship options for hackfests with various
       potential sponsors.
     * Got updates about the GUADEC 2008 finances.
     * Published the GCDS press release.
     * Received invitation to a Mexican event, the Festival
       Internacional de Software Libre 2009 Chiapas Mexico. Contacted
       Sandino Flores and Federico Mena-Quintero to see if they can
       represent GNOME.
     * Discussed partnership with Mobile User Experience Conference,
       thanks to Dave Neary.
           o http://www.userexperienceconference.com

Private Items

     * N/A
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[Dave Neary-6]

Hi,

Brian Cameron wrote:

>     * The Free Software Foundation invited the GNOME Foundation to do a
>       joint outreach program to promote women in open source. The board
>       is supportive, but we need to find volunteers to run the program.
>           o ACTION - Diego will send an email to the gnome-women
>             mailing list and otherwise try to find people to help
>             organize.
>
>     * The GNOME Foundation will do a joint FSF announcement to support
>       diversity. The FSF is working on a first draft. This should not
>       block the decision about whether we do a joint outreach program,
>       as mentioned above.
>           o ACTION - Stormy to keep following up with FSF.

I'd just like to say that it's great to see these very positive
initiatives and I hope that they accomplish a great deal.

>     * Discussion about printing the annual reports.
>           o ACTION - Lucas will look into the costs of printing the
>             annual report and how many annual report copies should we
>             print, and report back to the board. Lucas will also check
>             with Rosanna to find out how many copies were printed and
>             left over from last year's printing.

I'd suggest printing with Lulu again, but perhaps doing it cheaper, with
a colour cover & greyscale interior. This allows you to completely
master costs by only printing as many copies as you want/need.

I'd suggest sending the report to all individual donors who have given
over $1000 in the past two or three years. A nice way to show what money
was spent on and solicit continuing donations.

In general, I hope we come in under budget for programme printing, given
how much we've spent over the last 2 years.

>     * Find a good time for the next meeting - For now we will keep the
>       meeting at the same time. (Thursday, 17 UTC, and the board will
>       check again in 2 months after Germán gets more free time)

Simon Phipps suggested something to me during the Summer which sounded
like a good idea, although it requires a little planning.

The problem is easy to state. If you have Indian, South and North
American and European board members, finding an appropriate meeting time
in business hours for everyone is impossible. Deciding that one group
has "critical mass" and thus is privileged in the meeting time only
leads to disenfranchisement of the unprivileged board members (for
example, if 5 of 9 people on board calls are in the US, and the meeting
time is fixed for 12 noon PST, that means the Europeans always meet at
8pm, and the Indian at 1am).

Simon's principle was "spread the pain". Establish some arbitrary order
of people on board calls (it could be alphabetical order, for example),
and have the board meeting be at the same time every meeting, in the
local time zone of the board member for that meeting. And then decide
the meeting time (say, 15h). That way, once in a 9 meeting cycle the
meeting will be at 15h Bangalore time, once it'll be French time, twice
in the cycle it'll be London/Dublin time, twice eastern time, once
mountain time, once Peru, once Chile.

And the pain is shared.

Cheers,
Dave.

--
Dave Neary
GNOME Foundation member
dneary@...
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