GNOME Board meeting minutes, 2008/01/16

["Luis Villa" <luis tieguy org>]

= Minutes for Board Meeting of Jan. 16th, 2008 =

== Next Board Meeting ==
Jan. 30th, 2008

== Attendance ==

 * Behdad Esfahbod
 * Vincent Untz
 * Jeff Waugh
 * Brian Cameron
 * Lucas Rocha
 * Luis Villa

=== Regrets ===

 * John Palmieri (J5)

== Minutes ==

=== Ongoing items ===

 * Financial update from Zana- Zana still on maternity leave, no update.

=== Old items ===

 * Vincent to draft job description for part-time System
Administration position. [Blocking on third party who had volunteered
to help draft the description.]
 * GTK+ Hackfest: Behdad working to invoice RH expenses this month;
Behdad to blog about the hackfest; Behdad to continue organization
work. [Update: good venue at around 5,000 euro. Four sponsors, with
one more still to confirm. Still waiting for confirmation of hosting
company.]
 * annual report: Vincent to find out from Dave Neary who did the
visual layout for the annual report last year and if they can do it
again next year (ideally by tomorrow); Jeff to find someone local to
him if last year's person can't do it. [DONE]
 * Behdad to follow up with Baris re: GUADEC. [DONE]
 * Board: follow up on a11y discussion on list. [DONE]
 * Vincent to check with KDE guys about meeting them at FOSDEM to talk
about joint activities: [No response from KDE yet]
 * John to talk with Jonathan about the Summit venue booking [DONE
after meeting.]
 * John to contact Zana about financial handling between GNOME
Foundation and GUADEC organizers [ONGOING]
 * John to ask Baris about GUADEC timeline around the website,
registration, and billing systems [ONGOING; ACTION: Behdad- minutes of
meeting to go to Board list, DONE after meeting. ]
 * Behdad to work on the initial version of the GUADEC press release [ONGOING]
 * Membership Committee: Lucas to check with new volunteers if they
need any help [No progress b/c of vacation.]
 * Membership Committee: Jeff to make sure the new MC volunteers have
their accounts, in case this is blocking their work [DONE, pending new
news of any problems.]

=== New items ===

 * '''expectnation for GUADEC?:''' GUADEC committee wants to use this;
ACTION: Jeff and Behdad to talk after the meeting.
 * '''Mozilla announcement''': ACTION: Jeff to write tonight.
 * '''budget draft:''' Discussed an overview of the proposed budget draft.
  * '''Annual Report:''' $1,200 for the design? [APPROVED]
  * '''GNOME-FR sponsorship request for Solutions Linux:''' Now only
500 euro- no t-shirts will be printable. [APPROVED]
  * '''Sponsorship request for FOSDEM:''' approving what is currently
requested; will inform them that more money may be available if they
have specific budget proposals for it. [APPROVED]
 * '''Akismet non-profit account for GNOME Foundation:''' Mailing list
discussion was in favor of blogging about it and soliciting feedback;
Jeff suggests that this is not the kind of situation which gets good
quality feedback, though Luis points out that it is a new and quickly
changing issue which our old intuitions might not cover. Vincent
wonders about the need; Jeff feels it is pretty necessary. DEFER to
the mailing list.
 * '''Thanks:''' to the Sun JDS team for the conf call system.
 * '''Board Jobs:'''
  * Secretary: Luis volunteers
  * Treasurer: J5 volunteers
  * President/Vice-President: Behdad and Vincent are both interested;
Vincent is already Release Team manager. Jeff suggests that the only
problem there is time, not any kind of conflict of interest. Will
discuss roles and then people more on the list; ACTION: Vincent to
kickstart this discussion [DONE after meeting, discussion ongoing].
 * '''Board Focus Areas:'''
  * Development: not clear that this is necessary; something many
board members do as a matter of course, and not something that touches
on the board very much.
  * Community Relations: something more focused than general
Development; Vincent and Lucas have volunteered.
  * Events: should be Behdad and J5, given that they are both very
involved in GUADEC/Summit/Hackfest
  * Infrastructure: put aside for now; to some extent falls under
Community Relations/Development
  * Legal: Luis (duh); Brian will second.
  * Marketing and Media: were separate; should just be paired
together. Jeff will take lead, with Vincent as second.
  * Relations: Behdad has been doing a lot of sponsor and GUADEC
development, so relationship with Advisory Board members is good.
  * New areas: Employees? Generally, discussion of employees is
deferred to mailing list, given complexity of pending issues.
  * No other substantive areas appear to be overlooked.
 * '''GNOME.asia Summit:''' still some open questions about financing;
board does not require a phone call, unless GNOME.asia would like one.
 * '''Insurance:''' Agreed that this should be pursued; ACTION: Brian
to investigate further.
 * '''foundation.gnome.org:''' Agreed that wikifying f.g.o would be
good. ACTION: Jeff to wiki-fy, with privacy on by default.

== Action Items ==

 * Brian to further investigate insurance.
 * Jeff to wiki-fy foundation.gnome.org, with privacy on by default.
 * Vincent to propose definitions for board roles (president, v-p,
etc.) on board-list. [DONE after meeting, discussion ongoing]
 * Jeff to draft new OOXML statement for ad-board and board lists
Friday 14th. [No progress; says it will happen shortly.]
 * Vincent to draft job description for part-time System
Administration position. [Blocking on third party who had volunteered
to help draft the description.]
 * Lucas to check with new membership committee volunteers if they
need any help [No progress b/c of vacation.]
 * Jeff and Behdad to discuss expectnation after the meeting.
 * Jeff to write Mozilla announcement tonight.

== Ongoing Actions ==

 * GTK+ Hackfest: Behdad to update board on progress.
 * Behdad to work on the initial version of the GUADEC press release [ONGOING]

== Blocking On ==

 * Vincent to check with KDE guys about meeting them at FOSDEM to talk
about joint activities: [No response from KDE yet]

= Discussed on board-list =

 * VoIP phone number for the Foundation: general agreement that it
would be good. Behdad to work with Zana on getting one [ONGOING]
 * Contest rules for a GHOP-like contest [ONGOING]