Meeting Minutes Published - September 17, 2009

[Brian Cameron <Brian Cameron Sun COM>]

The meeting minutes for the September 17th board meeting is now public.
Refer here:

   http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoardPublic/Minutes/20090917

Other past board meetings are archived here:

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

-- text of the latest minutes follows --

Minutes for Meeting of September 17, 2009

Next Meeting

October 1, 2009

Attendance

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

Regrets

    * Vincent Untz (at openSUSE conference)

Absent

    * None.

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

    * Sri sent out the GUADEC call-for-hosts, and the next meeting with
      be an IRC meeting to discuss.
    * Stormy and Zana have an action item to get discussion moving to
      replace the U.S. event box and then purchase what is needed.
    * Can we confirm the money that is needed for the Boston Summit?
      Lucas will organize a budget for the Boston Summit.
    * Discussion about the following news about OIN
      (OpenInventionNetwork). Refer here:
      o http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/press_release09_08_09.php
      o http://press.redhat.com/2009/09/09/microsoft-and-patent-trolls/
    * Scheduled that we will discuss Stormy's bonus during the October
      15th board meeting.

Action Items

Completed Actions

    * Diego - Organize an IRC meeting with the membership this month.
      Sent the email, almost no reactions.
    * Lucas - To work on next year's budget and annual report since he
      is now vice-treasurer. Stormy and Germán did all the work while
      Lucas was on vacation. Thanks!
    * Srini - Talk to Seattle local community about the possibilities of
      hosting an event and possibly having an event instead in nearby
      Canada (perhaps Vancouver) where there are less visa concerns.
      Done. Srini spoke to cj on having a event, other than GUADEC
      possibly from Vancouver, Canada. He said he will look at the
      options and discuss on the visa issues with Federal.
    * Srini - Post a follow-up mail on the GUADEC call for hosts for a
      chat/meeting with previous organizers (Dave Neary, Paul Cooper,
      ...). Done. Paul, Dave, Quim, Baris, Agustin were invited. Meeting
      will be held on September 22, 17:00 UTC.
    * Srini - To communicate travel budget for Zeitgeist and Boston
      Summit to the Travel Committee.
    * Stormy - Invite Boston Summit organizers to the next advisory
      board meeting.
    * Vincent - To send an email to advisory board list enumerating
      upcoming events and seeking sponsorships.
    * Vincent - Invite the Zeitgeist hackfest organizers to next
      advisory board meeting.
    * Vincent - Put the event box topic on the agenda for next meeting
      (unless it is completely handled at that time ;-))

Old Actions

    * Behdad - Tasked with scrubbing the GnuCash file so it can be made
      public. Behdad sent a scrubbed GnuCash file to Rosanna to check,
      but 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 on August 10th, and they have been pinged
      on September 6th and 17th.
    * Brian - Look into organizing a hackfest on "how to make it easier
      for more people to do some usability magic". Talking with Calum
      Benson, Mairin Duffy, Ivanka Majic, Charline Poirier. I have also
      pinged Matthew Paul Thomas Lattimer, and Garett ?LeSage, but have
      not heard back from them. A proposal is solidifying.
    * 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.
    * Diego - Keep track of FISOL invitation (Chiapas, Mexico), take
      over from Germán. In response, they have the space covered (I
      understand that with a recommendation from Federico). They are
      eager to work together next year to have more GNOME people. Diego
      will add this to his calendar and keep in touch with our contact
      (Freddy Arguello).
    * Germán - Put together a proposal for how to address board members
      who become inactive. Still pending.
    * Germán - Take over John Palmieri's previous task to propose new
      obligations that people who receive travel subsidies should be
      asked to do in return.
    * 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. Waiting for Paul to get
      the general marketing message behind the ruler before publishing
      it. Paul was pinged on September 17th about it.
      http://www.gnome.org/friends/drive/
    * Lucas & Alberto - Set up a Euro bank account. Still in progress.
    * Paul - Will provide an overview of hiring a sysadmin and the
      benefits that has for the overall GNOME community.
    * 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 John Palmieri for status about importing Paypal data
      into GnuCash. John Palmieri was pinged, but no response yet.
    * 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. UPDATE: The sys admin team is now looking into this
      but waiting on a requirements document from the marketing team.
    * 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 - Contact advisory board members about raising fees.
      Waiting on a waterfall financial model (done) and a 2010 budget
      before sending this out. Almost done - ready to go if everyone has
      given their feedback on the finances.
    * Stormy - To propose a case study on how the improvements we made
      with bugzilla made a difference as input for the marketing
      materials for why the Foundation needs to hire a system
      administrator.
    * Stormy - Send the Texas Instruments Zoom 2 netbooks to the Boston
      Summit (perhaps to John Palmieri or Rosanna). John Palmieri will
      not be at the Boston Summit. Who is the best person to send to?
    * Stormy - Create a more public process for suggesting and deciding
      upon topics for future advisory board meetings.
    * Vincent - Will contact advisory board members to see if they will
      sponsor upcoming events. Some advisory board members have been
      contacted, but work sitll ongoing.
    * Vincent - Will look into who the GNOME Foundation should send to
      the Mobile User Experience conference, perhaps Paul Cooper.
      Vincent mailed Paul and is waiting for an answer.
    * Vincent & Lucas - Determine how to announce the endorsement of
      Franklin Street Statement on Freedom and Network Services:
      http://autonomo.us/2008/07/franklin-street-statement/

New Action Items

    * Lucas - Put together budget for Boston Summit.
    * Stormy & Zana - Have discussion on marketing list to determine how
      to best replace the U.S. event box.

Discussed on board-list

    * Germán Póo-Caamaño and Stormy Peters put together a proposed
      budget for the next year, and it has gone through a few rounds of
      review.
    * Lucas Rocha announced that he will start the printing of 200
      copies of the Annual Report.
    * Logistics for the next board meeting to be an IRC meeting.
    * Discussion about the Gnome Women Outreach Program going live:
          o http://live.gnome.org/GnomeWomen/OutreachProgram
    * Planning for the September 8th advisory board meeting which was
      about upcoming events (Boston Summit, GNOME.Asia, and the
      Zeitgeist Hackfest.
    * Planning for future advisory board meetings. It was suggested that
      the October meeting be about finances, November be an opportunity
      for presentations from advisory board members, and December to
      provide a wrap-up on the events that will be held in the fall of
      2009. Another topic that was suggested was that Nokia talk about
      the N900 with respect to GNOME Mobile. Stormy agreed to create a
      more public process for suggesting and deciding upon topics for
      future meetings.
    * Planning a GUADEC follow-up meeting with Quim, Paul, Dave, Baris
      and Agustin (past organizers) for September 22nd.
    * John Palmieri provided the board with the following budget costs
      for the Boston Summit. Need to find budget (hopefully sponsors)
      for the following costs:
          o $1600 - all you can eat/drink/play pool (this includes tax
            and tips) for the beer summit
          o $1500 - coffee refilled 3 times a day w/ bagels in the
            morning (this includes the cost for delivery for the one
            evening LiTL had their snack hour)
    * Planning for the Zeitgeist hackfest in Bolzano 2009.
    * GNOME.Asia had a planning meeting on September 15, 2009. They are
      working to update the website, send out a call for participation
      and putting together a new sponsor brochure.
    * Discussion about whether Stormy should attend GNOME.Asia,
      Latinoware and GNOME Forum to help build those communities.
    * Alberto Ruiz asked the Foundation to provide him with signed
      certificates that he volunteered time to the GNOME community which
      helps him to fulfill a requirement for his university degree.
      After we received the documents, they were signed and sent to him
      in the same day.