Minutes of the Board meeting of May 20th, 2014

[Emmanuele Bassi <ebassi gmail com>]

wiki: https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20140520

= Minutes for Tuesday, May 20th, 2014, 16:00 UTC =

== Next meeting ==
 * Tuesday, June 3rd, 2014, 16:00 UTC

== Attending ==
 * Andreas Nilsson
 * Marina Zhurakhinskaya
 * Tobias Mueller
 * Joanmarie Diggs
 * Ekaterina Gerasimova
 * Emmanuele Bassi
 * Rosanna Yuen
 * Sriram Ramkrishna

== Board Meeting Agenda ==

 * Quick budget update
  * Where are we?
  * More invoices have been paid since the last meeting
  * We should be able to reimburse the West Coast hackfest
   * Oldest event that has been earmarked
  * We need to check the state of the GNOME.Asia payment
   * The money was sent to the personal account of one of the organizers
   * It is being held by the bank
   * '''ACTION''': Rosanna to contact Emily about the state of the
GNOME.Asia payment
   * Should we re-send the payment without waiting?
   * USD 5725
   * Needs to go out to avoid local team paying out of pocket
   * We cannot avoid this new payment to be blocked again
   * We are going to use the process that the receiving bank has
outlined and hope for the best
   * We should get the money back (minus bank fees)
   * This is clearly a banking issue: we have full confidence in the
local GNOME.Asia team
   * We do have money in the bank to cover this in the meantime
   * '''VOTE''': Send the GNOME.Asia payment (USD 5725) again: unanimous
  * What's the situation with our resources?
   * By last meeting we had USD ~30k in the bank
   * We received more money in the last two weeks
   * We should have USD ~45k in the bank
    * Not earmarked
    * Not OPW
   * It is the opinion of the treasurer that we should keep the
expenses locked for the next couple of months
  * Reimbursing travel for OPW interns
   * We have received funding for that
   * USD 1136.15 total
    * Two interns from Mozilla
    * One from !OpenStack
   * We receive confirmation of relevance/attendance as part of our process
   * Do we have a record of the travel?
    * Blog post/private report
    * The mentor has to confirm the travel relevance as part of the
reimbursement
    * Having a proper report would increase visibility of OPW and of GNOME
    * '''VOTE''': +1 Marina, Andreas, Emmanuele, Sri, Joanie, Tobi; -1 Kat
    * The issue needs to be investigated further

 * Delegating back to the Travel Committee
  * Proposal from the Travel Committee to the board:
https://wiki.gnome.org/Travel/wip/Events
  * The board assigns a budget to the travel committee
  * Budget is assigned every 6 months, in two blocks of USD 20k
  * This budget is not part of the GUADEC and GNOME.Asia allocations
  * This budget includes GNOME North American summits (east/west coast)
  * How does additional funding from sponsors affects the budget?
   * E.g. a company funds a hackfest
   * The funding should be counted as part of that budget
   * We haven't had much luck in the past years to get corporate
funding for hackfests through the foundation
    * Companies may reimburse travel directly
  * '''ACTION''': Kat to update the travel committee proposal and send
the new draft to the list

 * ED hiring and plans going forward
  * There has been discussions on board-list
  * There has been discussions also on foundation-list as part of the
election Q&A
  * Should we put together a hiring committee?
  * Or should we postpone the decision to the next board?
  * If we decide for a hiring committee
   * People on the committee should have experience in hiring
   * Should also work on defining the role of the ED
  * The job description for the ED should focus on financial/fund
raising/administrative roles
  * Community management is also important
  * We should draft a list of people to be on the hiring committee
  * '''ACTION''': Sri, Marina, Kat to work on establishing criteria
for drafting for the hiring committee for the ED role

 * Visa fees reimbursements
  * Discussion was started on board-list
  * Visa fees reimbursements affect the travel committee guidelines
  * It's hard to keep track of the issues that may happen for visa
reimbursements even if everything went right
   * Most of the time the visa process is arbitrarily handled by the
issuing country
  * Should we require remote participation in case of visa rejection?
  * How do we ensure that the foundation does everything possible to
avoid a visa rejection?
  * Should we only reimburse visa fees if they were rejected?
   * We are willing to pay for the travel
   * But if a person applies for the visa process they should be able
to cover it (as per travel guidelines)
   * The asymmetry is that if the visa succeeds the person in question
would travel covered
  * The issue needs more discussion
   * Continue on board-list
  * '''ACTION''': All Directors to reply Andreas's/Kat's email on
board list about visa fees reimbursements

 * Groupon launched a product called "Gnome"
  * Trademark issue
  * We should contact them

 * Upcoming events
  * GUADEC 2014
   * Contract for the local organization
   * Andreas and Kat already gave feedback on the draft
   * The feedback is mostly on wording and making things explicit
    * We had issues in the past with unclear contracts
   * '''ACTION''': Kat to update the GUADEC/LiLo contract and send it
for board-list for review
  * GNOME.Asia
   * We need to be clear on the allocated funding from SUSE
   * Since it's been negotiated locally it should be outside the USD
15000 allocated by the foundation
   * The board should ask what the current projected expenses are, and
say that it's ok to spend up to USD 19,500 (considering SUSE's payment
as in addition), but keep the expenses as lower if possible, and
return what's left after the conference to the GNOME Foundation
   * '''ACTION''': Marina to contact the GNOME.Asia local team on
their current budget

 * Pitivi dontations fees
  * The contract had some unclear language with regards to the banking fees
  * If GNOME handled the banking fees then it would not be worthwhile
for the foundation
  * The banking fees were explicitly acknowledged by PiTiVi when first
discussing money handling
  * It seems that the banking fees were negotiated as part of the
agreement but it was not clarified further on either side
  * We are still receiving the money from them
  * '''ACTION''': Kat to draft a contract template for future use
organizations for which we handle money

== Discussed on the mailing list ==
 * GUADEC travel budget of EUR 15000 approved
  * '''VOTE''': +1 Emmanuele, Joanie, Marina, Kat, Andreas
 * Groupon product called "Gnome" has been announced, possible
trademark infringement
 * Funding request for OpenHelp
  * '''VOTE''': -1 Tobi, Andreas, Joanie, Marina; abstain due to
conflict of interest: Kat
  * Proposal to revisit in the future

== Completed Actions ==
 * Kat to document the GUADEC/GNOME.Asia combined sponsorship on the wiki
 * Kat to draft a new policy for the travel committee and send it to
the board for review
 * Tobi to follow up with Alexandre and Karen about the contract for
the GUADEC local organisation

== Pending action items ==
 * Andreas to put together a GNOME supporter card for our donors
 * Andreas, Joanie to draft thank you letters to our donors
 * Andreas to investigate the GNOME gifts situation
 * Emmanuele to send Zana and Tobi an update on FoG donors gifts
 * Emmanuele to send hackers up for "adoption" the list of donors that
want a postcard
 * Emmanuele to draft a date and time for the post-release meeting
 * Emmanuele to send a proposal to foundation-list about possible IRC meetings
 * Emmanuele to ask the adboard members for help with Bugzilla update
 * Joanie to draft a proposal for the photography policy at GNOME
conferences to discuss on foundation-list
 * Joanie and Karen to meet and discuss about the photography policy
for GNOME events
 * Joanie to go over Michael Schumacher ideas on the Gimp funding
processes and merge them with her ideas on the wiki
 * Kat to create a private wiki page on the web services accounts
holders and passwords
  * Allan and Kat decided to go for a private git account instead for
security reasons
 * Kat to draft a proposal for a privacy policy for review
 * Kat to update the travel committee proposal and send the new draft
to the list
 * Kat to contact Brian Cameron about the Groupon legal team
 * Kat to update the GUADEC/LiLo contract and send it for board-list for review
 * Kat to draft a contract template for future use organizations for
which we handle money
 * Karen to write the Privacy policy for GNOME services
 * Karen will look at gnome-software privacy issues from a legal standpoint
 * Marina to contact the GNOME.Asia local team on their current budget
 * Tobi to continue pursuing the fund collection in Europe
  * Tobi to draft a new WHS agreement after the feedback from the board
 * Tobi to talk to Andrea to move the !PayPal data extraction scripts
over to the GNOME infrastructure
 * Sri to investigate better uses of adsense/adwords on the GNOME websites
 * Sri to communicate to Rosanna and work on the donation for the West
Coast hackfest
 * Sri, Marina, Kat to work on establishing criteria for drafting for
the hiring committee for the ED role
 * Zana to check the inventory of merch she has in storage (low priority)
 * Rosanna to contact Emily about the state of the GNOME.Asia payment


-- 
W: http://www.emmanuelebassi.name
B: http://blogs.gnome.org/ebassi/