Minutes of the Board meeting for 2006/01/18

[Federico Mena Quintero <federico ximian com>]

Hi,

Sorry for the late minutes.  That's what happens when we lose Daniel ;)

  Federico

GNOME Foundation Board Meeting, 2006/01/18
==========================================

Roll call
---------

New board:
Luis
JRB
Anne
Vincent
Dave
Federico (minutes)
Jeff

Old board:
Owen
JRB
Daniel
Jody (missing)
Miguel (regrets)
Tim (missing)
Murray
Christian

- Agreed to stay with the same meeting schedule (bi-weekly,
  Wednesdays, 14:00 Mexico City time)

- Nominations for secretary, treasurer, chairman:

  Treasurer - JRB
  Chairman - Federico, Dave - Federico to chair this year unless Dave
  wants to challenge during GUADEC through mud-wrestling.


Notes
=====

This call was about making the new Board members know what happened
during the past year.  We exchanged observations about what did/didn't
work, and reviewed pending actions.


Highlights of the year
======================

- GUADEC, GNOME Summit.  

  Involvement on the Board for GUADEC is not central; it was mainly
  the volunteers and Tim.

  Summit: a small event; Board not very involved in organization
  (mainly Tim).  The Foundation paid USD 5000 for the venue and food,
  so it was pretty cheap.  There were about 100 participants.

  - [ACTION]: JRB volunteers to contact MIT for this year's Summit.

- GNOME Store:

  Dave has been organizing it.  In contact with several possible
  vendors, chose one which did a good job for GUADEC, had legal
  problems due to non-USA location.  Contract didn't get signed, got
  us back to square one.  Intends to get more vendor candidates in
  February.

- Trademarks:

  Finished submitting everything to the USPTO, we are on a waiting
  period before they'll finalize everything.  Responsible contact: the
  Foundation's lawyer.  JRB is in contact with lawyer.

  Got the User Group Trademark Agreement finalized.  Got a Member Logo
  for business cards finalized.

- Efforts to promote GNOME as an ISV platform:

  Federico on it.  Hired Shaun McCance to write an "Overview of the
  GNOME Platform" document; ongoing.  JRB suggests asking for funding
  to be directed to specific ISV-friendly projects (documentation,
  infrastructure, hacking).

Conference stuff
================

- Anne thinks we should stretch out to the parts of the world we
  haven't emphasized.  Luis mentions talk of GUADLAC in Latin
  America.  We got a proposal for a Southeast Asia conference, and
  gnome.conf.au.

  We have FOSDEM presence.

GUADEC organization
===================

- Quim is leading.

- We should probably have Quim on every other board call or so, to
  keep up with GUADEC organization.

- Dave: we have a location (Vilanova i la Geltr�ain, very close to
  Barcelona), dates (week of 2006/06/24).  24-25 is Spanish days,
  26-28 is GUADEC proper, 29-30 is hackfest. Confirmed keynote
  speakers: Kathy Sierra (Creating Passionate Users), Jim Gettys (One
  Laptop Per Child).

- Christian: says venue is pretty nice, next to the beach.

- Need to start making reservations, etc.

- Web side of things: need update from the sysadmin team.  Need to
  re-setup the registration infrastructure.


What worked, what didn't
========================

+ Bi-weekly conference calls worked well.

+ Wiki worked well.

- People sometimes assumed that someone would take care of something,
  but nobody replied and so nobody did.  Example: the gnome.de
  situation.

+ This board got a lot more done than other years, due to internal
  process of waiting for opposition rather than waiting for
  confirmation of permission.

+ More presence in local events than before.

- Dropped the ball on Google Summer of Code.  Mistake: thinking of
  them as bounties rather than mentorship opportunities.

+ Owen was a good chairman; he kept good track of things.

+ Thanks to Daniel for being our secretary.

+ Thanks to the Foundation members who voted!


Sidetracks:

- We have public Board page in the wiki now; Murray wants to have the
  agenda there before every meeting so that people can monitor us.


Outstanding:

- Dave contacted Sriram Ramkrishna about presence on Innotech 
  in Portland.