Meeting Minutes Published - September 3, 2009

[Brian Cameron <Brian Cameron Sun COM>]

The meeting minutes for the September 3rd board meeting is now public.
Refer here:

   http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoardPublic/Minutes/20090903

Other past board meetings are archived here:

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


-- text of the latest minutes follows --

Minutes for Meeting of September 3, 2009

Next Meeting

   September 17, 2009

Attendance

    * Brian Cameron
    * Diego Escalante Urrelo
    * Germán Póo-Caamaño
    * Lucas Rocha
    * Rosanna Yuen
    * Srinivasa Ragavan
    * Stormy Peters
    * Vincent Untz
    * Paul Cutler, from GNOME marketing was invited and present

Regrets

    * None

Absent

    * Behdad Esfahbod

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

    * Discussion with Paul Cutler about the status of Friends of GNOME.
          o How to best present matching funds versus actual
            contributions on the donations ruler.
          o Discussion about hiring a system administrator. How much
            money do we need and how will it be funded? In the past the
            board agreed that funding should come from the Friends of
            GNOME program. We need some marketing information to help
            explain to people the benefits of hiring a system
            administrator and how this will benefit the community.
          o ACTION - Paul will provide an overview of hiring a sysadmin
            and the benefits that has for the overall GNOME community.
          o ACTION - Stormy to propose on the marketing list a case
            study on how the improvements we made with bugzilla made a
            difference to show the way that funding and infrastructure
            work can improve the GNOME project and to serve as input
            for the marketing materials for why the Foundation needs to
            hire a system administrator.
    * GUADEC Update
          o Bidding for next year's GUADEC. Need to get the process
            moving.
          o Known possible bids:
                + A Coruña - GNOME Hispano/Igalia people talked to
                  Diego when he was visiting A Coruña. They are willing
                  to send a BID, but they are concerned about community
                  not happy having yet another GUADEC in Spain.
                + Netherlands
                + Seattle - Concerns about people having difficulty
                  getting visas, perhaps Vancouver might be an option?
                + Tampere - They said that they would host during a
                  meeting in Gran Canaria.
          o ACTION - Srini to 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.
          o ACTION - Srini to post a follow-up mail on the GUADEC call
            for hosts for a chat/meeting with previous organizers (Dave
            Neary, Paul Cooper, ...).
    * Budget for sponsorships
          o The board agreed that it makes sense to provide travel
            subsidy for people attending the Boston Summit this year if
            it will enable some significant project or hacking.
          o There is some money in the budget (ear marked for community
            travel) that can be used for funding travel subsidies for
            the Boston Summit and upcoming hackfests.
          o ACTION - Srini to communicate travel budget for Zeitgeist
            and Boston Summit to the Travel Committee.
    * Next advisory board meetings
          o September is about the GNOME.Asia Summit. It was suggested
            that we should also discuss the upcoming Boston Summit and
            hackfests at this meeting.
          o A good topic for a November/December advisory board meeting
            would be to discuss the results of these events.
          o ACTION - Stormy will invite Boston Summit organizers to the
             next advisory board meeting.
          o ACTION - Vincent will invite the Zeitgeist hackfest
            organizers to next advisory board meeting.
    * Hackfests
          o Need to organize a usability study, and perhaps use the
            Zoom 2 notebooks provided by Texas Instruments in that
            context.
          o Need to track FISOL invitation.
          o Need to seek sponsorships.
          o ACTION - Brian to look into organizing a hackfest on "how
            to make it easier for more people to do some usability
            magic".
          o ACTION - Stormy will send the Texas Instruments Zoom 2
            netbooks to the Boston Summit (perhaps to J5 or Rosanna).
          o ACTION - Diego to keep track of FISOL invitation (Chiapas,
            Mexico), take over from Germán.
          o ACTION - Vincent to send an email to advisory board list
            enumerating upcoming events and seeking sponsorships.
    * IRC meeting with the membership: do one in September? (who, how,
      what, when)
          o ACTION - Diego to organize an IRC meeting with the
            membership this month.
    * Other business
          o ACTION - Vincent will put the event box topic on the agenda
            for next meeting (unless it's completely handled at that
            time ;-))

Action Items

Completed Actions

    * Diego - Will send an email to the gnome-women mailing list and
      otherwise try to find people to help organize. This is done, but
      feedback has been low.
    * 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.
    * Srini - Send out an email announcing to the foundation-list who
      are the officers.
    * Vincent - Implement an automatic reminder email for meetings.
      Still waiting for the time of the bi-weekly meetings to be
      settled before doing this.

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, awaiting response.
    * 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.
    * 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 - To work on next year's budget and annual report since he
      is now vice-treasurer.
    * Lucas & Alberto - Set up a Euro bank account. Alberto is waiting
      for a reply from a friend who works in a bank to give some
      initial directions. We'll have a meeting next Monday (August 24).
    * 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.
    * 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.
    * Vincent - Will contact advisory board members to see if they will
      sponsor the Zeitgeist hackfest in Bolzano. Partially done:
      contacted some advisory board members. Still working on it. Will
      send a mail about the hackfests, Boston Summit and GNOME.Asia
    * 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

    * Brian - Look into organizing a hackfest on "how to make it easier
      for more people to do some usability magic".
    * Diego - Keep track of FISOL invitation (Chiapas, Mexico), take
      over from Germán.
    * Diego - Organize an IRC meeting with the membership this month.
    * Paul - Will provide an overview of hiring a sysadmin and the
      benefits that has for the overall GNOME community.
    * 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.
    * Srini - Post a follow-up mail on the GUADEC call for hosts for a
      chat/meeting with previous organizers (Dave Neary, Paul Cooper,
      ...).
    * Srini - To communicate travel budget for Zeitgeist and Boston
      Summit to the Travel Committee.
    * 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 - Invite Boston Summit organizers to the next advisory
      board meeting.
    * Stormy - Send the Texas Instruments Zoom 2 netbooks to the Boston
      Summit (perhaps to J5 or Rosanna).
    * 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 ;-))

Discussed on board-list

    * Certification of GNOME contributions for Alberto Ruiz (needed for
      his university degree).
          o Approved.
          o Alberto will write the text Brian will sign it.
    * Hosting the Google Summer of Code money for GStreamer (as we did
      last year).
          o In discussion.
    * Women in GNOME: Marina wrote some ideas in a text draft.
    * Draft of call for bids for next GUADEC.
    * Lucas will attend "LSE / IBM / OFE Roundtable" in London, on
      behalf of the foundation
    * Review of a text explaining to the adboard why we want to raise
      the fees (after it was drafted on marketing-list)
    * Discussion on where to print the foundation annual report.
    * Agreement to work on publishing the minutes a few days after
      the meeting (instead of just before the next meeting).