On Thu, 2011-05-26 at 05:43 -0700, Jeff Schroeder wrote:
> 1.) For incumbents, have you missed any meetings? What is your % of
> missed vs attended meetings and why? For new challengers, how much
> time can you dedicate to working on the board each week? How do you
> plan on spending that time?
My board meeting attendance record is:
In my first term (2009--2010) I missed 4 of 24 board meetings.
Why? I had a couple of busy weeks at work and university, there
was an earthquake where I was living and my own confusion with
the meeting time.
In my second term (2010--) I have missed 5 of 30 meetings.
Why? A couple of times I was traveling to do legal paperwork,
another couple happened in a busy month at university and, also
I had not sleep enough (aka. I could not wake up on time).
I think it is not a bad record considering the meeting time has
not been the best one for me in my 2 years as director. The
meetings have been mostly at 7:00am, with some cases at 6:00am
and a couple at 08:00am in my local time (I envy those rock
stars who can start working at 10:00am or 11:00am! ;-)
However, attending to phone meetings is not enough if you would like to
know how much time we have spent in "board" stuffs. Meetings help to
take decisions on topics that have not been voted or discussed in the
mailing list, update the status of pending issues, and raise new ones
that came just before the meeting, etc.
As in every team, there are plenty of other interactions in the mailing
lists, as well as contacting other people, etc. As I have discussed at
some point with Paul, Stormy and Diego, the difference with respect to
other teams is: the board requires voting for taking actions, this means
that responsiveness to discuss topics and/or vote matters.
> 2.) Other open source / free software projects run their meetings in
> the open via IRC (such as Fedora's FESCO I believe). Would you
> consider that, and if not, what about recording how board members vote
> on a given topic. This includes +1 / -1 / abstains and perhaps give a
> small comment on any -1 or abstain. In my opinion, as an open
> foundation, the transparency of the board is absolutely critical
> _where possible_. Leaders should always set the example for members.
Several topics are temporarily private/confidential, and some other can
not be disclosed at all. For instance, when hiring a new employee, some
people would not apply for a position if their names would be disclosed
unless they were hired. Other situation is a press release, where you
would not want the media publishes a draft which might contain errors,
or when there is a negotiation with a potential partner who asks for
disclosing the information after an specific day, etc. Or even a
negotiation where the board is requesting that a company drops a
Copyright Assignment Agreement. Sooner or later, the information will
be disclosed. But, they can not be discussed openly beforehand because a
negotiation could fail, or there is a risk of misinterpretation.
So, in order to run open meetings, eventually the board would require to
run extra meetings for private/confidential/controversial topics. It
could be a hassle, though.
Considering the way Brian (secretary) works with minutes, I do not
foresee any problem with adding details such as who voted, how directors
voted, and who did not. It would be more work for the secretary and the
board should take care that controversial issues have comments to avoid
misunderstanding, but it could be done.
With respect to transparency I can say that one of the first things I
pushed when I became a board director was to make the minutes public
during the next two weeks after a meeting. And it was easy because the
minutes were always ready (Brian is good on this), but not the votes to
approve them. Without enough votes the minutes could wait for weeks or
months. The change was the way of "voting" the minutes. Since then, the
board has a period of time to review the minutes, if there is no
comments, the minutes are automatically approved. The real work is
writing the minutes. Publishing the minutes on time gives them value.
--
Germán Póo-Caamaño
http://people.gnome.org/~gpoo/
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