Minutes for Meeting of July 31st, 2013, UTC

Next Meeting

• Tuesday, August 13th, 2013, 16:00 UTC

Attending

• Rosanna Yuen
• Andreas Nilsson
• Joanmarie Diggs
• Tobias Mueller
• Karen Sandler

• Shaun McCance (remote)

• Ekaterina Gerasimova
• Marina Zhurakhinskaya
• Sriram Ramkrishna
• Emmanuele Bassi
• Bastien Nocera
• Seif Lotfy (remote)

Board Meeting Agenda

• Board roles
  • what should be changed in the board structure and processes in order to improve them?
  • the board should be more active on the list and IRC
    • should use the meetbot to have a log of the actions and topics on IRC
    • we need to modify the bot to not publish the logs to a public location
    • Sri will ask Andrea to check the bot
  • Karen would like to have better guidelines and boundaries for independent action of the ED from the board
    • "signature authority" for authorising small disbursements without board discussion
    • time-critical decisions that should not require an emergency meeting to get a vote
      • up to USD 500: direct approval from the ED
      • up to USD 1000: ED with additional approval from the treasurer
      • immediate notification on the board list and 24 hours for objections

      • VOTE: Allow Karen to authorize time-sensitive expenses without requiring a vote from the board: unanimous

    • We should also allow board directors can authorize small expenses using the same model
      • up to USD 250: direct approval of a board director
      • up to USD 500: needs two directors approval
      • immediate notification on the board list and 24 hours for objections

      • VOTE: Allow board directors to authorize expenses without requiring a full vote: +1 Emmanuele, Tobi, Kat, Andreas, Marina; -1 Joanie

  • we should improve the reporting of the ED activities
    • publish the public items on Planet
    • send the annotated version of the status to board-list
  • we should have a vice-secretary when the secretary is absent/ill/travelling
    • the vice-president could cover the secretary's role
  • notifying the board of topics for discussion is complicated and opaque
    • tracking items across private mailing lists is hard
    • we should have a wiki page open for suggestions
    • the agenda should be published the week before the meeting
    • the minutes for the previous meeting should be published in the off-week
    • directors should review the minutes between the meeting and publishing
  • positions on the board

    • president: Andreas volunteered. VOTE: Andreas to be president: unanimous, Andreas was also thanked for his service over the past year.

    • vice-president: Joanie volunteered. VOTE: Joanie to be vice-president: unanimous, Bastien was also thanked for his service over the past year.

    • secretary: Emmanuele volunteered. VOTE: Emmanuele to be secretary: unanimous, Emmanuele was also thanked for his service over the past year.

    • treasurer: Kat volunteered. VOTE: Kat to be treasurer: unanimous, Shaun was also thanked for his service over the past years.

• Agenda for AGM
  • Pants
  • Team reports
  • Upcoming events
    • GNOME Summit in Montreal
    • GNOME.asia
    • GUADEC 2014

• Last keynote slot: board Q&A panel

  • Karen will moderate the panel

  • ACTION: Karen will send and email to foundation-list for questions for the board Q&A at GUADEC

• New advisory board member
  • The Linux Foundation has joined the GNOME advisory board
  • Karen drafted the PR and it will be announced at the GUADEC opening
• Advisory board agenda
  • Presentations and discussions
  • Topics to be raised with the adboard
    • OPW

    • ZaReason

    • adboard meeting at FOSDEM 2014
• 20k privacy money
  • Suggestion for using the campaign money
    • Location services for GNOME
    • We need resources on GNOME servers
      • cache for geo names
      • IP geolocation
    • we need to integrate them with the desktop
    • we need to host those services outside of the US to maintain/guarantee privacy
  • Other suggestion: call for bids, modelled on the a11y one
    • narrow down the call for bids options
    • we can use part of the money to sponsor 1 or 2 interns for the next round of outreach pro

  • ACTION: Karen to contact Tor, EFF, OTI for feedback and eventual funding for privacy work

  • ACTION: Karen to "call for ideas" for privacy work related bids at GUADEC and by blog/email to foundation-announce

  • https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/PrivacyCampaign2013

• Finances
  • So far, we're mildly in the black
  • We are missing some adboard invoices
  • Critical areas

    • Need to update the PayPal donations

    • GUADEC sponsorship decreased
  • Expenses
    • Higher than budgeted
  • We are still tight on resources, but we have reserves
  • We should write off some of the receivables we still have pending
  • Do we have the right amount of financial controls?
    • We have three points of control: board/treasurer, book keeper, and executive director
    • There's room for improvement in the tools we use to track finances and budget
• Action items update
• Montreal/GNOME summit
  • We have hotel rates for accommodations near the venue
  • Finalization of the recommended accommodation is pending
  • After we chose an accommodation we can book a block of rooms
  • Further discussion: should we open the Summit to other cities in North America?
• Reimburse Rosanna for her new laptop
  • Older one she was using was breaking down

  • New ZaReason laptop (similar to Karen's)

  • VOTE: Reimburse Rosanna USD 1200 for her new laptop: unanimous

• Implement a Foundation employee policy for COLA (Cost of Living Adjustment)
  • To be discussed on board-only
• Pants of GNOME
  • Allan wins the Pants
  • in previous years we had a token award for other notable contributors
    • it was slightly confusing, so we should announce them separately
    • alongside "pants", we could use shorts
    • Andrea wins the shorts
• Travel committee
  • Montreal/GNOME summit: should be used as a test for the new travel committee policies?
  • The travel committee is currently verifying the travel requests
    • The event's local team should take over this role
  • The travel committee needs more resources
    • Three potential volunteers
    • Streamline the process

  • ACTION: Joanie, Kat, Tobi, Rosanna, Karen will hold a work group at GUADEC about the travel committee process

• CiviCRM
  • CiviCRM is installed

  • We still miss the integration with the data from PayPal

  • But we don't need that right now

  • We have our own homegrown system of scripts that mines PayPal data and generates reminders and gift tracking

    • Bus factor is still pretty high

    • ACTION: Tobi to talk to Andrea to move the PayPal data extraction scripts over to the GNOME infrastructure

    • If we ever change the payment provider, the system will need to adapt

Completed Actions

• All directors should discuss the first-response contact for emails - less necessary now that Karen not on maternity leave and board is generally more responsive
• All directors should continue discussing the a11y team proposal on the mailing list for the Accessibility FoG project - finished some time ago
• Andreas to update the employee handbook with the parental leave policy - in fact parental leave will be handled n a case by case basis
• Bastien will research what the status of the Banshee Amazon revenue is and report back to Bertrand Lorentz - Karen has followed up on this
• Emmanuele to start a wiki page on the community feedback of GUADEC 2012 - a new page for GUADEC 2013 has been open by Kat
• Seif to contact Collabora to ask if they can help with securing a venue in Montreál for the summit - Ryan took care of this with Savoir-Faire Linux
• Karen - To look into Google Checkout as an annual payment option for FoG - Google has a completely different system with higher fees
• Karen - Develop trademark usage forms for common use cases. James Vasile from legal is working with Brian on this.

  • https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=644932

  • This has been done.
• Karen - Check records of organizations with existing contracts to use the GNOME trademark.
  • Taken over from Vincent Untz. Look at the archives in 2005 and try to determine which companies can use the GNOME trademark. Know what kind of contracts we had with them.
  • Information is in the wiki
• Karen to explore funding options for the GNOME Foundation to be a member of the W3C - The a11y team has W3C contacts and regular reports
• Karen to explore funding options for a marketing director
• Karen to make LWN integration with CiviCRM one of the requirements for the contracted project - part of the larger CiviCRM discussion/topic
• Karen to coordinate with Robert and Florian to make sure that the right person send the letter of invitation to those who need it for VISAs to GUADEC - completed
• Karen and Tobias to write a Memorandum Of Understanding for collecting fund in Europe.- done

• Rosanna - Automate the process of entering PayPal information into GnuCash - completed

• Rosanna - Will apply for the GNOME credit card - completed
• Rosanna - Received the PO from Google for the GSOC payments; waiting for individual mentor travel receipts to submit invoice. - completed
• Rosanna - Look at the actual amount of money allocated for the sysadmin that we can still use - completed, we have a new sysadmin now
• Seif to send an email on board-list to start the discussion on the areas of involvement for each board member - less necessary now that Karen is not on maternity leave and the board is generally more responsive

Pending action items

• Andreas to put together a GNOME supporter card for our donors
• 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
• Joanie to draft a new travel assistance form to replace the current one (Kat, Joanie and Zana to discuss and come up with a solution)
• Joanie, Kat, Tobi, Rosanna, Karen will hold a work group at GUADEC about the travel committee process
• Kat to create a private wiki page on the web services accounts holders and passwords
• Kat to check with Andrea how to improve the spam filters of the board-related list archives
• Karen to write the Privacy policy for GNOME services
• Karen to carry on the discussion to explore the offer from Wau-Holland-Stiftun for collecting funds in Europe for us
• Karen to contact Tor, EFF, OTI for feedback and eventual funding for privacy work
• Karen to "call for ideas" for privacy work related bids at GUADEC and by blog/email to foundation-announce

• Karen will send and email to foundation-list for questions for the board Q&A at GUADEC

• Sri to investigate better uses of adwords on the GNOME websites

• Tobi to talk to Andrea to move the PayPal data extraction scripts over to the GNOME infrastructure