Minutes for August 20th, 2013, 16:00 UTC

Next Meeting

• Tuesday, September 3nd, 2013, 16:00 UTC

Attending

• Rosanna Yuen
• Andreas Nilsson
• Joanmarie Diggs
• Karen Sandler
• Ekaterina Gerasimova

Regrets

• Emmanuele Bassi
• Sriram Ramkrishna
• Tobias Mueller

Missing

• Marina Zhurakhinskaya

No quorum was achieved due to summer holidays.

Board Meeting Agenda

• GUADEC 2015 bids
  • Italy announced a couple of hours too late.
  • Is the board ok with still allowing the Italian bid? (Note: board members involved in other bids must recuse themselves)

  • VOTE: The board votes to allow the Italian bid, despite missing the deadline (but by less than 24 hours): +1 Joanie, Emmanuele (list), Sri (list), Tobi (list); abstain due to conflict of interest: Andreas and Ekaterina.

  • ACTION: Karen will tell Andrea of the Board's decision.

• Github mirror
  • use of the trademark
  • concerns that there is no Free/Libre alternative
  • one of the biggest problems seems to be the use of the word "official"
  • related topic: previous complaint about mirroring of bugzilla bugs in Google
  • proposal: "GNOME mirror"
  • should the Board ask Alberto to not use the word "official"?
  • A vote on this matter seems to be called for

  • ACTION: Kat will email the board-list to call for a vote

  • ACTION: Karen will ask Andrea how much work it would be to maintain a mirror on Gitorious (or a similar service)

• Implement a Foundation employee policy for COLA (Cost of Living Adjustment)
  • At the face to face board meeting we discussed having employee salaries increase when inflation increases, as other comparable nonprofits do.

  • http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CWUR0000SA0?output_view=pct_12mths

  • This topic should be discussed on the board-only list

  • ACTION: Andreas will raise this topic on board-only

• Quick GUADEC post-mortem
  • What went well?
    • Really positive feeling and good press especially given the press prior to the event.
    • Videos came out fast.
  • What went wrong?
    • Professional networking event - is it appropriate to continue having it, and if so, can we improve it?
    • Minor issues: Could have communicated better with local team, but this was not serious.
    • Really scratched up the floors, damaging some of the floor waxing. We may need to pay for this (up to $2000).

    • AdBoard meeting date less than ideal: People were quite tired at the end of the event.

  • What do we need to stay on top of for next year?
    • Finalizing sponsorship brochure in a timely fashion.
    • Get the call for papers, and confirmation/rejection notifications out sooner.

    • Give more thought to the format and content of the AdBoard meeting.

• .NET hackfest
  • Sponsorship request for $4000, after other sponsorships that they have arranged.
  • They have done two previous hackfests, porting apps to Gtk#

  • https://wiki.gnome.org/Hackfests/dotNET2013

  • Miscommunication about the status and our decision to the event organizers
  • Current hackfest budget suggests we can afford this comfortably
  • Requested funds for non-Foundation members: $811

  • VOTE: +1 Andreas, Kat, Emmanuele (by proxy, assigned to Karen); Abstain: Joanie.

  • ACTION: Joanie will call for an URGENT vote on the board-list for the members who were not present at today's meeting

• Adopting a photography policy for GNOME events.
  • It was suggested on board-list that we adopt a photography policy for bigger GNOME events.
  • This topic will be discussed at the next meeting.
• Scheduling an IRC Foundation meeting

  • At the Board Q&A the board promised to do a Foundation IRC meeting.

  • Needs an agenda and a date.

  • ACTION: Joanie will follow up with the Release Team about the Board Q&A discussion about their role.

• Collecting funds in Europe update
  • Tobias and Karen responded to WHS
• Sysadmin update
  • We should ask Andrea to blog about his work and/or send his email updates to the Foundation list

  • ACTION: Karen will get in touch with Andrea to communicate more broadly to the Foundation about his work

• possible trademark violation to assess.
  • Another software project is using the name GNOME

  • http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/7/prweb10889727.htm

  • Justin replied that Rope & Grey can't help us this time but Karen has contacted SFLC.

• Montreal Summit
  • Travel sponsorship

  • ACTION: Kat to get back to Ryan

• Travel Committee, Delegation, Budgets, etc.
  • Reimbursements: can we take on the fees from Paypal payments?

  • Doing it via PayPal adds some overhead with respect to the workflow.

  • Our new bank has told Rosanna that transfers with them will be cheaper, but how much remains to be seen.

Discussed on the mailing list

• Legal implications of having LastFm authentication on GOA

• [gnome.org #13849] URGENT gnome Brand Registration Confirmation
• The new travel sponsorship process for "small" events

Completed Actions

• Karen will send an email to foundation-list for questions for the board Q&A at GUADEC - will be carried to a Foundation IRC meeting

Pending action items

• Andreas to put together a GNOME supporter card for our donors
• Andreas will raise the topic of implementing a Foundation employee policy for COLA on board-only
• 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
• Joanie will call for an URGENT vote on the board-list regarding the .NET hackfest sponsorship for the members who were not present at today's meeting

• Joanie will follow up with the Release Team about the Board Q&A discussion about their role

• 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 get in touch with Andrea to communicate more broadly to the Foundation about his work
• Karen will tell Andrea of the Board's decision regarding allowing the Italian bid
• Karen will ask Andrea how much work it would be to maintain a mirror on Gitorious (or a similar service)

• Kat will email the board-list to call for a vote regarding the GitHub mirror

• Kat will get back to Ryan regarding the Montreal Summit travel sponsorship procedures
• 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
• 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