Foundation Board Minutes for Tuesday, May 1st 2018, 18:00 UTC

Next meeting date Tuesday, May 8th 2018, 18:00 UTC

Attending

Regrets

Missing

Agenda

Feedback from Travel Committee (Didier)
- https://gitlab.gnome.org/Community/Board/issues/49
Map tile access (Meg)
OpenMindsClub (Meg)

Deferred:

Events code of conduct (Allan)
Engagement Committee (Nuritzi)
- Vote for charter and propose members
- https://gitlab.gnome.org/Community/Board/issues/16

Minutes

Feedback from Travel Committee (Didier)
- Didier has met with David from the travel committee, and shared his notes - https://gitlab.gnome.org/Community/Board/issues/49
- David is generally happy.
- Didier raised some points with David:
  - Possibility of inviting specific individuals to events, potentially non-Foundation members. David is OK with this, but we'd need to decide how it will be handled in practice - who approves each invitation?
    - Neil - we have done this in the past. It can come out of a conference budget. It doesn't necessarily have to be through the travel committee.
    - Allan - how do we make this facility available to other Foundation members, so they can request invitations? We ought to have guidelines or documentation so people know that this facility is available.
    - Didier - David was keen for the board to handle this - didn't want to be handling decisions for this.
    - It sounds like this is up to the board to resolve.
  - Providing an option for people to have their sponsorship paid prior to travel - David agreed to this in principle. He doesn't want to push it too hard, and it could involve additional bureaucracy for the committee.
  - Allowing more intercontinental travel - for example, to allow more people from the US travelling to GUADEC. David's view - it's just a question of cost and budget, and people planning far enough ahead to allow this kind of travel. Seems that this is a responsibility for event organisers.
  - Prices going up while waiting for sponsorship approval - hackfests need to be announced further in advance. David has agreed to change the wording of the policy, to make it a bit friendlier, not proposing policy changes at the moment though. Applications should get a response within a week. Delays often result from incomplete applications.
    - Meg - sponsorship requests can open late for GUADEC. Being able to book further in advance would be good. There can also be back and forth with the committee if their travel suggestion is impractical.
    - Neil - our staff travel policy provides some detail on what constitutes a reasonable travel option - this might be useful for the committee.
    - Allan - the issue with prices going up would be reduced if processing times were faster. Perhaps the process could be streamlined, to speed things up? One option - applicants suggest a flight based on guidelines for what's reasonable, then the TC just checks it over and approves/refuses.
    - ACTION - Didier to feed these ideas back.
  - Would it be possible to ensure that travellers don't lose out due to exchange rate fluctuations? Rosanna - it should be possible to reimburse in the local currency.
  - ACTION: Didier to send this feedback to the TC.
Map tile access (Meg)
- There has been a discussion on the foundation list about using the tile server for other application than Maps. We have a specific deal with Mapbox in the amount of requests we can do. Do we need to ask them about other applications using the service?
- Neil: the deal with Mapbox is for a certain amount of requests, which are capped. However, the main reason for using Mapbox was to get access to their satelitte images, which might not be needed for other applications.
- ACTION: OpenStreetMap might be a better fit for other apps. We have some experience talking to them and can suggest a way forward. Meg to respond to the application author.
OpenMindsClub (Meg)
- It's an university group promoting Free Software and contributing. They have asked for videos about Free Software.
- ACTION: Meg will pass this on to the Engagement Team.