Foundation Board Minutes for Tuesday, April 24th 2018, 18:00 UTC
Next meeting date Tuesday, May 1st 2018, 18:00 UTC
Attending
Regrets
Agenda
- 2018 Board of Directors elections timeline (Allan)
- Code of Conduct Committee (Nuritzi)
- Vote on charter and propose members
- Code of Conduct adoption process (Neil)
- Sponsorship committee call update by Carlos (Nuritzi)
Board's GitLab workboard/workflow proposal (Nuritzi)
Review open issues - https://gitlab.gnome.org/Community/Board/boards (standing agenda item)
Minutes
- 2018 Board of Directors elections timeline (Allan)
- We've received a timeline for this year's elections from Andrea Veri.
- Rosanna - when do people have to have their membership confirmed in order to get a vote? It's agreed that we should find this out and ensure that the information is included in the elections announcements.
- GUADEC starts July 4th, so there will only be two weeks between new directors being announced and the board's in-person meeting at GUADEC.
- Cosimo - a suggestion for the elections announcement - if you are elected, you will need to be in Almeria a couple of days early.
- Allan - do we want to bring it earlier? Neil - that could be difficult.
- ACTION: Allan to confirm that the timeline is OK and pass on our suggestions to Andrea (DONE).
- Code of Conduct Committee (Nuritzi)
- Nuritzi and Allan have worked on the draft charter for the committee, which Allan has circulated to the board.
- Didier - what happens if the committee isn't at an event? The charter implies that they have to enforce the code of conduct at all events. Nuritzi - if they aren't at an event, their responsibility will be to respond to reports that are submitted remotely.
- Cosimo - it looks good. It feels speculative in places - we don't know what kinds of issues it will have to deal with. Some clauses are narrow and specific and others are very broad. We will possibly need to update it in the future (Didier agrees that this is a good idea).
- Cosimo - it should say that committee members are removed by the board as well as being appointed.
- Rosanna - there's no mention of conference code of conduct teams. Who's responsibility is this?
- Allan - the committee ought to have the final say on who's appointed to teams, in order to prevent disagreements over appointments.
- Neil - it's the committee's job to ensure that the team is assembled and does its job. This ought to be led by the committee rather than conference organisers. It ought to be appointment by the committee.
- Does the draft charter need to be changed? Cosimo - companion guidelines for how teams are setup might help to resolve this question. Carlos agrees that this would be a good solution.
- Meg - this seems like something that the committee can work out. Nuritzi agrees with that.
- Carlos - "removing priviledges or responsibilities" seems strong. Nuritzi - this is around roles at events, like as an organiser.
- VOTE: approve the charter, with the amendment to state that the board appoints or remove members.
- +1 Nuritzi, Carlos, Cosimo, Meg, Didier, Allan - unanimous
- Code of Conduct adoption process (Neil)
- Neil - amongst the recent discussion on foundation-list, it has been asked whether the existing code of conduct proposal is "formal". The answer is no, but it wasn't required to be formal. Is the board happy to vote on a proposal that doesn't have the unanimous support of the working group? Or would they prefer a vote of the working group?
- The previous suggestion was for the board to vote now, and the community to have an affirmation vote at GUADEC.
- Nuritzi - wants to ensure that the community can feel good about the adoption process.
- Neil - we want a code of conduct in place for GUADEC 2018, prior to registration opening. Nuritzi - voting on the code of conduct isn't necessary for that - the existing proposal could be used anyway.
- Rosanna - but the local organisers need an indication from the board that they endorse the code of conduct.
- Cosimo - the board should vote and approve the code of conduct before asking the community to affirm it. It's unrelated to whether GUADEC 2018 uses that exact text or not -- they can use it regardless of whether the board or the community have officially approved it
- Meg - we can communicate that there will be a process (discussion/consultation) after the board vote, if we have more steps in mind.
- Didier - we can vote on the current draft of the CoC, confirming the board is comfortable with this proposal to be put in front of the community
- Allan - the question about the proposal submitted to the board is separate to the the question of what should happen to the code of conduct after it has been voted on.
- Should we vote on the code of conduct proposal today? Allan - there are some outstanding issues that have been raised by Alexandre and he's not here today. We might want to wait on him before we vote. (Cosimo agrees.)
- VOTE: accept the proposal that has been put forward by Allan as a legitimate presentation to the board.
- +1 Carlos, Nuritizi, Cosimo, Didier, Meg. Allan abstains.
- ACTION: Carlos to report this decision to foundation-list
- ACTION: Allan and Neil to respond to Alexandre's issues on the mailing list.
- Sponsorship committee call update by Carlos (Nuritzi)
- Carlos had a meeting with Alberto. Things are going well in general.
- They're not sure how to handle more than one event at any one time - this can involve going repeatedly back to the same sponsors, which can get awkward.
- GNOME.Asia members are yet to participate.
- Nuritzi - GNOME.Asia is preparing to do a sponsorship drive of their own, so we need to ensure that our sponsorship efforts are coordinated.
Nurtizi - async is important for communication with GNOME.Asia. GitLab could be a good option for the sponsorship committee.
- Neil - we have a sponsorship brochure for the main conferences, which go out to our main events sponsors. Smaller conferences can also do local fundraising themleves.
- ACTION: Neil to reach out to the GNOME.Asia team to coordinate on sponsorship.
- ACTION: Carlos to follow up.
Board's GitLab workboard/workflow proposal (Nuritzi)
Nuritzi has a proposal for how to manage the board's issues - https://gitlab.gnome.org/Community/Board/issues/34
- Allan's interested in differentiating high priority issues.
- Meg suggests a "blocked" label. Didier suggests "in progress" instead.
- Carlos - the board shouldn't have a large number of issues, so how useful is this?
- Allan - we need to have regular sessions where we review the backlog.