Meeting of the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors, 27 January 2020, 15:30 UTC
Attending
Regrets
Agenda
- Approve minutes from 13 January
- Bid for GNOME.Asia 2020
- Approve Neil's travel
- Announcements
Minutes
- Approve minutes from 13 January (Philip)
- No remarks.
- Minutes are approved.
- Bid for GNOME.Asia 2020
See https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Board/issues/145 for more information.
- Allan: Neil, what are the circumstances of this bid?
- Neil: This was a response to the call for bids that Kristi sent out. It seems like a good bid and I recommend going forward with it.
- Allan: Has the team put together the budget in collaboration with the staff?
- Neil: They put together the budget themselves. It seems similar to the Indonesia budget.
- Britt: Is this the only proposal we've received?
- Neil: Yes.
- Allan: If there were aspects we were unhappy with, we could remark on those, so it's OK that there's no competing bid.
- Tristan: The sponsorship part looked sort of tentative, as in a list of organizations that they might get sponsorship from.
- Federico: It wasn't clear whether they would have talked to these organizations yet or not.
- Rosanna: We don't expect them to contact organizations until the proposal has actually been approved.
- Neil: There's a range, there are some organizations that have sponsored before.
- Allan: I have reservations about some of the expenditures in the maximal budget case, such as giving everyone a T-shirt and the island hopping trip. Those are things I'd not normally expect to come out of a conference budget. It's also not clear whether we're approving the maximum or the minimum budget or something in between.
- Neil: Usually, what happens is we approve the maximum budget, and the maximum liability for the Foundation is the minimum budget. So if they raise no sponsorship at all, then they cannot overspend the minimum budget.
- Allan: Do the numbers seem reasonable in general? There's no entry for venue costs, or are they getting that for free?
- Britt: Is it under Accommodation?
- Philip: That looks like hotel accommodations for the committee.
- Neil: I assume that since the university staff are involved in the organization, the venue is being provided for free.
- Allan: We should double check that.
- Allan: Do we need to vote on this now?
- Neil: The total expenditure is such that the board doesn't need to approve it as a whole, I can approve it with Carlos. I will double check about the venue costs.
- Allan: I'll send a reply that the board has looked at the proposal.
- Approve Neil's travel
See https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Board/issues/146 for more information.
- Neil is asking for approval for:
- FOSS Asia, Singapore, 19–22 February
- SCaLE x18, California USA, 5–9 March
LibrePlanet, Boston USA, 14–15 March
- Tristan: I think the dates for FOSS Asia are wrong, it's 19–21 March. It might conflict with the others.
- Allan: We can approve all three anyway and Neil can decide which to go to.
- VOTE: Approve Neil's requested travel.
- +1 unanimous
- Announcements:
- Allan: No meeting on February 3rd. February 10th is pencilled in as a special ED report, to include a budget report.