Minutes for January 23, 2014
Emerald sprint & PSM financing; Google Summer of Code; Budget; CMS Gardens
Paul called the meeting to order at 20:05 UTC
Housekeeping
Attendance
Present: Paul Roeland, Andy Leeb, Alexander Loechel, Érico Andrei, Cris Ewing, Steve McMahon
Absent: Tom (Spanky) Kapanka
Approval of the minutes of Jan 9, 2014
Cris moved approval
Andy seconded
Unanimously approved, with Érico abstaining
+ check if action items were followed up
Paul will invite Liz for the next meeting
Érico checked, and the Brasilia group is working on their accounts, payments still coming in. We need a ballpark figure on what the foundation may expect.
Stroopwafel (documentation) sprint has grown to 10+; no longer a small sprint. Cathedral sprint is full!
Idealware report; demo/meeting has occurred (thanks, Nathan van Gheem). We’ll see a draft sometime. We’ll be letting folks know about advertisement opportunities.
Incoming correspondence
Request from Emerald Sprint for $1,500 sprint funding.
Some money needed to reserve space. Paul has checked and the treasurer sees no problems with advancing money for approved purposes.
Also, there is a potential earmarked donation from Chris Calloway.
We still need the Framework Team’s approval for strategic sprint.
Andy moved we loan the money; Érico seconded
Unanimously approved
- Separate inquiry about interest in getting a copy of Gilbane report. No interest.
New Business
PSM (Plone Symposium Midwest)
The PSM organizers (led by Kim) are interested in having the PF be the fiscal agent for PSM. Plone Symposium Midwest is the second iteration of a highly successful Plone event at Oshkosh.
The big problem is that UWOshkosh is too slow and awkward to manage timely reimbursement of sponsors. So, they’d like to know if we can handle most of the finances. Kim has gotten a written agreement that UWO will guarantee covering any possible losses. Jenn (our treasurer) is willing to do the work. Budget is roughly $18,000.
They will take care of minute details. We won’t have to deal with coffee/meal choices. Registrations will come in; we’ll pay caterers, travel for speakers. $15-17,000 would pass through our hands.
Steve noted that the UW guarantee is a strong statement that expenses will be educational/charitable.
Paul also checked and believes the tax status is not a problem.
We’d need to accumulate adequate paperwork before final approval.
Paul asked for a general discussion on acceptability.
Andy inquired about Treasurer burden; Paul noted that he has checked with Carol Ganz and 6FU is volunteering the work for this. They’re on the organizing committee. We’ll need a solid agreement on this.
Andy asked if this is a precedent. Paul noted that we did this for the San Francisco conference, which was much more work than this should be.
General agreement that this is well within our charter. Paul will work with Carol, Jenn, Kim and Steve to marshall paperwork and a concrete motion for the next meeting.
GSOC (Google Summer Of Code)
GSOC organizing starts in February. Matthew Wilkes, who has done this before, and he’s willing to be chief organizer. Cheers!
IP Counsel update
We received a bill for $806.80 from Nutter, McClennen & Fish, LLP for expenses involved in handling our IP legal issues.
Steve will mail them and get address updated.
Paul will forward invoice to Jenn for payment.
Old Business
Budget 2014
The draft budget under discussion was in a shared, private area.
Paul noted that our income is more speculative than we would like (pending conversation with Liz).
Érico noted that the marketing budget is always speculative, and we’ve never used it up. We have, though, spent our sprint budget. Draft marketing budget is $49,000.
Paul noted that the conference income may be less than anticipated. We’re also anticipating a high ($50,000) sponsorship income. That exceeds previous years, but is more reasonable in light of last year’s income. So, $10-15K might not happen.
Cris suggested we regard this as an aspirational budget. Steve noted that we have enough in the bank to handle a shortfall if everything goes wrong. Paul and Érico noted that this budget should be a good sell to potential sponsors.
Alex said that this is probably as well as we can do at the moment.
Alex moved
Cris seconded
Discussion: a little work needs to be done to make this more presentable. We quickly saw a couple of places that need to be made more realistic.
Motion tabled by consensus pending this work. Next meeting!
Érico will update the numbers based on the discussion.
Plone.com
deployment
Some news: Work scheduled on this during Cathedral sprint. Case study work has resumed. One problem is getting corporate signoffs on giant intranet case studies, as many corporations seem to regard Plone intranet use as a competitive advantage that they don’t want revealed. Some brainstorming about corporations that might be willing to disclose.
CMS Gardens
Alexander reported that the German Python Foundation will add some funds to our $4,000. Armin has been working on ad materials. Alex wondered how quickly we could reimburse PSF. Paul said we should be able to do this promptly. There will be a final document on joining CMS Garden project that will need signing.
In-kind sponsorships
Steve reported he had failed abysmally to make progress on this.
Advisory/ambassador board
We have several candidates we are ready to name, but we need a short paragraph on what ‘ambassador’ means.
Steve will write this. Then, we’ll be ready to announce.
Contributor agreement status
Andy has done some follow-up work, but this still needs review by the KDE lawyers. Paul has been in touch with them. He has learned that a challenge of the document will be of considerable interest: we’d have good company. What we’d be doing will be very similar to what KDE does.
German law is generally regarded as the tough case for contributor agreements.
Paul said he would like one more final check; it can then go to the PF board — assuming no problems found. Difficult part is assignment while in the employ of somebody else. Legal systems differ on presumptions.
Short review of the basic document and the updates we would need, which are largely procedural, not legally substantive.
Sponsorship status & process
We need to interview Liz on this.
Review ongoing: CC relicensing, possible trademark infringements
Work on the CC 4 relicensing will be part of the Documentation Sprint (Stroopwafel) sprint. We’ll have some colophon restricting use of trademarked materials and images.
Paul anticipates being ready for action after the Cologne Sprint.
Odd items
Cris will be having some trouble with a couple of months of upcoming meetings. “A time of potential conflict.” He doesn’t anticipate missing more than a couple of meetings.
Spanky dropped the board a note saying that meeting during the work day is becoming a problem for him. A bit of a problem since it’s hard to find waking overlap with the European folks. Would an hour earlier work? Both Europeans have a problem then. No solutions.
Adjourned at 21:45 PM UTC