Minutes for February 18, 2010

Minutes of the Plone Foundation Board of Directors

Called to order at 12:03pm PST

Housekeeping

Attendance

Attending: Geir, Matt, Mark, Steve, Roberto, Alex
Calvin on IRC from pycon

Approve minutes for February 4, 2010

Geir moved, Mark seconded
Unanimously approved

Quick Committee status reports (IP, Membership, Marketing)

IP

Steve: The Plone Foundation has filed a dispute entry with DENIC over plone.de.

Marketing

Mark: Meeting took place to break up tasks for Plone 4 launch.
Geir: we could use a feature list for plone. Not just new things.

Old business

Insurance [toby]

Toby did research with SLC folks. Delaware allows any corporation to indemnify its officers. Also, Delaware law protects anyone acting reasonably. Risk is low, though it wouldn’t hurt to insure. Main risk would be from a rogue board member.
Employees or full-time or permanent volunteers would change exposure.
Discussion: with no employees, premises, risk low enough to not purchase officers & directors insurance at this point. No action.

Plone conference 2010 [matt]

Venue confirmed; working on picking a party location. Making lists.

Revisit: Event funding request: Open Source Pacific Asia Conference and Expo, Pretaweb

Matt will be in touch to determine what they’re really asking for, and if this is their primary event for the year.

Revisit: Event funding request, CMSExpo, Enfold systems, Contextual corporation, Alan Runyan, Aimee Errington [mark]

Trying to put together a full Plone track, but asking for more money than typical for events.
Mark: if we spend this much ($5k USD) on one event, we need to make it clear that this is a special item, and not a part of the regular budget. Otherwise, it would be 40% of the marketing budget.
Matt: It would be a real coup to have that Plone track.
Mark: we need to get more companies involved if this is to be acceptable to the larger membership.

Limi: not like other conferences. You pay to have a track, rather than a booth.
Geir suggested going ahead and allocating money, but conditioning it on participation from additional Plone companies to provide people for the tracks. Also, suggested that this be regarded as a special marketing event (not part of regular marketing budget).
Matt: suggested funding X amount if only Enfold and Contextual. Y amount if more companies.
Geir: Is there general agreement that this event is important enough to warrant expenditure beyond the marketing budget?

Discussion: the full track would be a big deal, raise our presence. Mark emphasized that it must not hijack the event budget.
Geir suggested saying we’re willing to allocate $1,000 for participating Plone company up to $5,000 total. Money will not come from marketing / events budget.
Mark and Matt suggested going ahead and funding, but with agreement that we won’t do it again w/o participation from additional companies.

Matt moved allocation of $5,000 towards a Plone track at CMS Expo, project to be managed by Contextual and Enfold, with understanding that they will seek additional participation from Plone companies. Money to come from general budget and not from marketing/events budget.
Geir seconded
Unanimously approved

Mark will make contact w/ Contextual / Enfold regarding this.

Regional conferences, naming, guide. [alex]

Alex still working on it.

New business

Event funding book-keeping, record-keeping, reports?

Geir: We need boilerplate for notifications of funding that makes it very clear how to report and ask for payment.
We should keep a shared google spreadsheet with this information: who’s applied, how much allocated, disbursement.
Steve suggested using Google Domain Accounts for keeping track of this rather than ad-hoc docs all over the place. board@plone.org

Budget for 2010

Geir will pick up the leadership on this.

Adjourned at 1:15pm, Next meeting March 4th.