Minutes for December 15th, 2011

meeting minutes of the Board of Directors

The meeting starts at 22:03 CET

present: everybody

housekeeping

• approval of the minutes for December 1st.
  Carol moves to approve minutes, pending a name change
  Geir seconds. Unanimous approval

Old business

• Marketing budget
  The Board has received the preliminary marketing budget for 2012. There is a new item on there: a 'we are Plone' campaign. The aim of this is to focus on various people using Plone; thereby showing the diversity of the community and the wide range of organisations that use Plone. The Board thinks this is a good idea.
  
  The budget also leaves room for events that are not certain yet; as it should. This is a budget, and therefore should leave room for the unexpected.
  
  There is also a post on there for promotional material / schwag, which has not been used in the past years, but it still is good to budget it.
  
  There will be a Plone Latin America conference somewhere in august.
  
  It would be helpful if a person will be responsible for tracking all global events happening in the Plone community. The Board will ask the Marketing team to nominate a person.
  
  Paul moves to approve the budget, so the Marketing team can get on.
  Érico seconds. Unanimous approval.
  
  
• Zea Indian trademark transfer.
  We're waiting for the paperwork, it's in the works.
  
  
• OASIS WEMI standard.
  After a call to the Membership, Armin Stroß-Radschinski indicated he would be interested. But his time at the moment is limited, and the WEMI working group starts just about now.
  That means we're not going to join in the initial process at this moment, but we might later see if Armin can take this up.
  
  
• PloneConf 2012 call.
  The call has gone out. No responses yet, but we have it on good authority there's proposal(s) in the making.
  
  
• Plone Foundation seat in Europe.
  This still needs to be sorted. (Matt)
  
  
• good-py.appspot.com funding
  The practicalities will be taken care of by Carol and Jen, the transition of Treasury will have taken place by January 1st 2012. They will take it up with Philip Bauer.
  
  
• Plone.org cleanup.
  The sections on the various Teams on plone.org are sometimes not up to scratch. Most of them are made up of automatic lists of people, but some of that information is outdated. Some information is also duplicated in several places
  Also what is missing is a clear introduction for each team on the why, who, what and where of their activities. Making an introductory page will increase the transparency of the teams.
  The Board will publish guidelines on setting up such a page.
  
  Maurizio will take it up.
  
  Another issue are the various mailing lists at lists.plone.org. A few of these have not seen traffic in recent times, and should be archived or at least marked "obsolete". Some others need a better description and information, and we need to make sure the admins are reachable.
  Maurizio will also take this up
  Matt will set up the necessary permissions for the rest of the board.
  
  
• Contributor agreements
  The physical copies need to go to Sjoerd.
  We should also make regular publicity about new contributors joining.
  Mark will resurrect the 'This month in Plone' newsitem, which would be an ideal location to mention new contributors to the Plone core.
  
  
• Newsitem on the Marketing team.
  Carol and Mark have written a newsitem on this team; last time the board said we would like to hold it a bit until the information about the team on plone.org is up-to-date. Now it can go out.
  Carol and Matt will take care of this.
  
  
• New Membership committee.
  The Membership committee has started, we expect new recommendations on applications for the next Board meeting.
  
  
• plone.org infrastructure maintenance
  There was a prolonged, and ongoing, discussion on the Membership list about this. We see the potential pitfalls as soon as money would be involved to handle these tasks.
  The Board would be much happier to, for instance, fund a sprint on this, to emphasise that this is a collaborative effort where many people contribute.
  
  
• Funding request CMS Expo
  A revised request for funding has come in. Still, It's a relatively small  and for-profit event. The costs are therefore still higher than would be justified by the returns. The Board decides to not sponsor this event. Matt will take it up.
  
  

(Carol has to leave at 23:03 CET)

New business

• PO box for the Foundation
  The cost would be 62 dollars per annum and a few dollars for the key. The board agrees it's totally worth it, it will make future Board changes much easier.
  
  To paraphrase Captain Picard: First Officer Carol, make it so!
  Matt moves to approve, Sjoerd seconds. Unanimous approval
  
  
• Invoice Google Summer of Code.
  We've received an invoice for travel expenses; it is covered by the grant from Google, so it's just down to paying it.
  Matt will deal with it.
  
  
• Ploud.com
  There is a press-release about ploud.com, with a request to put it up on plone.org.
  There is potential tension here between not wanting to promote any particular company, but still promote the various efforts by companies to further the Plone community as a whole.
  We think this should go into a 'This month in Plone' newsitem.
  
  Since these type of questions pop up regularly, we will also consult the Membership on this generic question. Our goal is to find a good way to highlight companies doing cool stuff with Plone, while remaining vendor-neutral.
  
  
• Change of bankaccount.
  Carol has received an example form to change the bankaccount and the signatories.
  
  Matt and Paul will deal with this.
  Board decision: We authorize Jen Meyers to be primary signatory, authorize Carol Ganz to be secondary signatory, and will remove Toby as signatory.
  Érico moves to approve, Maurizio seconds. Unanimous approval.
  
  The Board expresses our deep gratitude to Toby for his many, many years as devoted Treasurer (and will make sure he gets a physical token of our gratitude as well).
  
  
• Publishing of the minutes.
  There was a question on whether we can publish these minutes earlier. Unfortunately, they can only be published after they have been approved on the next Board Meeting
  
  
• Donations
  The Board will set up a way to receive (micro-)donations. These will be possible in a wide range of currencies and payment methods, to allow both individuals and smaller companies to donate.

Matt moves to close the meeting
Paul seconds. Unanimous approval.

Meeting closed at 23.34 CET