Minutes for October 18th, 2012

Officer election, agenda policy, interest-disclosure policy, appointment of Membership and Communications/Marketing Committee chairs, funding for UI sprint

meeting starts at 22:08 CET

This is the first meeting of the new Board of Directors for 2012/2013

Housekeeping

 

 

New Business

 

  • Election of officers:
    Carol moves to appoint Paul as president, Érico seconds. Unanimous approval.
    Carol moves to appoint Érico as vice-president, Matthew seconds. Unanimous approval.
    Paul moves to appoint Steve as secretary, Matt seconds. Unanimous approval.

    Paul nominates Jen Myers as treasurer, Matt seconds. Unanimous approval.

    To ensure an orderly meeting, the new positions start at the end of this meeting. Thus, for the duration of this meeting, Matt chairs the meeting and Paul takes the minutes.
  • Discussion of goals and expectations for this term.
    The Board has started a discussion on this, and will further flesh it out over the coming weeks. The goal is to make this publicly available. Transparency is a key issue for everybody, and publishing our goals and expectations is a good start.
  • Discussion on board transparency and task tracking.
    A suggestion has been made to the Board to use the issue tracker on dev.plone.org for tracking tasks and issues. While we definitely see the value in a public workflow tool, we feel that this is not the right tool for the job. An issue tracker works well for software projects, but we are the board of the Plone Foundation, and need to stay in communication with a wide range of people. Members, non-members, with a varying level of technical expertise. We will look into other solutions, preferably one that is user-friendly and can be accessed on plone.org itself.

    We also want to enable commenting on the agenda, keep the agenda and the minutes linked, and ensure that correspondence to the Board gets noted in the agenda. (Obviously keeping privacy in mind).
    Steve makes the following motion, seconded by Liz: "Agendas should go out to foundation members list and board list at least two days before every meeting. Also, posted on plone.org in the agendas listing. List mailing should be full text of agenda, not just a link. Lead every agenda with something like “comments or feedback on any agenda item? E-mail the board list at least a day before the meeting.” Agendas should include a list of correspondence received by the board since the last agenda."
    Unanimous approval.

    Steve makes the following motion, seconded by Paul: Directors are expected to disclose financial and strong personal interests when items are considered. If there is a direct financial interest in an outcome (beyond the impact on the membership at large), the disclosure should be recorded in the minutes. (Example: “XXX, under consideration for YYY, has worked for my company as a consultant within the last year.”)
    Unanimous approval.
  • Video of conferences
    A request came in whether the Board should enact a specific policy on conference organizers to upload videos of the talks to a specific location. After discussion, we decide that would be micro-managing. Having a proposal for video availablity is already part of the due diligence process on conference proposals.
  • Appointment of Membership Committee Chair
    The Chair, as stated in our bylaws, has to be a Board member. Liz moves to appoint Matthew Wilkes, Paul seconds. Unanimous approval. Matthew will be in charge of getting candidates for the new Committee.
  • Structure of the Marketing Committee / Communication Team
    The Board has discussed various pros and contras of having Marketing and Communication as either a Project Committee and a team. There are differences in the requirements of each; currently the bylaws state that Committee members have to be Foundation members as well, which is obviously restricting. On the other hand, "Promoting Plone" is a core function of the Foundation, and there is a significant budget involved. Therefore, we come to the conclusion that a Committee is the best option, that is tasked with developing a strategy and a budget. There will also be a wider Team, where all interested community people can participate, regardless of Membership status.
    Steve moves to appoint Matt as chair of the Marketing Committee, Liz seconds. Unanimous approval. Carol also agrees to be on the Committee, and there will be more members.
  • Discussion of Advisory board members
    We are still at the informal stage of getting in advisory board members. It is clear that we want them, and that for this year the focus will be on getting more geographical diversity. We're drawing up a list of people to contact, and are working on what the expectations are for advisory board members, so as to be clear on both sides what the Board expects from candidates and what they can expect from us.
  • Plone logo violation issue
    This is a new issue. We've been pointed out a potential logo violation, where a company that makes security software uses a logo that is very much like ours in colour and shape. As their working field is close to Plone, this will go to the lawyers. Matt will contact them.
  • Contributor agreement process
    The Software Freedom Law Centre needs to be contacted again, to see if we can get the proposal for a simplified Contributor Agreement approved. Apart from the legal process, we want the whole experience to be smoother, quicker and friendlier. Action: Liz and Paul

 

Old Business

 

  • Plone.com progress/discussion
    There was both an Open Space and a sprint on this at Arnhem, in which some of the key messages were further discussed. Also, design has come a long way.
  • Request for funding UI Sprint @ Arnhem
    This request, from sept. 17, has been discussed several times, mainly because first other avenues of funding were explored. We now decide to grant the remainder, being $1,046.40.
    Carol moves to approve this sum, Liz seconds. Unanimous approval.