Minutes for December 23, 2014

Special discussion with Guests on possible Strategic Summit, Executive Director

(Minutes taken by Cris in Steve's absence.)

1:03 PM PST, meeting called to order by Paul

Attendees:
Paul Roeland, Chrissy Wainwright, Cris Ewing, Kim Nyugen, Alexander Loechel

Absent:
Carol Ganz, Steve McMahon (both excused) 

Guests:

Philip Bauer

Eric Steele

Special Meeting with Guests

Items of interest to guests:

1. Question of an Executive Director

There's been a noted lack of progress (or rather, slowness of progress) on critical projects such as plone\.[org|com]. Also, need to keep activity in the front of people's minds. The point of an executive director would be to "do the things that aren't being done", or perhaps to keep the pressure on to keep things moving.

First job for this person would be to raise their own salary by increasing sponsorship and participation.

Counter opinions center on not wanting to have one person "in charge", but that's not the point, could this person be seen instead as a person who moves initiatives by others.

Eric: 

I am the closest person to this type of job at the moment. I have 

taken on a lot of this role over the last few years but haven't got the 

time or the public persona to do the "figurehead" thing that might be 

needed.

One thing that is done poorly is getting decisions out to the public. We've had ongoing team leader meetings, but haven't held one since March.

An organizer who makes sure that each community initiative is moving forward in some way could be needed.

K: Plone.org/com is important to the community

E: how does a full-time nagger integrate with part time nagees? The ED should not take on tasks

C: Perhaps an ED could be seen to help equitably distribute work among available nagees?

A: What we describe here could be more a PM role, An ED should be more focused on marketing, publicity. We are describing two separate jobs.

K: I don't think the two roles are mutually exclusive. It could be a bit of both.

Ch: Job description could be clearly defined.

A: Not so much the jobs are mutually exclusive, more that the person who would be good at it might be. We have community members who are good at things other than code, we can leverage them to tasks like PM, marketing.

Important not to dis-incentivize community member participation.

Paul: Agreed, damage could be done by having community members decide not to participate because this person is intended to be "the person" doing the work. Also, marketing is divisive, and runs the risk of drawing vitriol and anger from those whose opinion is not reflected in decisions.

The person should be someone well-established in the community, but those people have their own companies, which risks the perception of self-serving.

E: community has a history of shooting down any one entity that gets too much power, so we'd have to work around/against that tendency

K: to work on that, part of the job description is to anticipate and diffuse those perceptions. A good candidate would work to avoid these situations.

We haven't had a role like this in a long time, but people's time is so split. This person, by getting paid avoids the split between getting paid and doing Plone-centric work.

We can either hope for something to change or push to make a change.

Phillip: I agree with some of what you say, but my doubt is that those who might be able to do such a job are already fully employed. How to get such a person to do this job if it can't pay as well as something else?

CH: this is my concern, Eric, how is it to balance this for you?

E: increasingly difficult to do it, takes a lot of work to balance the two.

Phillip: What would it take to make it work?

EXECUTIVE SESSION 

No actions taken.

2. Strategic Summit

Planned for Sorrento, but conflict has been noted with PyCon

Chrissy pointed out that the schedule is in conflict.

Philip: No announcement has been made, Is anyone who needs to be there going to PyCon?

C: SFU is all going to PyCon and cannot reschedule.

Ph: Calvin was at Bristol, is he planning on going to the SS?

A: Yes, he expressed interest

Ph: We raised the schedule issue in October, we only heard of this now. PLOG is the perfect time for this. P5 might be in rc by then.

P: We've been having the 2020 discussion spread over time and space, can we do the same thing for this? Could we declare PLOG as *a* strategic summit?

C: spreading out a decision-making meeting is not as viable as for a discussion like the 2020 thing.

K: the overlap is not complete, correct?

A: yes, but not enough separate to make a difference.

K: time pressure is here to get things done. Can we really wait until JP or Bucharest?

Phillip: The timing of PLOG is good, and it is longer than most other events, so it's more appropriate to this work.

C: The time, venue and event are good. PyCon has no web talks, Name this and go.

Chrissy: agree

P: dates have been out, moving PLOG is not possible. I think we should go ahead.

K: We should ensure that those who cannot attend can participate remotely.

P: Yes. Put money into improving tech infrastructure to support this.

C: Move to name this a strategic summit and support providing alternative channels for participation for folks who cannot attend.

Seconded by Alex. all YEAH

Phillip:

1. PLOG is an open event, everyone who wants to attend should attend. The SS is not a closed list event.

2: There may be people who attend who are not interested in the SS, so the normal PLOG activities should be concurrently occurring.

3: Who should be asked to attend the SS, who are those who *ought* to be there from all areas of Plone community.

4: How should the event be structured and who should moderate? 

need different moderators for each day.

some discussion of various possible candidates.

Who should drive the summit? Should be board take the role? Phillip says yes, since it means less work for him.

A: how many people are possible

Ph: 50-60 last year, more capacity this year.

K: We should take the lead.

How many board members will be there? 

Paul, Alex yes. Kim, maybe? Would like to be, funding is hard.

Phillip: What topics should be on the agenda? Anything that hasn't already been written about by Martin, Kim or me?

P: Team leader meeting, should support all attending. Not just a board-driven event.

Ph: Old timers: will the board talk to former community members? Limi, Paul Everett, Martin, etc.

Paul: yes.

Phillip: book your rooms now.

Will keep communications open:

Ph: I will communicate with PLOG organizers about this. Announcements on p.org and mailing lists from the board.

ACTION ITEM: Phillip communicate w/ organizers, Paul will handle p.org etc.

Regular Business

Approving Minutes for last meeting

alex moves, paul seconds. all approve

Plone.org

Paul: Demo version being tested. Content is transmogrified, ready to go but needs theming help. Chrissy can help a bit. Might be chance to unify some styles across .org and .com. Alex can also help.

Tickets available at https://github.com/plone/ploneorg.core/issues

We have a Poster Session at PyCon

ACTION ITEM: Cris will begin assembling attendance list and building a t-shirt
order to get a bunch of folks representing Plone.

Cris moves to adjourn, Chrissy seconds. All approve.