Plone Foundation Board Minutes September 4, 2025

Call to Order

• Meeting started at 20:03 UTC

Attendance

• Present: Rafahela Bazzanella, Eric Brehault, Brian Davis, João Henrique Gouveia, Mikel Larreategi, Martin Peeters, Guido Stevens, and Steve Piercy (interim treasurer)
• Excused: None

Approval of the minutes of

• August 7, 2025: Brian motions to approve. Mikel seconds. All in favor except Guido and Gouveia who abstain.
• August 21, 2025: Guido motions to approve. Brian seconds. All in favor.

Action items

• Mikel posted a Sponsorship summary to Quaive.

Incoming Correspondence

• Emails related to Treasurer Role
• GSoC
• 2 emails about Plone sponsorship
• 1 email about external event sponsorship
• Axolote Sprint reimbursement
• PloneConf26 possibilities

New Business

• Advice on sponsorship of external events
• Marketing is the decision-maker for the Marketing budget.
• The Board does not usually validate each element of that budget.
• Since we don't have a mandate, in this case, we are just advising.
• The Board advises to not sponsor the event.
• Brian to contact Marketing Team.

• Establishment of policy for future events
• If policies are created, those should come from Marketing and PloneConf, not the Board.
• A Board policy runs the risk of being too over-reaching and strict.
• Mikel: Perhaps there is difference? For PloneConf, the organizer has full control. In Marketing, although they have control of the budget, we are tied to that representation.
• Guido: If we do not have a mandate, it is only our role to advise.

Continued Business

• Interim Treasurer Report
• Steve has created a Google Sheet to gather officer contact info for signers
• Need preferred name, legal name, phone number, and email address.

• Adding additional signers to the current bank accounts
• Steve: We need to make a motion to approve Board officers as signers, so I can deliver Board Meeting Minutes with the approved motion to our banking institutions.
• Martin: First, are there any questions about giving Treasurer, President, and Secretary access to the accounts?
• No questions, all understand and agree.
• Guido motions to approve Steve Piercy (Treasurer), Martin Peeters (President), and Brian Davis (Secretary) as designated/mandated signers on all known bank accounts: Chase, PayPal, Stripe, Payoneer, Wise. Eric seconds. All in favor.
• Guido thanks Steve for all the work he's been doing on this.
• Brian will expedite meeting minutes for tomorrow.

• Closing the Capital One account
• Steve: We need to make a motion to close the account, so I can deliver Board Meeting Minutes with the approved motion to Capital One.
• Mikel motions to close the Capital One account and instruct the treasurer to get the check and deposit into in the Chase account. Eric seconds. All in favor.
• Steve: We need to create a Signed Letter of Direction (Digitized through Docusign) on letterhead that advises:
• The current signer is no longer associated with The Plone Foundation.
• Steve Piercy is requesting to be added to the account in order to close it.
• Provide the treasurer's mailing address for receipt of the check.

• Approve outstanding reimbursements
• There are two current requests:
• Martin: Axolote was the amount we agreed on. Expenses are justified. Reimbursement can be processed.
• Martin: Victor's request has already been approved. No board action needed. Reimbursement can be processed.
• Martin will reply to the requesters to validate both.
• Steve: These two transactions will be our first Wise transactions.

• Guido: Meeting time is limited, can we set a time-box for some of these topics?
• Martin: We still have some meeting time left. We will try to fit everything in.

• Review domain ownership contact information.
• Steve: We need someone to update this with 3 different registrars.
• Martin recommends contacting Paul.
• Brian recommends whois protection if we aren't doing that already due to spam.

• Sponsorship management and levels
• sponsor@plone emails not being received/replied-to
• We reviewed the communication history on a failed sponsorship.
• sponsor@plone is a Google Group with 2 members (one a generic sponsor_user)
• Adding board@plone as member of the Sponsor group should plug that communication hole.

• Steve: Anything that is Paypal is designated to receive notifications, so sponsor@plone should be added to Paypal as a contact.
• Steve will add a new user with restricted access to just get notification that money is coming in.

• Steve: Who is responsible for updating the Sponsors page on plone.org?
• Martin: The Sponsorship Manager. However that role is unresolved at this time.

• Responding to the failed sponsorship
• Steve: Should we wait to respond to the failed sponsorship until Sponsorship Manager role is resolved?
• Guido: We should contact the sponsor and acknowledge that we take this seriously, but need more time to resolve this. Trying to repair and acknowledging the mistake is important. It changes the perception of a failed experience.
• Guido: I recommend we extend the subscription by the amount of failed months and offer an additional 1 year.
• Martin: I still like sponsoring a PloneConf invitation, because that gives us a chance to interact and repair the relationship.
• Copper is 500 EUR, Bronze is 1000 EUR and includes 1 ticket.
• Guido proposes Bronze conference sponsorship + 1 year of Foundation sponsorship.
• Let's first coordinate this with the PloneConf organizers.

• Steve would like to identify with Sponsorship Team Lead who has paid, who has not, and who do they expect.
• Guido: Perhaps Sponsorship Team should have representation on the board?
• Martin: Yes I agree, similar to how we have liaison member to the Marketing Team. Sponsorship Team Lead doesn't have to be on the Board, but should have liaison to work with.

• Github security overhaul
• No news
• Provider listing on plone.org: what to do as a company in the community, self-grading
• No news
• Sprint funding request
• No news
• Guido: Has the money been transferred? Can we do something to unblock the situation? Let’s get them what was allocated now, and rectify the over-budgeting later.
• Martin: I will send Steve the info Beth had and will let the requester know this is coming ASAP.
• Steve: Also mention we have a new treasurer and new payment methods. There are several reimbursement options that they can choose from.
• GSOC 2025
• Eric: This was a bit of a mess, because I was totally off-grid 3 weeks and didn't get notifications.
• Paul stepped in and took care of this. Nilesh and Tiesha will be the new technical mentors.
• Disappointing situation, but lesson learned, and we will be more careful next time. Will also designate a fallback person next time.
• I realize this hurts Plone and hurts the student. Will address changing the process next year, so it doesn't happen again.
• Plone Conference 2025
• Mikel: Conference committee is currently reviewing talks submissions.
• There are a lot of talks and there are rooms for open spaces.
• Friday's Pycon Finland schedule is already out.
• Conference organizers are working hard on the website.
• Next meeting is Tuesday, will have more news soon.
• AI Policy
• No news.
• Steve: What is blocking it?
• Zope Foundation Funds
• No news.
• Steve: Is there anything I can do?
• Martin will send Steve a summary on what has already happened.

Review Ongoing

• Sponsorship and Board Priorities documents
• Please look on Quaive before next meeting.
• Github Security Remediation:
• Martin took action, but Guido advises that action was not enough to address all possible scenarios.
• Steve will take the lead and contact Maurits.
• Mikel: Also, please talk to the Security Team.
• Ploneconf26: Discussed possibilities.
• Ploneconf25: Steve and Martin to attend the next meeting to address invoices and sponsorship.

Adjournment

• Guido motions to adjourn. Mikel seconds. All in favor.
• Adjourned at 22:00 UTC