Minutes of the Board Meeting of November 20th, 2012

[Emmanuele Bassi <ebassi gmail com>]

wiki: https://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20121120

= Minutes for Meeting of November 20th, 2012 =

== Next Meeting ==

 * Tuesday, December 4th, 2012, 15:00 UTC

== Attending ==

 * Emmanuele Bassi
 * Rosanna Yuen
 * Joanmarie Diggs
 * Bastien Nocera
 * Shaun !McCance
 * Andreas Nilsson
 * Karen Sandler

=== Regrets ===

 * Tobias Mueller
 * Seif Lotfy

=== Missing ===

== Board Meeting Agenda ==

 * GUADEC 2013 & 2014 announcement
   * News leaked
   * Need to announce it either today or on Monday
     * Thursday is US Thanksgiving

 * GNOME Accessibility FoG project update
   * The a11y team have a proposal (2 project areas) on how to spend
the funds and needs feedback on that.
     * Document accessibility and caret navigation
   * Bastien started a reply on the board list
     * The scope is fine, but it should not be restricted to a couple of modules
   * Joanie proposes to recuse herself on the voting to avoid conflict
of interests
     * Joanie should still provide guidance and help in evaluating the bidders
   * '''ACTION''': Board members should continue discussing the a11y
team proposal on the mailing list
   * '''ACTION''': Bastien and Karen to draft a call for bids and
submit it to the board list

 * Joining the W3C
   * Accessibility team have discussed the possibility of GNOME
joining the W3C in order to have a stake in the emerging standards.
   * Some of the test cases in some working groups are available only to members
   * There are some standards that would benefit from our perspective
and interest
   * GNOME developers have been invited to be experts on the WG
proceedings but it's difficult to justify this to employers
   * '''ACTION''': Karen to explore founding options for the GNOME
Foundation to be a member of the W3C
   * There is the option of having an adboard member to send one of
their employees to be in the W3C representing GNOME
   * '''ACTION''': Karen to look into the details of the W3C
membership and invited experts rules

 * Reports - annual report
   * Progress of the web version of the Annual Report.
   * Andreas has the donors list
   * '''ACTION''': Andreas to publish the Annual Report at the end of the week.

 * Sysadmin position
   * We have funding allocated for a sysadmin that we didn't use on
our last sysadmin.
     * '''ACTION''': Zana to look at the actual amount of money
allocated for the sysadmin that we can still use
   * We should look into spending that money.
   * The funding could also cover the CiviCRM migration

 * Marketing director position
   * On foundation-list, there have been suggestions about us hiring a
marketing director in order to coordinate our messaging.
   * Budget-wise, it's problematic
     * Having another employee will impact our reserves
   * We should explore the option of having an adboard member donate
the time of an employee for a full-time/part-time position
   * There is also the question as to whether we should be having a
marketing director at all
     * Marketing is really hard
     * We could also use the chance to entice former adboard members
   * '''ACTION''': Karen to explore funding options for a marketing director

 * webkitGTK+ hackfest
   * 4th annual WebKitGTK+ Hackfest. 17 participants for 4 days.
   * They have asked the Foundation for sponsorship of 4500 EUR.
   * We still don't have a 2012-2013 budget
   * We also had far fewer hackfests than last year
   * Vote: +1 Shaun, Emmanuele, Andreas, Bastien; Joanie abstains/recuses
   * '''ACTION''': Joanie to communicate the decision of the board to
the WebKitGTK+ hackfest organizers

 * travel committee
   * Gérman Poo e-mailed the board and said he thinks that the travel
committee has become too process-heavy.
   * The travel committee was created to reduce the load on Zana
   * The process may need to be streamlined, especially for the
reimbursement part
   * The discussion should continue on the mailing list
   * We should keep the travel committee in the loop with the discussion

 * GNOME supporter card
   * We should put together a GNOME supporter card for one of our donors.
   * '''ACTION''': Andreas to look at drafting a GNOME supporter card

 * Next adboard meeting
   * Adboard members are starting to respond to the survey

 * Health insurance increase for employees.
   * No progress since last time
   * The board needs to discuss and vote.

== Completed Actions ==

 * Seif to get more information on the event and create a proposal
about a possible event in Egypt
 * Karen - To continue working with Justin about renewing the old trademarks.
 * Karen to check if an AB meeting would be possible at the Boston Summit
 * Karen and Joanie to get feedback on corporate sponsorship for the
Boston Summit
 * Karen - Will reach out to Mozilla to find advice about negotiating
partnerships.
 * Emmanuele to check the data mined by Tobi from ?PayPal and send it to Andreas
 * Bastien to notify the Strasbourg bid of the selection for GUADEC 2014

== Status of action items ==

 * All directors should discuss the first-response contact for emails
 * Andreas - To create a wiki page on the web services accounts holders.
 * Bastien - To contact the BBC to discuss about possible
collaboration in working directly with GNOME.
 * Bastien - Reach out to the GNOME Advisory Board via email to see if
they can help out with providing contacts at Yahoo.
 * Bastien will research what the status of the Banshee Amazon revenue
is and report back to Bertrand Lorentz
 * Emmanuele - Will audit the current donors and check that everybody
received their benefits.
 * Emmanuele to start a wiki page on the community feedback of GUADEC 2012
 * Joanie, Seif to go through the board-list archives to categorize
the types  of contacts and come up with the various areas
 * Karen - To look into Google Checkout as an annual payment option for FoG.
 * Karen - To finish the Privacy Policy, get review from James Vasile, etc.
 * Karen - To continue following up with CiviCRM contractors.
 * Karen to contact foundation-list to get feedback for CiviCRM
 * Karen - Develop trademark usage forms for common use cases. James
Vasile from legal is working with Brian on this.
   * This has been done.  Will close once the Foundation website is
updated, refer to bug #644932.
   * https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=644932
 * Karen - Check records of organizations with existing contracts to
use the GNOME trademark. Taken over from Vincent Untz. Look at the
archives in 2005 and try to determine which companies can use the
GNOME trademark. Know what kind of contracts we had with them.
 * Karen to investigate alternative solutions for CiviCRM (security,
reliability)
 * Karen to contact sysadmin team to evaluate existing contract proposals
 * Rosanna - Automate the process of entering !PayPal information into !GnuCash.
 * Rosanna - Will apply for the GNOME credit card.
 * Rosanna - Received the PO from Google for the GSOC payments;
waiting for individual mentor travel receipts to submit invoice.
 * Seif to send an email on board-list to start the discussion on the
areas of involvement for each board member
 * Karen - to make LWN integration with CiviCRM one of the
requirements for the contracted project

=== New Action Items ===
 * '''ACTION''': Board members should continue discussing the a11y
team proposal on the mailing list
 * '''ACTION''': Bastien and Karen to draft a call for bids and submit
it to the board list
 * '''ACTION''': Karen to explore founding options for the GNOME
Foundation to be a member of the W3C
 * '''ACTION''': Karen to look into the details of the W3C membership
and invited experts rules
 * '''ACTION''': Andreas to publish the Annual Report at the end of the week.
 * '''ACTION''': Zana to look at the actual amount of money allocated
for the sysadmin that we can still use
 * '''ACTION''': Karen to explore funding options for a marketing director
 * '''ACTION''': Joanie to communicate the decision of the board to
the WebKitGTK+ hackfest organizers
 * '''ACTION''': Andreas to look at drafting a GNOME supporter card

== Discussed on the mailing list ==
 * DNS move of clutter-projects.org
 * Possibility of GNOME joining the W3C
 * Possible shutdown of the travelling committee
 * A11y FoG project update
 * Funding of 3 hackers for Color Management hackfest in Brno

--
W: http://www.emmanuelebassi.name
B: http://blogs.gnome.org/ebassi/