Minutes of the Foundation Board, 3rd April

[Allan Day <aday gnome org>]

= Foundation Board Minutes for Tuesday, April 3rd 2018, 18:00 UTC =

Next meeting date Tuesday, April 10th 2018, 18:00 UTC

== Attending ==

 * Didier Roche
 * Allan Day
 * Cosimo Cecchi
 * Nuritzi Sanchez
 * Meg Ford
 * Carlos Soriano
 * Neil McGovern
 * Rosanna Yuen

== Regrets ==

== Missing ==

 * Alexandre Franke

== Agenda ==

Any GitLab issues that require discussion or that have had significant
updates should be put on the agenda.

 * GNOME Asia 2018 update, proposal & budget approval (Nuritzi)
 * Bi-annual committee reports (Nuritzi)
 * Employee Handbook & Records Retention Policy (Nuritzi)
  * https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoardPrivate/Staff/EmployeeHandbook#Records_Retention_Policy
  * Make employee handbook public - email from Ekaterina Gerasimova (Carlos)
 * Code of Conduct committee charter (Allan)
  * https://gitlab.gnome.org/Community/Board/issues/36
 * Marketing Committee charter (Nuritzi)
  * https://gitlab.gnome.org/Community/Board/issues/16
 * Fractal Hackfest Accommodation (Meg) (urgent)
 * Review open issues -
https://gitlab.gnome.org/Community/Board/issues (standing agenda item)

Postponed:

 * Engagement budget increase (Nuritzi)
  * https://gitlab.gnome.org/Community/Board/issues/42
 * Role of the Executive Director and Director of Operations with
regards to the Board (Allan)

== Minutes ==

 * GNOME Asia 2018 update, proposal & budget approval (Nuritzi)
  * We've received accounts from last year's GNOME.Asia. (They made a
small loss, but that's being covered by a sponsor.)
  * We received a proposal for GNOME.Asia 2018 last week, to be held
in Taiwan, 11-12 August. It will be a joint event with COSCUP, which
means that income and exenditure needs to be split. This might become
a tricky question if we are funding more travel than COSCUP, but is
probably something we can work out.
  * There's some uncertainty over what our expectations are for teams
running their own bidding processes. It isn't clear whether the
GNOME.Asia team know to follow the new conference guidelines.
  * VOTE: Approve the GNOME.Asia 2018 proposal, with the condition
that the local team follow the Foundation's conference guidelines -
PASSED UNANIMOUSLY
  * ACTION: Neil to inform the GNOME.Asia team, and ask for
information about accomodation, travel, and the local team
  * Does the GNOME.Asia team need to be a committee? (They call
themselves a committee, but they're not a committee of the board.)
   * Carlos - no, because the Foundation isn't devolving any powers to them.
   * Allan - a committee might be a way to formalise the relationship
without giving extra powers.
   * Didier/Cosimo - but then does every group need to be a committee?
Where does it stop?
   * Nuritzi - the power we're giving them is to run the bidding process.
   * Rosanna - it could be damaging to say that they can't call
themselves a committee. Neil - they can call themselves a committee if
they want - they're not calling themselves a committee of the board.

 * Bi-annual committee reports (Nuritzi)
  * Board elections are coming up so it would be good to catch up on this.
  * Didier's on the case with travel.
  * Carlos will take over as sponsorship liason, from Cosimo.

 * Employee Handbook & Records Retention Policy (Nuritzi)
  * https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoardPrivate/Staff/EmployeeHandbook#Records_Retention_Policy
  * The employee handbook was created about 9 years ago, for insurance
purposes. However, the handbook was never formally approved. The
handbook is required for tax returns so it would be good to have it
approved.
  * We had an email from Ekaterina Gerasimova asking if the handbook
could be made public.
  * Neil - a lot of it needs to be reviewed and updated. If we make it
public, this would be a good time to do it. However, it is standard
practice is to keep employee handbooks private.
  * ACTION: Neil can do this. If he can't, we could think about hiring
a lawyer to do it. Neil to follow up with Kat. (Tracked at
https://gitlab.gnome.org/Community/Board/issues/43.)

 * Code of Conduct committee charter (Allan)
  * https://gitlab.gnome.org/Community/Board/issues/36
  * This is being actively worked on.

 * Marketing Committee charter (Nuritzi)
  * https://gitlab.gnome.org/Community/Board/issues/16
  * This is being worked on and Nuritzi has a draft proposal which
needs discussion.

 * Fractal Hackfest Accommodation (Meg) (urgent)
  * This is a follow-up to the issue from last week (tracked at
https://gitlab.gnome.org/Community/Board/issues/37). The hackfest
organisers want to receive accommodation sponsorship funds in advance
of the event, but the travel committee doesn't do pre-payment.
  * Meg sent a mail to the Travel Committee and to the hackfest
organizers. No one has submitted a travel sponsorship application yet.
  * Meg has proposed that:
   * Attendees apply for travel sponsorship.
   * The travel committee provides the board with a list of who's
approved and for how much.
   * The board approves pre-payment so Rosanna can forward the funds
(taking the funds from the Travel Committee budget).
  * Cosimo agrees that this is the best way forward.
  * ACTION: Meg to email the Travel Committee and hackfest organizers
with a status update. Didier to follow up with the Travel Committee to
see if these processes can be standardised and/or improved in the
future.

== Notable Status Updates ==

 * Reviving Free Software Macedonia
  * 2018-04-02: Nuritzi: has closed this issue. She reached out to the
person inquiring about the GNOME group in Macedona and directed her to
the Engagement Team for more assistance in helping to revive the
group.
 * Laptop donation for US travel box (Nuritzi)
  * 2018-04-02: Nuritzi has closed this issue, as she has followed up
with the community member who would like to donate the laptop:
(https://gitlab.gnome.org/Community/Board/issues/32). The laptop
donation is now being tracked within the Engagement team here:
https://gitlab.gnome.org/Community/Engagement/General/issues/67.
 * Write documentation for small events (Nuritzi)
  * 2018-04-02: Nuritzi finished writing documentation about small
events and how to access the funds set aside by the Board:
https://wiki.gnome.org/Engagement/Events. She has emailed
engagement-list about the documentation updates. The issue for this
(https://gitlab.gnome.org/Community/Board/issues/41) will be closed
and further comments about the events page can be discussed on
engagement-list or the engagement's GitLab board
(https://gitlab.gnome.org/Community/Engagement/General/boards).