Foundation Board Minutes for Monday 28 January, 16:30 UTC

Attending

Regrets

Agenda

  • LAS 2019 (Nuritzi)
  • Board hack hour feedback (Nuritzi)
  • Update procedure for external inquiries on board-list (Philip)
  • SCALE 17x approval (Neil)

Minutes

  • LAS 2019
    • Nuritzi: Reminder that LAS organization is starting. It would be helpful for the board to have a discussion ASAP to decide whether this is something we intend to put resources into organizing this year, and can authorize spending Foundation time and resources.
    • Allan: I seem to recall that last time we discussed it, we wanted to see a proposal?
      • Neil: It was discussed during the Foundation hackfest, that seemed to be where we left it.
    • Carlos: I would like to see a clear definition of the mission of the LAS conference.
      • Nuritzi: That's what we don't have right now. It's still being figured out. It would be helpful for the Foundation to say what goals we want to achieve with participation in LAS, and let the organizers know.
      • Allan: I seem to remember that last time we were speaking about whether LAS wants to be a GNOME event at all, so ideally that should be resolved first.
      • Nuritzi: LAS is indeed separate from a potential North American GNOME event ("GINA"), although they could be co-hosted. That's why it would be advantageous for us to state what goals we want to achieve with participation in the conference, since the conference is in the process of defining itself. We now have the opportunity to help shape it.
      • Carlos: It doesn't seem correct that the GNOME Foundation board should have to define goals for a conference that isn't a GNOME event and it's yet not defined itself. I would like to see proposals and alternatives by the LAS team.
      • Nuritzi: Leaving aside LAS for a moment, if a group organizing, for example, a GTK conference approached us and asked what we would like to achieve if we participated in the event, I think that would be a reasonable question.
    • Nuritzi: Notwithstanding, when we have that information it would be better to have the discussion as soon as we can.
    • Discussion about whether it's possible to have this discussion at or before FOSDEM, and who is going to FOSDEM.
    • Allan: I would like to see something written that we could comment on.
    • ACTION: Nuritzi to write down something for us to comment on and discuss.
  • Board hack hour feedback
    • The context of this item is the new plan discussed in the previous meeting to have biweekly board meetings, with a "hack hour" in the intermediate weeks during the time when the board meeting would otherwise be held.
    • Nuritzi: I found it positive. Philip and I were able to meet in person.
    • Carlos: I also found it positive.
    • Allan: I am still a bit worried about whether attendance at the hack hours will drop off as time goes on.
      • Kat: Hopefully people will bring work to the meeting when they have it.
    • Those going to FOSDEM will not be present at the hack hour next week.
      • We can still have the hack hour next week. The next board meeting will then be February 11th. Since that is the first meeting of the month, Neil will present the ED report and then the second half of the meeting will be board-only.
  • Update procedure for external inquiries on board-list

    • Philip: I propose that we find a way to redirect inquiries such as the FOSS-North and GIMP university course ones that we discussed during the last meeting, to the Foundation staff. We should not be instructing the Foundation staff what to do just because a request appeared on board-list. Furthermore, the current policy that we have (someone logs the mail and opens a GitLab issue) isn't working quite as we envisioned. I propose writing a standard copy-paste reply, and forwarding all such mails promptly to a Foundation email address such as info@gnome.org.

    • Nuritzi: Last time when these messages came in, we talked about changing the contact address for the GNOME Foundation, to be info@gnome.org and not the board.

      • Neil: I changed this already.
    • Nuritzi: What email address should we use?
    • Allan: Are there any cases that we should document about when the board should actually be contacted?
      • General agreement that the board only needs to be contacted as a last resort, if someone has an issue that they feel hasn't been handled satisfactorily.
    • Carlos: Keep in mind that board-list is a mailing list which is archived.
    • ACTION: Allan - Look for other instances of the board being the contact address.
    • ACTION: Philip - Document the new process in a wiki page, and write a template for copy-pasting into emails.
    • ACTION: Philip - Document when the board should actually be contacted and decide an appropriate place to put it.
  • SCALE 17x approval
    • Neil is requesting approval for travel to SCALE 17x in Pasadena, California, where we will have a stand.
    • VOTE: Approve Neil's travel to SCALE 17x.
      • +1 unanimous

Actions

FoundationBoard/Minutes/20190128 (last edited 2019-03-05 05:41:30 by PhilipChimento)