vuntz

everybody, feel free to add agenda items: http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/MeetingAgenda is a bit empty right now :-)

jcastro

good morning!

vuntz

good afternoon :-)

N_Nick

good evening :)

vuntz

marina: hey, good to see you!

marina

hi vuntz!

luis

morning, marina!

marina

morning, luis!

vuntz

and it's not too late to add topics: for this, please edit http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/MembersAgenda
so far, we have two topics: finding a better time for the meetings, and long-term plan for sysadmin
(feel free to also mention topics you want to discuss here if you can't edit the wiki)

luis

stormy: I accidentally clashed with your edit, sorry

vuntz

woo, many more topics now
let's first work on a better time for meetings, to enable more people to attend
fwiw, there's this proposal on the wiki: "Ubuntu rotates every six hours, making it inconvenient for everyone at some point"

pcutler

vuntz: maybe rotate every other month - jorge, yippi and I are all US eastern / central, maybe there's a night we can host one later our time that would be morning Asia / Pacific

stormy

luis: I see my stuff. Did I clobber your edits?

luis

stormy: no, it seems that it is still there

vuntz

pcutler: this would mean losing european people, but we'll have to come up with something like this in all cases

luis

vuntz: I think the idea behind the Ubuntu plan is that you have to lose someone every time

vuntz

nod
I like the idea of a 6-hour rotation, although I've never tried it

luis

eight hour might work for us too

pcutler

I like the idea of eight, once a quarter at minimum for participants

zana

it's just a matter of reminding people ahead of time because it would be hard for people to remember which rotation it is

luis

zana: right, but they need to be publicized well anyway :)

vuntz

(that reminds me I wanted to blog about this meeting to get the word on pgo...)

yippi

every other month sounds good to me.

vuntz

8-hour rotation would mean something like: 0AM UTC, 8AM UTC, 4PM UTC.
sounds reasonable
any objection against trying this?

jcastro

let's go for it!

pcutler

+1

vuntz

okay, no -1 => let's try it
cool
and we can move to the next topic:
What is the plan for long-term sustainability of the new sysadmin?

luis

that was more a 'question from the membership' than a topic for actual discussion, I hope :)

vuntz

yeah :-)

stormy

I'd like all staff to be covered by income we can definitely count on.
So adboard fees.
We doubled them this year and we are always looking to add more sponsors.

luis

<nod>

stormy

We are also growing Friends of GNOME support but I think most of the fundraising will be targetted.
It's easier to do a fundraising drive for a specific new things (hackfest, sys admin, etc) that it is to support something you already have.
One thing I'd like to see is for everyone to be on the lookout for potential sponsors.

luis

how much of the support in the current drive has come in the form of recurring donations?

stormy

We have around 100 subscribers.

luis

(from non-corporates, I mean)

stormy

The drive has not gotten us a lot of new ones.
I think we need to do a different type of campaign for that.

jcastro

perhaps we should advertise the subscriber option more?

stormy

At the very least, the ruler should count subscribers, not $'s if that's what we want.

pcutler

and we may see a bit of fall off as we come up on the 1 year anniversary of J5's blog post that asked for help as people get their gifts

luis

pcutler: oh, are they not auto-renewing after the first year?

stormy

They have to cancel.

pcutler

some don't, stormy's email a month or two ago mentioned we saw some slippage

stormy

But some did after the first year.

pcutler

I'm a tiny bit worried come April / May, but hopeful
If / when we do another campaign, I'd like to see us do a subscriber goal instead of a $ amount

vuntz

fwiw, in this case, we put a $ amount since we knew what we needed for this specific goal. It's really targetted

jcastro

yeah that sounds better long term

stormy

We could do a subscriber campaign around GUADEC.
Having the ruler really helped.
I have no facts but it seems to me that many of the current donors are end users or at least not developers that I know.

jcastro

we should ask people to subscribe when they register for their badge or something

stormy

(Developers are also giving very generously!)

luis

stormy: it might be good to ask that question when we get the subscription? (dev or user)

stormy

So the ruler on gnome.org and pgo is reaching more people
luis, we did a survey a while back.
I'd like to repeat it every 12-18 months.

yippi

i'd like to see more outreach to end users in the FoG program

stormy

At that time something like 95% were not contributors.

vuntz

stormy: oh, it'd be nice to track if people are coming from the ruler, and if yes, from which website

yippi

the ruler definitely seemed to help a lot

stormy

Supposedly we can do this with our website metrics.
I don't know the tool well enough yet to be able to report.
We are also adding code to know which ones come from Google ads.

luis

if I had a suggestion for http://www.gnome.org/friends/ who would I email?

yippi

the marketing list, i'd think

pcutler

luis: friends@gnome.org or the mktg list
I think friends goes to the board

yippi

it would also be nice to have some new swag for the FoG program.
perhaps we might get more people interested to donate if we refreshed the swag more frequently. how old is our current t-shirt? several years at least

stormy

luis, the marketing list, not friends@gnome.org

pcutler

We'll be launching a new GNOME store to buy swag with 2.30 next week, and we hope to refresh / change designs quarterly
you cannot buy the FoG t-shirt

stormy

friends@gnome.org goes to Rosanna and me. It gets all the paypal info.

yippi

right, i know you can't buy the new FoG t-shirt...i was just thinking we might want to consider a new design.

luis

stormy: OK, email sent

yippi

when you see someone with a tshirt you don't know if they donated 4 years ago or last month

bkuhn

It would also be good to encourage the use of social networking sites like identica to encourage giving, including GIVE buttons on people's websites and blogs.

yippi

but if we had newer tshirts, then people would be able to express that they donated recently

vuntz

bkuhn: I think we have buttons that people can put on their website now

stormy

bkuhn, we have badges people can use to promote http://www.gnome.org/friends/promote.html

yippi

perhaps a sysadmin campagin specific fog tshirt
or button, yes

vuntz

bkuhn: but if you didn't know about that, it means we need to advertize this more :-)

yippi

i'd also like to see us give GNOME polo shirts out to people who run the EventBox

bkuhn

vuntz: Well, I don't see the buttons used very many places.

zana

yippi: last time i priced embroidered polo shirts, they were ~$35 each

yippi

they are a bit expensive, but having people at booths look professional would be worth it I think. we don't send the eventbox to that many people per year, do we?
also, i'd think that many people who run the booth are repeat customers, who wouldn't need a shirt each time

jcastro

vuntz: I didn't even know about the buttons either

yippi

er, perhaps customers is probably not the word i meant, but you know what I mean

jcastro

they need to be linked from the main friends page, that's why no one sees them
like after you donate it should encourage you to use the button

pcutler

jcastro: we do do that after you donate

jcastro

oh ok

stormy

After you donate, there's a link to the buttons. We obviously need to make it more obvious.

vuntz

okay, let's try to note stay on this topic for the whole meeting :-)
there was some useful stuff discussed. Do we have some concrete action items people want to take?

pcutler

yippi: I'll make a note to look into the event box and we can price it out for a next step

yippi

yes, perhaps we could also get polo shirts at a discount if we bought in bulk
or if polos are too expensive, at least nice tshirts

pcutler

I'll take a look at the buttons and mail the marketing list about placement on the site, and blog about it

yippi

we should reward booth volunteers i think

vuntz

fwiw, in europe, we give free t-shirts to people helping at the booth
(at least at fosdem)

stormy

We were also including free tshirts.

yippi

vuntz, that's good, but i think they should be included in the eventbox

stormy

I assume that is still happening with Larry taking over. zana?

zana

as far as i know
i gave Larry everything for events

stormy

Did you send him enough shirts?

yippi

does larry have a stock of tshirts?

zana

but I think he's just shipping from one event to the next
i don't think he's checking inventory

stormy

Nevermind, let's discuss this at the marketing meeting!

vuntz

(pcutler: good. One AI for you, I love this :-))

zana

i gave him what i had left of the old shirts; don't remember now how many

pcutler

vuntz: I've got two!

vuntz

stormy: good point
any other concrete AI that are coming out of this discussion?

pcutler

another action item, need to schedule that marketing IRC meeting, heh

vuntz

or shall we move to the next agenda item?

pcutler

vuntz: let's very briefly talk about GNOME 3.0 marketing

vuntz

pcutler: that's on the agenda too
so let's do it now, yeah

pcutler

yeah, thought it was a good segue

vuntz

What is the plan for marketing GNOME 3.0?

pcutler

so a couple things:

yippi

maybe we could just give people who run the event box a special code so they can purchase a polo or tshirt directly without it needing to be in the box
and have it charge back to us

pcutler

1 - at the marketing hackfest last November, we laid a lot of the groundwork, and agreed on our target audience for 3.0, a theme, and some of the things we want to do

yippi

rather than trying to include it in the box physically

pcutler

2 - we'll be having a hackfest in Zaragoza, Spain the first week of May to do 3.0 specific work
such as a 3.0 website, video campaigns being led by Jason Clinton, and putting together materials such as presentations, artwork that can be used
one of our goals is to make it easy to co-brand / re-brand the materials so our downstream partners can use them too

yippi

at the last marketing hackfest, i felt it would have been more productive if there had been more graphic designers attending. perhaps we can invite more for the next one.

pcutler

yes, we're trying. Andreas is coming, so that will help
a lot of it is still in the planning stages, so now is a great time for people to join the marketing list and volunteer to help out. We need all kinds of help :)

vuntz

wiki page for the Zaragoza hackfest: http://live.gnome.org/Hackfests/Marketing-2010-05

pcutler

that's my little speech on marketing, what kind of questions are there?

vuntz

pcutler: can we assume that, after the hackfest, all the planning for marketing will be done, and what will be left will "only" be execution?
or are we already at this stage?

pcutler

yes, I would hope so. "only" execution. :)

yippi

is marketing ever done?

vuntz

yippi: marketing for 3.0, I mean

pcutler

for example, on the video stuff, i had a conversation with jason last week, and I'd like to do as much planning on that before hand (applications highlighed in the video, storyboarding, etc)

yippi

are we planning to only make training/promo videos for YouTube, or also a possible TV ad?

pcutler

there are some concerns about 3.0 is, especially after the UX hackfest, but we'll be talking through that this month

yippi

PublicTV allows charities to run ads for free

pcutler

yippi: I think Jason is planning on promo videos for GNOME Miro community, YouTube, etc

yippi

and many are not particularly hi-fidelity
that's too bad. a tv spot would be fun
especially since its free

pcutler

similar to the Google Chrome / Nexus One short 1 minute videos

owen

pcutler: Is there a concise definition of what the marketing team is trying to accomplish somewhere?

pcutler

owen: That's a great question. I'd say no at this point.
I have some time next week, I can work with the marketing team and get that done

owen

pcutler: it seems hard to answer a question like "should we try create a public tv spot" without that

luis

:)

vuntz

anything else on the marketing?

baptistemm

hello, sorry for the late

vuntz

baptistemm: it's okay, more french mafia is good, even when late ;-)
so let's move to the next item
"Code of Conduct required for all members - will be voted upon on Thursday "

yippi

it is really required for all members, or just those who sign it and new members?

vuntz

so, quick summary: this was an idea the board discussed a few months ago. And the original discussion about this on foundation-list lead to an unrelated looooong thread in December. But we think it's still something important, so we want to move forward and just do it

yippi

yes, and we also reworded things quite a bit based on foundation member and advisory board member comments

vuntz

yippi: would be all members in the long term, but this can only be enforced on renewals for existing members, imho
no question on this? Are people all happy with this idea?
cool, no question. Makes things easier ;-)

yippi

seems reasonable to me

vuntz

so it'll be discussed and voted during the next board meeting, on Thursday
next item: "GUADEC schedule"

stormy

Is someone from the GUADEC planning team here?

vuntz

stormy: I guess this is about the slight change in the schedule?

stormy

I just wanted to let people know the schedule is a bit different this year.
Monday and Tuesday will be more of unconference days that can be scheduled via the wiki.

yippi

it helps to have a policy to refer to afterwords, then people at least understand what they've done wrong

stormy

Wed-Fri will be the core conference with scheduled talks and keynotes.
There will be training on Monday and Tuesday as well.

yippi

and one would hope a policy proactively helps people to consider such concerns and reduces the frequency of such issues

stormy

And a government focused half day, most likely on Tuesday.

owen

yippi: I was more referring to a need to "sign" it, rather than the existence of the policy. And if people sign it, does that prevent us from changing it later without having people resign?
(sorry,don't want to derail the meeting which had moved on)

stormy

wants to thank jcastro for being our latest Friend of GNOME subscriber! Thanks, jcastro! (Stormy likes this trend!)

jcastro

stormy: I used to give yearly but now I will sub too!

stormy

cool!

vuntz

owen: (for me, the main point is that it's a way to tell people that what's inside the code of conduct are values shared in our community, and not just by some people)

stormy

Subscribers are nice because it's regular donations we can count on for things like sys admin.

vuntz

stormy: anything else you want to mention about guadec?

stormy

nope, not if there are not any questions.
Hopefully everyone submitted lots of great talk proposals!

vuntz

:-)
so, let's move to another agenda item
"What are our plans for the Outreach Program for Women? GSoC application process is March 29 - April 9 and they should be coordinated."
marina: want to say a few words on this?

marina

yep, so I wanted to know if we have funding for a specific number of women, in which case we should set up our own application process and encourage women to apply for both OPW internships and GSoC
otherwise we should just encourage women to apply for GSoC

stormy

We planned to fund the outreach program for women like we did last time
with donations from companies

marina

(by e-mailing gnome women list, Women in GNOME Facebook group, and several women that have contacted us expressing interest

stormy

So far we only have funding for one student.
But jcastro just sent out a new call for funding
But I think we should also strongly encourage them to apply for GSoC.
Perhaps they could apply for both and we can coordinate?

marina

I think it is very important to encourage women to apply for GSoC

vuntz

nod
marina: did you chat with rubenv and other GSoC admins?

zana

stormy: i thought we paid for last time with the mentorship fees we get from google for the GSOC?

marina

and it would be good to know our plans for OPW internships before we make such encouragements

stormy

I thought Google kicked in specifically for the women's program.

vuntz

zana: hrm, I think we had some specific donation from Google for it

stormy

We had funding for 3 (maybe from GSoC) and then they funded 3 more.

zana

vuntz: we started with using the mentorship fees, then google found out and doubled it for that

rubenv

there is a gsoc meeting going on right now

stormy

Google is the one that gave us the funding for the one student this year, fyi.

crevette

marina: (sorry, I xas disconnected) there is also debian-women list IIRC, you can perhaps contact them (if you didn't already)

marina

vuntz: not yet, but I suppose there wouldn't mind getting a couple extra applications from women what do you think we should discuss?
crevette: yes, good idea, we can cross-post it to women list for various distributions

vuntz

marina: oh, nothing specific. Just for the coordination :-)

marina

the application form that was used in 2006 is here: http://projects.gnome.org/outreach/women/2006/apply

vuntz

marina: so, do you need help for the next steps? Or is everything on track?

marina

vuntz: yes, I need to know whether to resurrect this form and have our own application process for a specific number of participants or whether to e-mail everyone encouraging them to apply for GSoC and update the wording on the outreach page

vuntz

marina: I think we want to encourage the women to apply to GSoC first
and then do our own application process

stormy

I like vuntz's idea.

marina

vuntz: when do you think we'll know if we want to do our own application process?

jcastro

yeah that makes sense

stormy

Wouldn't we want to do ours no matter what?
We have funding for at least one more and hopefully will get more.

vuntz

marina: http://socghop.appspot.com/document/show/gsoc_program/google/gsoc2010/timeline

marina

stormy: if we have funding for a meaningful number of people

vuntz

marina: so I'd say mid-April
marina: although we'd want to make it public only when Google announces which students are selected for GSoC (April 26th)

marina

(meaningful for setting up our own application process, contacting universities, and getting a 100 applicants like we did last time)

vuntz

stormy: oh, I think we should do ours anyway. But maybe not talk about it too much while applications for GSoC are still open

stormy

marina, I agree.
And I am hopeful about funding.

marina

vuntz: so you see it more as a way of getting more women to participate in GNOME if we don't get enough GSoC women participants?

rubenv

are we doing a WSOP again?

vuntz

marina: remove the "if" :-)

marina

rubenv: we are thinking about it
vuntz: why?! we should be able to do better with women participants in GSoC!
there are also threads like this one: http://geekfeminism.org/2010/03/23/gf-classifieds-google-summer-of-code-edition/#comments

vuntz

marina: well, I hope we'll do better, but I don't think it'll be perfect either.

rubenv

so let us know if you need anything from the GSoC admins

stormy

We can get lots of women in GSoC and still do a Women's outreach.

yippi

so our plan is to announce our women's outreach program after GSoC?

marina

vuntz / stormy / rubenv : ok, so I'll coordinate with you guys in the next couple days with a GSoC application encouragement to be sent to all the women forums, and in particular whether or not we mention a possibility of OPW there at all
then we'll see

vuntz

sounds good

rubenv

perfect

vuntz

we're already out of time, but very quickly, one last thing
rubenv: I think you're still in the GSoC meeting, but is there anything important you want to mention about GSoC?

rubenv

vuntz, nothing in particular besides a short status update along the lines of "all ok / what we are doing and planning"

vuntz

okay Let's just see if there's any GSoC-related question?
no question, good
so we can close the meeting, without being too late ;-)
thanks everybody

pcutler

thanks!

vuntz

so the next meeting will be on April 24th, at 0 AM UTC, if I'm not mistaken!

luis

:)
thanks!

bkuhn

Ok, thanks.

stormy

See you all then!

vuntz

apologies to stormy for skipping the "Representing GNOME at events, ideas for encouraging more people to do that?" topic, but 1 hour is short
people should feel free to stay and discuss it if they're interested, obviously (or this can be an item for the next meeting)

yippi

vuntz, i just sent you my notes for doing minutes. Can you publish them?
they probably need some review to make sure i captured things properly.

vuntz

yippi: well, maybe send to foundation-list for review?
oh, and if someone has a log, feel free to add it to http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes (see the end)

jrb

do we give additional gifts to people who stay subscribed for a second year?

gpoo

jrb: no, afaik

yippi

they are still quite rough, i sent it to board-list for the board to review before we publish them.

jrb

(just saw dcm wondering about that on twitter last night)
gpoo: should we?

gpoo

jrb: we should have a strategy to keep subscribers on board

stormy

jrb, zana and I discussed it.
I think we should