Foundation Board Minutes for Tuesday, August 14th 2018, 15:00 UTC
Next meeting date Tuesday, August 21 2018, 15:30 UTC
Attending
Regrets
Missing
Agenda
- URGENT: GUADEC 2019 Thessaloniki bid (Allan)
- Private meeting minutes issues (Nuritzi)
- Foundation hackfest planning (Allan)
Minutes
- GUADEC 2019 Thessaloniki bid
- Neil has helped them rework the budget.
- Philip: I already sent some questions to board-list. There's nothing in my list that really blocks the bid, just some things I was wondering about.
- Philip: The only thing in my list pertaining to the bid as given, is the price of the lunches.
- Kat: We'll check what the university includes for that price.
- (The reply from the local team was that that was the standard price for conference lunches, not university cafeteria lunches.)
- Allan: A few items I don't understand in the budget:
- The line item for keynote speakers, is that for travel?
- Neil: keynote speakers usually get their flights expensed by the Foundation
- The number for social events is high, do they come out of the main budget or do we expect the local team to do fundraising for that?
- Kat: We can also not have events if there's no room in the budget, but that's not so nice.
- Allan: In past GUADECs we've done specific fundraising for social events.
- Neil: We can certainly try and fundraise for these.
- Smaller items like gifts for the speakers, is that something we normally do at GUADEC?
- Kat: we have done them at least since 2010, budget permitting
- The line item for keynote speakers, is that for travel?
- Allan: Will they require a float? Do we need to preapprove any immediate spending in order to book the venue?
- Yes.
- Nuritzi: Is 35k a good travel budget or should we be expecting larger? This is our flagship conference and we should bring in people from other places around the world, which would be more expensive.
- Kat: We could also give all our interns full sponsorship for the flights. That would require more travel budget as well.
- Kat estimates that 20K is too low a budget; 30k minimum, 35k expected, 40k-50k high.
- Nuritzi: How about 40k expected?
- Kat: In the past, on the travel committee, we did blog posts on the numbers; in recent years we didn't do them, but I still have some drafts from those years.
- Nuritzi: We should prepare ourselves to increase this budget if necessary.
- Federico: From the Code of Conduct committee, we would like all subsequent conferences to use the new code of conduct, and we will provide all the resources they need to implement it.
- Nuritzi: Is there anything blocking our approving the bid in this meeting?
- Kat: I would like to see the amount on the travel line updated.
- Allan: That would have us approving the budget at a loss, so maybe we can revisit it when we get more fundraising?
- Neil: The numbers for fundraising now are my best guess as to what will come in. Generally we should try to make a profit at GUADEC although some years that might not happen.
- Allan: What exactly are we approving? Just the "expected" column?
- Neil: The whole thing; the different scenarios are linked to the amount of money we raise.
- Neil: One possible way forward, with the travel budget question, is to approve the conference (float for the venue), start moving forward, and approve the budget in a future meeting.
- Kat: That might lead to the situation where we approve a budget that the local team doesn't support.
- Neil: It sounds like some people are not comfortable voting on the whole budget.
- Allan: Are we voting on increased travel amounts?
- Philip: What are the consequences of increasing the travel budget if there's no matching fundraising?
- In that case we run the conference at a loss.
- Rob: We can see if we can increase the baseline budget in a future meeting
- Kat: Propose to vote on the existing proposal, Allan sends questions to Kat or the local team/travel committee, as appropriate.
- Allan: The date is late for GUADEC, do we see that being a problem?
- Rosanna: It's after school starts, so I'm not sure I'd be able to go.
- Federico: ditto.
- Carlos: For Summer of Code / Outreachy students it would be late, after the internship ends.
- Rosanna: Term might also have started by then, too.
- Kat: Moving it earlier would be inconvenient for the local team, and later is better for students.
- Allan/Philip: Later is better, but not so late as to be after the end of the internship.
- Kat: There are two date options, we can wait 1-2 weeks to book the venue if needed, but we should approve the bid. We can get back to them on the dates after we get a better idea from the different parties involved.
- Allan: So we would request that the local team investigate more date options.
- Kat: These two are the options they've selected and investigated
VOTE: Approve the original bid, the updated budget sent by Neil with the understanding that we'll revisit the travel budget, and we'll seek input on the dates before picking one
- +1 unanimous
ACTION - Federico to contact the local team to make arrangements for the Code of Conduct
ACTION - Kat to contact the local team to communicate the result of the vote
ACTION - Kat to get input from interns on the dates
ACTION - Philip to ask the travel committee for a budget proposal
- Private meeting minutes issues
- Some background from Allan: This dates back to the last board, who voted on the Events Code of Conduct. At the time, the minutes for that item were marked as private. The reason was that we wanted to publish a more finely crafted announcement rather than leaving it to be read in the minutes. There was a delay in the finely crafted announcement. Fast-forward to the current day, the minutes are still private, and Benjamin Berg has requested that we publish them. The snag is that the minutes are labeled "private", and not "private, to be published later." All but one of the then-directors have given the okay to publish the minutes.
- First issue to discuss: Do we want to publish those minutes or not?
- Carlos: Did we contact the then-director?
- Allan: I have pinged them, but I have not yet directly emailed.
- Philip: Did the then-director dissent, or just miss the ping?
- Allan: I don't know.
- Kat: Can we contact the then-director now?
- Allan: Yes.
- Philip: Can we legally decide to publish the minutes without the approval of the previous board?
- Yes, but it would set a bad precedent, implying that anything we decide is private can be undone by a future board of directors.
- Kat: If we keep the minutes private because we don't want them published before the announcement, then we should aim to publish them after the announcement.
- Carlos/Allan/Rob: This would really create an uncomfortable situation for future private minutes.
- Rob: However, in this specific case, the intent would seem to be that this particular item were made public.
Neil: In general we are transparent, but some of the things people have been asking for on the GitLab issue go too far. We are not a public governing body.
- Philip: I think the best course of action would be to email the then-director and explain the situation.
- Nuritzi: We should get the consent of the then-director even though we're not legally obligated to do so.
- General consensus.
- Carlos: Did we contact the then-director?
- Second issue to discuss: Creating a policy around how long to keep minutes private after decisions are made.
- Nuritzi: How about a process by which we mark our private meeting minutes for publishing later and review them, say, monthly?
- Neil: That's potentially a lot of work.
- Carlos: If we do that, we could find ourselves in the same situation again when the board of directors changes.
Philip: When we have a private discussion that can be made public in the future, we can mark it at the time, and create a GitLab issue.
- Allan: Each secretary should have some discretion in how this is organized.
General consensus that a GitLab issue, preferably with a date or condition for making the item public, is sufficient.
- Nuritzi: How about a process by which we mark our private meeting minutes for publishing later and review them, say, monthly?
ACTION - Allan to follow up with the then-director
ACTION - Philip to define the process for private meeting minutes
- Foundation hackfest planning
- 17-19th October is the best option. If held in the UK, it works for everyone. Let's move forward with these dates.
- Allan: it might be getting a bit late to book a retreat-style venue.
ACTION - Allan and Kat to do some research on accommodation options
Actions
- Federico - Contact the Thessaloniki GUADEC team to make arrangements for the Code of Conduct
- Kat - Contact the Thessaloniki GUADEC team to communicate the result of the vote and the acceptance of the bid
- Kat - Get input from GSoC / Outreachy interns on the proposed GUADEC dates
- Philip - Ask the travel committee for a budget proposal
- Allan - Follow up with the ex-director whose approval is needed to publish the private minutes about the Events Code of Conduct.
- Philip - Define a process for private meeting minutes.
- Allan, Kat - Do some research on accommodation options for the Foundation hackfest.