Board meeting Minutes/13 Jan 2014

Prior:
2 Dec 2013

Board meeting Minutes

Next:
27 Jan 2014

Minutes approved: 27 Jan 2014

NOTICE to those on the line: All present agree to a temporary recording of this call to be be deleted no later than when the minutes are approved. Please speak up if you disagree with this and we will discuss it after roll call.

Unspecified: Move your name to Present or Apologies prior to the meeting!

Present: (Subject to verification) Dan Rich (chair), William Bilancio, John Boris, Ski Kacoroski, Matt Disney, Martin Gehrke, Mike Julian, Evan Pettrey, Matt Simmons

Apologies: ?

Opened: 8:02 PM Eastern Time

Closed: 8:52 PM Eastern Time

Consent Agenda

Minutes of 2 Dec 2013 were approved without objection

Action Items

From past LOPSA Board meetings

17-Dec-2012

T-shirts: We take the orders using ubercart -- did this ever get setup/configured?

This is not setup. The T-Shirt provider is changing his business. William will start an RT Ticket to keep track of it.

14-Jan-2013

Video proposal: Ski had floated several ideas about video content, what ever happened with it?

Ski could not find a good way to capture videos at Local meetings. He suggests we search for someone with that type of background to give us advice on how to get it done.

11-Mar-2013

LOPSA-SD was voted as a provisional chapter, what is the status of moving them forward to a full chapter?

Martin will follow up with them to see where that stands.

Standing Reports

Treasurer's report (Evan)

We are up to date with our liabilities

Membership report
- 7 new members this month
- 6 lost members this month (including 2 charter - will contact -MS)
- 832 total members (last month we lost 39 members and got 19)

Conference/events activities report
- (Ski) SCALE 2013: Talked with Ilan and agreed to payment for 25 people @ $150/pp for 2013. However, unless we want to run our own registration for a class, they are not going charge extra for classes any more. This is inline with other LinuxFests where it is free or a small set fee to get in to everything. The idea of extra fees for a class is just a hard sell. So we either need a sponsor or we do the class as an in kind donation. We can still get a booth for no cost. Ilan did say that SCALE really wants us so they would be willing to pay us something like $250 to help defray the cost of a class. So for example, I could teach Time Management in kind (hotel, airfare, food about $650 - $700 + $250 for teaching) and ask if Florian would teach an Amazon EC2 class for just the $250. We need to decide how we want to participate in conferences.

Contracts for Cascadia Tutorials went out today. They will be opening registration soon. An email discussion needs to be started on how we will handle Training sessions at LINUX conferences.

Ski motioned that we invoice SCALE for 2013 instructors at the rate of 25 people @ $150/pp for a total invoice of $3,750. Seconded by William. Motion passed without objection.

Local Chapter Committee report

LOPSA-SD emailed back in November about status and asked for detailed information on how to move to the next level. We have not heard back from him yet. Over the break we had one inquiry from Hudson Valley near Marist College to start a Chapter but they have not gotten back to us. A person in West Virginia approached Matt Disney and Jesse about starting a chapter and was directed to contact the Locals Committee but this never happened. Matt Disney will forward Martin the email so he can follow up on it.

Development report

Splunk will not return Ski's emails so he will try again but it looks like they have dropped their interest.

Communications (LOPSAgram, #lopsa-live, etc)

The LOPSAgram was sent out. Matt Simmons asked if the Board members would like to write some blogs that can be added to the LOPSAgram. He would like to get a letter from the President. William brought up that Philip had started writing a letter from the President which were added to the LOPSAgram. Dan will go back to see what subjects Philip wrote and go from there.

Project Management report

Nothing but Dan will be contacting Project Managers for status and reports over the next few weeks.

Liaison reports (LC, etc.)
- Technical Services Report (William)

The TSC is working on the SPAM issue. Drupal 7 development has stopped due to the lack of a Theme designer.

- Mentorship Report (John)
  - Nothing much to report. We had the meeting and I setup Amy and Ed with accounts on we 2project. The on call people now select weeks in advance to make the transition easier and smoother.
- LOPSA Professional Recognition (Matt Simmons)

We have 26 applicants. We are suing the software to evaluate and grade the applicants. The applicants will be contacted to fill in gaps in their applications. We are about $2 ahead per person so we are on track with this progrtam being self sufficient.

- Leadership Committee (Ski)
  - Talked with Mario. The committee is Mario, Scott Murphy, Aaron Sachs, and Warner. He would like to know who of these expiring board members is planning to run again so they can start to fill out the slate. Also needs to know the rough amount of time and energy it takes for a board member and what areas the board feels we need help with (e.g., recruitment, sponsorships, member benefits, volunteer coordination). I have modified the leadership alias per his instructions. Finally, Warner is documenting the process and will most likely be a good candidate for the next Chair.

Ski will see who is up for re-election and will post it.

Motion to replace TSC Liaison (William Bilancio)

Due to to work commitments William is going to step down as Liaison to the Tech Team and makes the following motion. William motioned to have Mike Julian be the new Tech Services Committee Chair. Seconded by John Boris. Motion passed without opposition.

Motion to switch LOPSA's email to Google Apps (Mike Julian)

This accomplishes several things:

1. As a maturing organization, we need to start implementing oversight and control around LOPSA operations. This switch would allow all LOPSA business to flow through and be stored on LOPSA-managed accounts, instead of personal email accounts.

2. LOPSA volunteers who require a LOPSA email address (for example, Mario as LC Chair) will still get one, and as an added bonus, we will get email retention and account control as mentioned above.

3. Cuts down on the spam problem we've been having (Gmail's spam filtering is awesome).

Cost is free, because we already have a Google Apps For Nonprofits account.

Motion to move that we change LOPSA's email to use our Google Apps account. Seconded by William Discussion on the Motion followed: Migration was a discussion point and there was no foreseen issues with the migration. This will not effect the mailing list and the aliases will

The motion passed without objection

Motion to restructure board meetings (Mike Julian)

Our board meetings tend towards staff meetings, instead of what we all really want them to be: strategy sessions. This is further reinforcing the problem we've been trying to solve: doing less "staff work" and more "strategy work".

Specifically, the standing reports are something that take a lot of time at each meeting, and I think we would get the same value out of them if they were simply submitted as a report to be included in the published minutes, but verbally repeated or discussed only if someone has questions or concerns. This would free up a good 20-30m that could be used for discussion of strategic goals.

Mike Julian made a Motion we submit standing reports as text only, prior to the board meetings, not to be verbally detailed unless there are specific questions raised.

Dan suggested this be tabled until the next meeting. Mike Julian did not object. The Motion was tabled with the suggestion that Board members put their reports into the agenda in enough time for other members to read them prior to the meeting.

LOPSA Professional Content Committee (Matt Simmons)

Discussion regarding LOPSA Professional Content Committee from Aleksey Tsalolikhin and Will Dennis.

Motion that we create the LOPSA Professional Content Committee, to be disbanded no later than October 31st, as outlined in the linked Charter and Policy. with as the Chair and Seconded by Ski.

The motion passed without objection. Dan Motioned that Aleksey be the Chair of the Committee and Matt Simmons as the Board Liaison. Seconded by John Boris. Motion passed without objection

Change complimentary membership to 6 months (Matt Simmons)

Current policy is one year. That seems excessive. I would like to move that we amend the Classes Policy to specify that a complimentary membership is six months. There was a short discussion about the motion as to was their a spike in requests. Matt explained he had put the information about that in the renewal letters for hard ships to contact the biard. Motion to amend the Classes Policy to specify that a complimentary membership is six months. Seconded by William Motion passed without objection

Buying "Guidebook for Directors of NonProfit Corporations" (Matt Simmons)

Link to Amazon
$44 per copy, 5 in stock.
Dan suggested that each Board member pass it down as they leave.
Motion that the Board purchase 9 copies of "Guidebook for Directors of NonProfit Corporations" to be distributed to each sitting Board Member., with the request that it be passed to that Board Member's successor. Seconded by Dan

There was a discussion about the cost of purchasing new copies every election and if the cost would become prohibitive. This was agreed that the Board members would pass their copy down when they step down. It was decided that if the Board member decided to keep the book LOPSA would purchase a new one. The discussion also solidified the reason for this book as to another.

The Motion was amended to remove the request to pass the book down to a board successor and agreed by the Second. The new amended Motion was Board purchase copies of "Guidebook for Directors of NonProfit Corporations" for Board members and each new incoming Board member unless the Board member wishes to purchase their own copy. Seconded by Dan. Motion passed without objections.

Discussion & Motion to reserve one meeting per quarter specific to strategy (Matt Simmons)

My seemed well-received. I would like to hear any last discussion, and then make a motion to reserve the first Board meetings in November, February, and May to be limited to strategic discussion and planning (the fourth to be the face-to-face in August). As there appears to be no Board Meeting Policy, and the bylaws only state "The Board shall meet at such times as the Board deems necessary for the proper conducting of Association business", I believe a simple motion should suffice. Dan did not think a motion was needed that all we have to do is set the agenda for that type of meeting and schedule it. Matt Simmons agreed that he could setup the agenda. The discussion continued about having these type meetings as a Face to Face and it may not be feasible to have more than the one per year as a Face to Face. So for now we will stay with remote meetings for these and further discussion will come to setup the agenda for these type meetings.

New Business

Purchase of Copies of Sturgis

Mike Julian suggested that since we are buying a copy of the "Guidebook for Directors of NonProfit Corporations" we purchase a copy of Sturgis for each Board member. There was a short discussion on the cost of the book. Motion a copy of Sturgis be purchased for each Board member and each new board member as they get elected to the board. Seconded by Ski. Motion passed without objection

Adjournment

Motion for adjournment William Seconded by Ski