Board meeting Minutes/17 Jun 2013

Prior: 3 Jun 2013

Board meeting Minutes

Next: 1 Jul 2013

Minutes approved: 1 Jul 2013

• 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) Philip Kizer (chair), William Bilancio, John Boris, Matt Disney, Ski Kacoroski, Evan Pettrey

Apologies

Martin Gehrke, Dan Rich

Opened

8:02 PM Eastern Time

Closed

8:31 PM Eastern Time

Consent Agenda

• Minutes of 3 Jun 2013 were approved with no objections

Action Items

The Board was asked to review their open tickets

Standing Reports

• Treasurer's report

Quick Books is up to date for review

• Membership report

Dan is away so there will be no membership report

• Technical services report

The Tech team has people lined up for work on the Job board and they will get started shortly. There are no major issues with our servers. Mike Julian resigned from the Tech committee last week because he did not want to be on the board and the team at the same time. If he did not get elected he wanted to focus more on his Local Chapters work. He will be missed on the Team.

Matt asked for the names of the members of the Tech Team and they are:

Jesse Trucks (leader answers to William), Matt Hoksin, Chris Layton, Dan, Philip and William.

• Conference/events activities report
  • We will have a table at Fosscon'13 in Philadelphia
  • Ski is working on the Yerkes Award
  • Please add your ideas on the LISA'13 to the Wiki Page
  • Southeast Linux Fest LOPSA-U (Disney, submitted previously to Board and Crossbow chair via email):

I think SELF is a good venue for us. We had a lot of great conversations with potential members, potential sponsors, and local chapters and LUGs that we could work with. We weren't taking memberships at the table so I don't know how many we have/will pick up from that. I would say less than 10 for sure. Maybe around 5.

We had mostly the normal routine at the table. Candy, printouts, digital picture frame, multi-language standups, stickers. Would have been nice to have bigger display/sign somehow. I was at the table most of the time and during the busiest periods. There were a few periods where other members from East TN covered the table and a few times when it was unattended. We had a glass on the table where people could leave business cards.

The training went very well but we didn't get the numbers we wanted. By my math, we generated $1250 in revenue, but have up to $2000 in expenses to cover for the trainers (they might donate some of that, which is why I say "up to"). The price was right but we didn't get our info up early enough for some people to get it paid for by work (that's on me more than William). And having a paid track there was a little awkward since the rest of the conference was free. Similar problem to SCALE in that regard.

Feedback about the training from students and trainers was very good, though. I suggest issuing a survey via email to the registration list from eventbrite, if that isn't already standard operating procedure.

We did run into a small issue where it would be nice if eventbrite left registration open once the event has started. We might have been able to pick up another $100-200 if that weren't the case. I might still have some follow-up on this, to ask how one or two of the people can get money over to PICC if they attended the class but didn't register in advance. We only had a few of those.

As for the bottom line of future attendance:

1. It's a good event for us and we should go back if we can, but it probably can't support the cost unless we get someone closer to the area to represent us there or our representative donates their time/expenses (which is what I'm doing). We could also ask trainers to cover the table but as some of you know who have done that, it can be draining to do one or the other, even more so to do both.

2. We should consider whether we want to continue training there. I'd say we could perhaps try one more year of the same approach, with more lead-time/organization on planning. I believe we should reach out to Garrett and Jesse to get their opinions on this, because Garrett has already told me he'd like it to work differently.

2a. The Consensus was to keep doing it and maybe fill the room, ask for donations at the door just so we can promote us. When we do conferences like this it tough for the instructor to check payments.

3. It might be cool if we could somehow sponsor SELF in a different way, potentially a BoF track in "the LOPSA Lounge" room or some such.

I have probably a dozen or so contacts to follow-up with, some potential members, some potential sponsors or speakers. Any suggestions for how I track those? If not, I'll create an RT ticket for each one and then put their info in Civi and run it from there.

• Mentorship Status report

Had meeting on June 11. The team is working on the next LOPSAGram article. Matt Simmons has agreed to work on that. It will be on next week's agenda for final approval. We have these open Proteges:

• • Multi Part Project.

I want to create a: a) Load balanced solution, for b) A WordPress website running on apache2 which c) Runs on Amazon Web services Infrastructure

• • I am a student at Houston community college, I am interested in this as a particular career path. Computers have always been an interest of mine since I was a little boy. I started off with basic plus on a Commodore 64 at school and I got out of it the right basic programs. And now I had the age of 35 I found myself back at my first love which is computers. I have built my own computer and I found myself back at my first love which is computers. I like to be hands on you know removing things and putting things back together that sort of stuff. So someone told me about network system administrator as a job and said I would be basically doing the same thing but on a larger scale. I was looking for some information on the Internet about graduation rates for this job and I found the website, so I took a good look at it and there was this mystery ship program so I thought to myself what do I have to lose so here I am.

• • The end goal would be to create and maintain a "resume" style website which would serve as a platform for me to outline my skills and projects. I'd like to use a content management system like Drupal or preferably something based on Django. Because the server will be publicly accessible, I would need to learn how to harden it using iptables and an IDS system, in addition to learning how to analyze log files. Lastly, the publicly accessible server would need to be able to communicate with a Debian system inside my private home network so that the log files can be stored in a central location.

• • I'm a network engineer with some systems background, interested in starting a wireless ISP in rural North Carolina pretty much from scratch.

• • I am interested in what it takes to run a networked office environment of no more than 100 employees. Not only hardware, but strategies to implement, software to use, etc. How to put something on a server and reach it from another machine on the network. How to be an administrator on the server / network admin side and create groups with policies. Basically, how to "run the show" so to speak. Any help or tips would be greatly appreciated.

• Local Chapter Committee report

The reconfiguration of the committee is going fine. The group is working on the wiki and their top 5 things to help the chapters is on the Wiki. William will collate them. There will be a meeting on the 26th. The cause of the meltdown will be reviewed and then go from there. Matt Disney resigned from the group and he will be missed.

Matt Disney was successful in getting contacts for a group in Atlanta. Matt Simmons and William will meet with the Atlanta group

• Communications (LOPSAgram, #lopsa-live, etc) (last meeting of the month only)

We missed a bit of time on SELF and DevOPS but hopefully going forward we will be better. We are up on the Devops page and we have their logo on our site, thanks to William for fixing it. Ski asked that if anyone has any other news to get it to him as soon as possible so he can get it out.

• Liaison reports (LC, etc.)

There is no report as the Elections are just over. William asked if we will have to find a new LC Leader. Philip will speak to Mario if he will continue. If not we have a good list of candidates. William commented that the elections went very well. Ski mentioned that we did have some issues with people voting. Part of their problem was due to the system and the other part was them using the correct email logging into the system. A few users never set themselves up with an account on lopsa.org. The voting system does not use the Civi database. Most were fixed but we should speak to the Tech Team and see what we can do to correct that. One issue was a Sponsor and there was confusion if he had to pay for a membership as well. It was not clear. This will be a topic for a future meeting about memberships for sponsors. Philip will roll that into the Lifetime membership discussion.

The Election had 19 more voters than last years so which is an improvement.

Notes/announcements

145 votes so far, 17.554479418886%

Adjournment

Motion to adjourn Ski Seconded by William