Board meeting Minutes/14 Jan 2013

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Prior:
17 Dec 2012 		Board meeting Minutes Next:
28 Jan 2013



Minutes approved: 25 Feb 2013


Present
(Subject to verification) Philip Kizer (chair), William Bilancio, Ski Kacoroski, Martin Gehrke, Dan Rich, Evan Pettrey, John Boris, Matt Disney,Jesse Trucks
Opened
20:00 Eastern Time
Closed
21:03 Eastern Time

Consent Agenda

Standing Reports

  • Open Tickets.
    • There are no specific tickets to point out.
  • Treasurer's report
    • Evan gave financial report. PayPal administration is being difficult. He will stay on top of this to get it resolved.
  • Membership report
    • It is hard to report which are new or renewed because of the way Civi reports the numbers. He suggested looking at the recent reports to see the numbers. About a tenth renewed during the sale.
    • Discussion about relative numbers and the holidays not allowing time for LISA.
    • We should hit non-renewals with an email and ask why they did not renew.
  • Technical services report
    • Some projects are at a stand-still due to other work requirements. Jesse isn't on the call so we cannot get a full report.
    • William has Forums at the top of his list; there are issues with the forums and their interface with Drupal.
    • Our site handled LISA very well and there weren't any slow downs like last year. William credits Mike Julian for that with the work Mike did after he (William) and Jesse got everything moved over. Mike is still working on it.
  • Conference/events activities report
    • SCaLE
      • We are going to SCaLE and we have a table. We have two training classes set up and Aleksey will run them. We were supposed to get 4 rooms but we lost two of the rooms. We may get them back but in a way it helped out as he would of had to send a person from the East cost. We might try to get another room. The classes will be Aleksey's Time management class and his Beginner vi class. William will have numbers for Evan to send a contract out to Aleksey. William will get Ski the info so he can start publishing it.
      • Ski asked about guarding the door of the class. William said that is on his To-Do list to have that taken care of so we will not have to do that. If we need someone he will know in the next few days.
      • Ski will set up the signupgenius.com site to get volunteers for the table like we did at LISA.
    • Cascadia-IT
      • Cascadia has announced their pricing and class schedules. They are still accepting papers for invited talks. If you want there is still time to get one in.
      • Cascadia registration will be open soon.
    • LOPSA-East
      • LOPSA-East has their schedule done.
    • William is thinking about bringing back Crossbow and will be looking for someone to take it over. He has to find someone to be able to do that. He will still be the Board contact but he is getting busy with a bunch of things and needs to get this handed off. At least handling the day to day stuff, LOPSA-East, SCaLE and other LOPSA only events. Also maybe looking for other venues for us.
  • Mentorship Status report
    • John brought up about finalizing something for the volunteers that gave the presentation at LISA. This was discussed at an October Board meeting. Big influx of mentors and proteges from LISA.
  • Communications (LOPSAgram, #lopsa-live, etc) (last meeting of the month only)
    • Ski asked Martin to get the Locals to send in what is going on. He has been contacting a lot of people about sponsors. Dell gave us a discount. Need more content for the LG. Martin has the LOPSA-Live Doodle up for February.
  • Project Management report
    • Minimal progress on the projects. He thinks that the nature of the projects it is better to make the reports quarterly. He has some delays between home and work and has been trying to catch up.
    • Philip asked Jesse if he is still working on the tools to use for tracking. Jesse thinks he has settled on one. He will send Philip something later this week.
  • Liaison reports (LC, etc.)
    • William and Dan will both contact the LC by at least Wednesday by phone.

Directors and Officers Insurance (Evan)

  • Status and discussion
    • Agent and backer had different time-frames on past actions we are resolving. He will probably hear back shortly. Once he hears back he will let people know.
    • Jesse asked if we can get coverage, afford it and how long before we get it.
    • Philip thinks we should be able to get the new contract by the end of February
    • Evan summarized the expected costs and considers them reasonable
    • Evan says that the info is shared on Google Drive showing the work in progress
    • Jesse stated that if this is not resolved by early February he will resign.
    • Much more discussion and links relative to NJ law

Tech Team paging service (Jesse)

  • Request for monthly service... details coming.
  • The Tech Team is trying to improve their job of monitoring and managing things.
  • Tech team is testing a pager service it will be $36 a month for four on point people to handle issues. The Tech Team would be able to be on top of issues that come up. They would be able to put anyone in who is on Pager Duty
  • That way they can be more proactive. Jesse felt that it was important to bring to the board for discussion.
  • Dan stated that Pager Duty has been approaching him and other sysadmins for quite a while and asked if Pager Duty could do this as a sponsorship. Maybe a discount for us.
  • Jesse stated he has not done this but would go that route and see what happens.
  • Dan stated maybe mentioning in our LOPSAGram a couple time or even giving our members a discount.
  • Matt has contacted them before about discounts and the like but they were not warming up to that. This was in the past year. He did say he would dig up the information and see what he can find.
  • Jesse will get back to them to see if they can do this as a sponsorship. If they turn us down is it okay to work with Evan to get an account setup.
  • Philip says we need the notification but Jesse should try to work out a deal and if that fails to get with Evan.

Square Reader Proposal... (Ski)

  • I would like to purchase (2) iPOD touches for us to keep with the conference materials and use at conferences. I can get them for about $100 used online so they are the least expensive option and I think they work better with the Square a bit better than android devices.
  • Ski has looked at various Android devices but none of them work very well. He was thinking about sending out an email to the membership asking if they have an iPod Touch or similar device laying around in their drawer they might like to donate to the cause. They would be perfect. They work with Square. After LISA he needs a reliable device.
  • William asked Evan to look into PayPal for their Swiper and since we have a PayPal account if that will make it easier. He likes Ski's idea but thinks we should try the PayPal version.
  • Evan will look into the PayPal. Square was 2.75% and PayPal might be different. Ski said PayPal is 2.67%.
  • William asked Evan to contact PayPal about their new swiper William likes the idea.
  • Evan will look into it. He will compare the rates. Square was 2.75% and PayPal may be cheaper. The device would be sent to Ski to use at Scale. Evan is ordering the PayPal swiper and it is agreed for Ski to send out an email to the members.
  • William asked we should at least get one to try. Evan asked where to have it sent. William said to send it to Ski so he could use it at ScALE. Ski agreed with that.

Video Proposal... (Ski)

Out of LISA came a need to really have a place to put videos.

There are three areas where videos would be helpful for use: conferences, locals, and system admin training. The concept is you are trying to create ssh keys and the screen is captured.

  • Livestream will cost $42/month (paid on a yearly basis so $504/yr). LOPSA provides this and the locals/conferences provide their own equipment. We can have one recording and multiple viewing at a time. Use cases are:
  • Conferences & Locals : Will need a PC or Mac and webcam ($80 for a recommended one). Better would be a camera with optical zoom ($300) that can stream to a Mac workstation vi thunderwire. Use this to stream sessions to the conference event. Afterwards put links to the event on conference web page, etc.
  • Training: Concept is that when a system admin starts to solve a problem, they can turn on livestream, the webcam on their computer, and then stream their desktop as they solve the problem. We would link to these from our website and also get schools and online services like Opsschool to link to it.
  • At this time I am still practicing with my personal accounts, but I plan to ask for volunteers who want to work on this. Once we get some processes down, I plan to ask to the board to approve the $$$.
  • Ski is hoping to do this at Cascadia.
  • Philip likes the idea. He thinks we should be doing something as this would increase interest long term
  • Dan says that we have to get agreements from people that they are being videoed allow us to post them on the site. They should be behind the pay wall. Put local meetings in front of the Pay wall to entice them to join. Similar to BayLISA.
  • William mentioned that LOPSA-NJ did their meeting with an iPad and did a Google Hangout. John Boris did most of the work on it. LOPSA-NJ will keep everyone appraised. LOPSA-NJ is not going to the next meeting as it will be a cluster meeting. We are looking to do the March meeting using Google Hangout.
  • John explained about using the iPad. The microphone is the issue. You have to really work with the sound. We videotaped the last one as well as the hangout. Sound was poor and the mike was only four rows from the speaker. Also bandwidth has to be considered along with the connection. Our connection kept dropping.

John volunteered to help Ski with that.

  • Jesse say his local has been kicking this around and is very interested in this. Their meetings have been very well attended (approx. 25 members per month). He was thinking of having a virtual meeting. This would make this possible where we could have speakers from all over the world. He sees the problem is the software infrastructure is the issue.
  • Dan said that BayLISA does a lot of this and asked if Livestream had any bandwidth issues. Example we have a 90 minute meeting. Ski doesn't think so and will verify it. USENIX uses Live Stream so it looks good but Ski wants to make sure we have content providers.
  • Dan commented that as long as there are no bandwidth charges it looks good for us.
  • Dan sees this a lot with web comic artists. Both Dan and Ski agree we need content before we go through with this.
  • Martin said that before we go out and ask for content we should have a list of topics we are looking for so we get content we can used. Dan agreed.
  • Philip asked Ski if he had his direction. Ski stated he will go ahead and report back.

SCaLE... (Ski)

  • This was covered under conferences

Mentorship Acknowledgement (John)

  • Thomas has suggested the board send some Merchandise to the four Volunteers on the mentorship Team Ed, Lois, Nick and Lawrence. I mentioned this at another board meeting.

John wants to give Thomas a definite answer. William asked how many luggage tags he wants. John mentioned we give them kudos in the LOPSA Gram.

  • William has a quote for T shirts but it is missing the shipping. William will go back and see the total cost. Once set all we have to do is turn on the front end on the Web Site.
  • William will present this at the next meeting.
  • Philip has some donated books from Cisco. Philip will get them documented and out.

Harassment Policy (Kizer)

  • Dan asked about the comments on the Policy and Philip said that it looks as though the comments are tied to the text and since he removed the text the comments may have went with them. Dan stated he really doesn't remember his comments and would like to see them. Philip stated all y9ou have to do is click on versions and you will see them.
  • Philip has harassment policy up for review and wants to ratify this at the next meeting.
  • Dan thought it was more conference centric and maybe we should also include IRC, forums etc.
  • Philip thought the rules of etiquette applied with other areas. If he wants it more electronic he will have to redo it. If the rules of etiquette does not apply do we get rid of it. Dan doesn't think it conflicts. IRC rules are specific that we can ridicule you etc. So a one liner where this could apply in other forums where the LOPSA name is used.
  • Matt is for the document and is happy to ratify. He wonders if we need more procedure or formality at the bottom of the document.
  • Phil agrees we need formal procedure but the document should be more generic.
  • Dan says he is okay with it being ratified tonight as long as everyone has read it since we can always amend it.
  • Jesse moves that the Board moves and accepts the Harassment Policy proposed by Philip.
  • Dan seconded the motion.
  • A voice vote was taken and it was a unanimous vote.
  • Jesse spoke on how difficult that was to get that together and how important it was for us to get this out to show our membership how we are backing them.

Notes/announcements

  • Matt spoke on how his group has grown at ORNL and he now has a bit more work that he should be able to continue with his level of involvement with the board. He wants to stay on the board. He wanted to know if anyone is opposed to his level of commitment he is willing to talk about it. He is happy to have an open discussion on his level of commitment to the board.
  • Philip thanked him for the disclosure and will chat with him.

Adjournment

A motion to adjourn by Ski seconded by William

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