Board meeting Minutes/16 January 2006

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Prior:
9 January 2006 		Board meeting Minutes Next:
23 January 2006



Minutes approved: 23 January 2006

Redactions below were approved by the Board.

Present
Matthew Barr, Trey Harris, Andrew Hume, David Parter, Stephen Potter, Pat Wilson (chair, note taker)
Apologies
Sam Albrecht, Doug Hughes, Tom Perrine
Opened
20:04 Eastern Time
Closed
21:16 Eastern Time

Consent Agenda

Consent agenda approved.

Potter holds minutes of 9 January for redaction.

Action Items

Board Committees

  • Development Committee (Wilson/Potter)
    • Potter, Wilson - Draft more rigorous sponsorship policy (including definitions) - in progress
    • Potter - Contact {name redacted; remove name of potential sponsor until finalized} sponsor identified at LISA regarding possible corporate sponsorship - still no response. This item will be removed from future action item lists and dealt with as a normal potential sponsorship
    • Wilson - Work on a proposal for {Name redacted; business sensitivity} - no action
  • Partnership and Liason Committee (Perrine)
    • Perrine- Write another note to the Advisory Council as soon as biz plan first draft complete - no action (pending business plan)
  • Leadership Committee (Greg Rose)
  • Policy Committee (Harris)
  • Communications Committee
    • Palmer -- Fix the problem with the postcard - no report
  • Membership Committee
    • Harris, Albrecht - membership kit - in progress Solanki getting quotes on mailing materials
    • Harris - draft "welcome email" for new members - see questions on wiki page "new member acknowledgment emails"
    • Parter - send "welcome email" to new members - waiting for text
    • Hume - Contact the individuals who had expressed interest in a life membership and try to sell multi-year instead - waiting for response to email

Program Committees

  • Conference Planning Committee (Wilson/Perrine)
    • Barr, Perrine, Wilson - Review charter for Conference Committee and propose a structure to address issues related to participating in conferences and trade shows, includng setting criteria for participating, goals. base budgets, etc. - no action
    • Barr reports that it's possible to get a booth at SCALE for free (in the non-profit section); probably need to get this going soon, as SCALE is mid-February

ACTION ITEM: Conference committee to finalize the structure and decide about SCALE participation by 20 January

  • Technical (Online) Services (Hughes/Parter)
    • Barr, Hughes - Move the remaining sage-members.org mailing lists (including the Advisory Council) to lopsa.org - Done
    • Albrecht, Hughes - extend member database (expected first look 8 Jan) - still in progress
    • Parter - add verisign credit card processing - almost done
    • Hume - "verify" paypal account - Done AH will be handling the fund transfers from now on.

ACTION ITEM: Parter to make "staff@" alias for Solanki and Albrecht.

  • Content Services Committee (Palmer/Potter)
    • Palmer, Potter - Contact other LISA '05 content contributors with hosting offer - no action

Non-Committee

  • Financial (not a Committee, should it be?)
    • Albrecht, Hume, Parter - Work on integrating databases and financial procedures - in progress
    • Hume now has a copy of a draft process for handling emergency financial issues
  • Albrecht:
    • Contact BitPusher with invoicing information - Done
  • Barr:
  • Harris:
    • the governance material is the last old information remaining on the sage-members.org site; it will all be moved to a lopsa.org machine in the near term
    • a new Wiki for the resume standards group will be created, with boilerplate verbiage assigning copyright of all contributed materials to LOPSA
  • Hughes:
  • Hume:
    • Review minutes and provide a list of redactions pertaining to SAGECom that may now be restored - no action
    • Contact Usenix regarding how much of the $10000 allocated to the spinoff startup remains. - in progress; waiting for Usenix reply
  • Palmer:
  • Parter:
  • Perrine:
  • Potter:
    • Update the Code of Ethics Review committee charge - no action
  • Wilson:
  • Everybody:
    • Flesh out charges/specifications for 90 day services - it wasn't really well-understood where this action item came from. It will be carried forward

ACTION ITEM: Harris to find the Wiki page of services and relay the location to the rest of the Board

Standing Report

  • Treasurer's report

The question of what sort of information should be in these reports was raised. Consensus seemed to be that basic budget numbers (cash on hand, a simple indication of whether the trend was as expected) and extraordinary expenses might be nice to have.

  • Membership report
    • 253 paid online accounts
    • 35 paid memberships with no matching online account
    • 288 total
    • 15 pending payment

So, about 16 members since last week (~2/day), which seems fairly on-track. Parter will investigate making a time-series membership report available.

  • Online report
    • verisign credit card interface almost done
    • 450 online accounts (some duplicates)
    • 318 on announce list
    • 337 on discuss list
    • 326 on tech list

Auto-reminders of mailing list membership aren't going out monthly; Barr will investigate and enable the functionality if there's no reason not to. A report of (numbers of) subscribers to all mailing lists will be made available.

Membership Discussion

Discussion of membership issues

Much discussion on philosophy of attracting and retaining members. Retention is vital to meet LOPSA's growth goals (which will require adding 700+ members by the end of 2006). Answers to questions regarding how much each member will cost the organization (ballpark estimate is ~$10/member, fully loaded) will help determine what sorts of membership drive inducements are affordable. Drives should probably be more short-term, with defined goals and "rest" periods between them so as not to annoy members. There might be different types of drives, as well (recruiting for local groups, for example).

Some brainstorming occured - see wiki.

ACTION ITEM: Albrecht to give a plausible estimate of fully loaded member cost

ACTION ITEM: Harris will put an item on next week's agenda regarding how the Membership Committee would like to proceed.

Change status and Charter of Membership Committee

MOTION: Revise the Charge to the Membership Committee to read as follows:


The charter of the Membership Development standing committee shall be:

  • To draft the initial Membership Policy, and monitor it for needed changes, proposing any required policy changes to the Board.
  • With the staff, create and administer projects and programs to increase membership in the organization.
  • With the Communications Committee, draft and propose talking points which will serve to explain the "value proposition" for membership.
  • With the staff and the Partnership and Liasons Committee, explore and propose services and partnerships that will add value to membership in the organization.


Barr moves, Hume seconds approving the motion - passes.

Business Plan Draft (Status)

Perrine will be updating the draft business plan as often as possible, and uploading it as a PDF. The latest version should always be on the wiki.

New Business

Notes/announcements

We need to be careful not to burn out; the effort to push to LISA is not sustainable, and the current level of effort is probably more practical over time. Will need to better use volunteers - to do that, the #1 priority for the next week or so should be to get the 90-day projects clarified so that they can be turned over to volunteers (and AH to manage). The process of clarifying projects (and/or getting them under way) will probably lead to a need for policy generation, but that level of involvement is a better one for the Board.

Adjournment

MOTION to Adjourn by Harris, seconded by Hume. Adjourned at 21:16 ET

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