Board meeting Minutes/18 Nov 2013

Prior: 21 Oct 2013

Board meeting Minutes

Next: 2 Dec 2013

Minutes approved: 2 Dec 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) Dan Rich (chair), William Bilancio, Matt Disney, Ski Kacoroski, Mike Julian, Matt Simmons, Evan Pettrey, John Boris (arrived late)

Apologies

Martin Gehrke

Opened

8:00 PM Eastern Time

Closed

8:58 PM Eastern Time

Consent Agenda

• The minutes of 23 Sep 2013 and 7 Oct 2013 were approved without objection

Action Items

• Dan is in the process of reviewing all past minutes for 2013 to find missing action items and will either be opening tickets for them or adding them to the agenda for upcoming board meetings.

Standing Reports

• Treasurer's report

We are current with our liabilities. There will be a payment from ScALE.

• Membership report
  • This month (+24):
    • Renewals: 27
    • New signups: 16
    • Lapsed: 19
  • This quarter(+17):
    • Renewals: 22
    • New: 40
    • Lapsed: 45
  • This year
    • New: 352
    • Renewals: 516
    • Lapsed: 312
  • Upcoming
    • 21 expiring in next two weeks

A discussion ensued on the low numbers of renewal and sign ups at LISA. Possible reasons for the ow numbers may be:

• • Table placement (although there wasn't an optimum location at that Hotel due to the room arrangement
  • LISA was a month earlier than last year and members still had a month to go before their renewal date
• Conference/events activities report
  • Cascadia has their CFP deadline approaching. The board is asked to talk it up to their contacts and blog about the conference. The Sponsorship information is posted as well.
  • LOPSA-East's CFP has gone out last week on the web site. Again the board is asked to push the CFP and blog if possible. Their sponsorship information is also poated.
  • LISA
    • The consensus of the board was that the conference was an overall success.
    • T-Shirts and Swag, We did not sell as many as hoped.
    • The flyers went well. Great comments on them.
    • The ribbons were well accepted and people were pleased to put them on their badges.
    • Swag packages were handed to Local leaders at the conference.
    • A question about LISA attendance numbers. There was an unofficial number of 1,000 attendees. Although the attendance was down our numbers did not reflect that.
    • The Town hall meeting went very well. The feedback from the attendees was good. Dan did a great job on the presentations. The meeting moved along very well and was a positive meeting.
• Local Chapter Committee report

Atlanta had their first meeting as they were meeting on line. They had 3 people attend but being their first in person meeting it is a start. The San Diego chapter has sent in info for review.

• Development report

Ski is working on a sponsorship by Splunk. It would be a large sponsorship. He will also be speaking with Puppet about them renewing their sponsorship next year.

• Communications (LOPSAgram, #lopsa-live, etc)

The LOPSAGram automation date has been set for the January timeframe. A LOPSA-Live is due in the near future and Ski and Matt Simmons will be getting together for more coverage on the social media side. Matt Disney asked that we research a proper venue for our next LOPSA-Live other than IRC. Ski mentioned about getting ads in print magazines especially for Cascadia and LOPSA-East. Ski believes LINUX Admin will place these ads as part of their sponsorship.

• Project Management report

Everyone is asked to go onto their projects in the Web2project site and update the status of their projects.

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

The Drupal 7 dev server is up but the TSC has not formally confirmed this. William will be getting with Jesse concerning the documentation the Board has requested. Once the Drupal 7 dev server is completely up and running we will have to get our Designer (JD) rolling. Hopefully his tie will be covered by our sponsors. A question on the SPAM issue was asked. Mike stated he is getting a lot of SPAM on the Board email. Others don't see it since their filters are hiding it from them. William will have the TSC work on the SPAM issue.

• • Mentorship Report (John)
    • The mentorship core team has changed their meeting times to bi-weekly on Thursdays at 11 AM Eastern time. The meetings will start up again on November 21. The core team has recruited a new member , Simon Fraser. Part of the agenda for the next meeting is to talk about getting their own namespace with Google apps. , mentorship.lopsa.org. This is a move to make the management of the team more organized and able to handle the in and out flow of core team members. With no founding members on the core team it has been hard to gather all of the original logins/passwords. The addition of Amy Rich to the core team and her rise to co-chair has been a plus to the LMPT and LOPSA. She gave a very good presentation at LISA'13 and has brought organization and regime to the team. Not downing previous member's work as they were in deep to getting the job done. Amy has brought organization and documentation to the group and I believe with her and Ed at the helm the Mentorship Project will continue to excel and be an great plus to LOPSA. Question for the board is how to get them their name space in Google apps?

William will pass this along to the TSC.

• • Leadership Committee (Dan)

Mario is still searching for more people for the Leadership committee. The elections are coming up and they

• • LPR Report
    • Since we launched at LISA13, we've had 19 responses and added one committee member. Mostly useful feedback from the community, and mostly positive, though the minority opposing opinion was vocal. Matt is on track to stepping down as the Chair and is vetting prospects.
  • USENIX Liaison
    • Got USENIX services menu from Casey ( https://drive.google.com/a/lopsa.org/file/d/0BwxpemkyfGVBSlZQc185aklYdmc/edit?usp=sharing). During our meeting with USENIX at LISA the USENIX board offered us these services that we may be able to take advantage of. There will be more services in the future. USENIX stressed that they do publications they would be able to offer that to our members. It would be a plus for our members to take advantage of this.

Agenda

Board password policies (MPSimmons)

• This is ridiculous
• Need a three step process:

1. Get the passwords out of plaintext wiki entries and into an encrypted password file
2. Change passwords so a compromised backup doesn't result in confidential data exposure
3. Get a centralized password management solution in place to restore current usability while maintaining security

• I (Matt Simmons) will take responsibility for #1 and will help delegate responsibilities for #2 among board members
• #3 needs to be handed to the TSC chair.

I move that we charge the TSC chair with finding and proposing three possible solutions prior to the meeting of December (Dec 16) along with his recommendations on which one to select, with the LOPSA board to determine the solution on January 13, with the solution to be put in place no later than February 10th.

Ski suggested Keepass with a centralized copy that everyone can sync to their own local copy. Keepass does not have hierarchical authority but we would be able to make a separate file for mentorship. A discussion started on this and it was decided that Matt will forward a list of requirements to William for review by the TSC.

Creation of LOPSA Professional Content Committee (discussion)

• Charge: Create content relevant to and of interest to professional system administrators
• Co-chairs: Aleksey and Will Dennis
• A discussion followed that there might be a committee already formed for this but that will be researched. Dan stated that there might be a place already for this and we don't want to slow down this enthusiasm. Matt will draw up the charter for the committee and submit it for approval. There will be an email discussion to flesh out the details.

Adjournment

Ski Motioned for Adjournment William Seconded 8:58PM