Board meeting Minutes/22 Sep 2014

Prior: 8 Sep 2014

Board meeting Minutes

Next: 6 Oct 2014

Minutes approved: 6 Oct 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! Matt Simmons

Present

(Subject to verification) Dan Rich (chair), William Bilancio, John Boris, Steve VanDevender, George Beech, Ski Kacoroski,

Apologies

? Steve Murawski, Matt Disney,

Guests

Simon Fraser, Amy Rich

Opened

9:06 PMEastern Time

Closed

10:08 PM Eastern Time

Consent Agenda

• Minutes of 8 Sep 2014 were approved without objections

Action Items

There were no action items for discussion or review.

LMPT Core Team Presentation (Boris/Murawski)

John Boris turned over the LMPT presentation to Amy Rich and Simon Fraser. Amy Rich introduced herself as the one of the Co-Chairs of the LMPT. Simon Fraser introduced himself stating he has been doing a large portion of the Mentorship Automation and Information tools rewrite.

The first item on the agenda was LOPSA in general and how the Mentorship program fits into LOPSA. Amy stated that the feedback she has received from the Board was the program is the top or one of the top programs LOPSA provides to its members. The Board confirmed this as correct feedback.

Amy gave a description of the LMPT Charter that is being developed. Through discussion on the creation of the Charter the Team had to define

1. Objectives of the program
2. How to Define Success of the Program
3. What Metrics do we gather to assure they are meeting their success criteria

Amy asked the board what their thoughts were on those points as it helps the LMPT to perform their tasks.

A discussion started on these items. Ski stated he sees the program as a way to match up people with the proper person to meet their needs and from his experience it has been doing that. To that broad statement Amy asked if there were a certain number of match-ups, new proteges,or mentors they should be getting each year? The ensuing discussion on quantifying the program brought examples where the end point of the project (Project Style) was reached in a few weeks and others that are open ended (Free Style). The Project Style Match-Ups have an end point and thus can be rated as success or failures but the Free Style Match-Ups are the tough ones to find a metric as the Mentors and Proteges may only get together for a period and then have a lag for a while and some never get back in touch. Sli suggested that maybe a survey of the proteges may help give an idea of the success of the program.

A larger question is "What percentage of the LOPSA Population should we be serving?" "Should the Mentorship program be a driving force for membership where we tell prospective members we have this program to offer"? The LMPT needs some charge or measurement the team can use to gauge if they are fulfilling their charge.

Dan Rich mentioned that a good metric would be to see how many non members do we get to become members because of the program. He gave an example of discussions he has had at LOPSA tables at conferences (SCALE) where people like what they read and ask "How do I become a member?". Simon asked if we have a metric like that or from the Local Chapters. Dan stated we did not have such a metric in place but we can add this (through Civi) asking the applicant for a referral at the time they apply.

Amy stated there is a spot on the Mentorship application where the applicant is asked "Did you join because of the mentorship program?" The problem quantifying that data is not easy because of the way it is saved in a Google Spreadsheet. The numbers for this have been generated but they don't look that great which is the main reason for this question being asked now.

The Team has seen a fall in Mentors/proteges signing up over the past few months. Currently the program is getting one or two a month and the Team is searching for ways to improve those numbers. Simon stated the program has not reached "Critical mass" yet. If the team does improve those numbers how are they going to quantify those numbers.

John stated that one of the team's goals should be to make it an easy process for a Mentor or Protege to be part of the program, another to train the Mentors. John is against hard numbers for programs. He feels that the program can be measured as the influx of members from the program being promoted at conferences.

Amy asked how many new members do we sign up when we go to these conferfences. With the exception of LISA the numbers range from 0 to double digits.

Simon asked if this is our target demographic (People attending these conferences) or are there other marketing campaigns going on? Dan stated Marketing is an ongoing issue the Board has been trying to resolve and it is a major point that was emphasized at this year's Face to Face meeting.

Amy mentioned that this leaks over to the LMPT as they don't do any other marketing outside of what LOPSA does.

Steve V. stated that we should be gauging the program by the people that come to us and whether we meet their needs. He is also against hard numbers to measure the program. If we have records of where these Mentors/proteges come from we can see what caused the large influxes and then do more of those actions to help gain more people in the program.

Simon mentioned a comparison with a British organization (British Computer Society) where they now have a mentorship program started where a person can get chartered. (The BCS has over 80,000 members similar to ACM). Simon asked if we were going toward that. Dan stated that our goals were to become an aid for the System Administrator and hopefully we can get to the point the BCS and ACM are one day but that is a long way off.

Simon asked if we had a clear definition of what a System Administrator is. Dan stated that we have a clearer one which came out of the Face to face meeting in August. The discussion notes on that topic were tasked to the Communications Committee to mold a definition of System Administration out of the discussion notes. (Matt Simmons may have comments on this)

Amy mentioned that one charge would be to gauge the experience (satisfaction) of the mentors/proteges in the program. There is no current way to track that and it should be automated if we want to track it.

A short explanation of charters in the US as opposed to Great Britain followed.

Simon gave an explanation on what the Team is striving to do via automation. He mentioned the SSL certificate acquisition has held up the automation from moving forward. William mentioned the payment for the SSL certificate to Google has been approved and the Tech Team is waiting for the invoice to be paid.

The team understands that LOPSA is a volunteer organization where Life and work can take precedence but there is a lack of communication back to the Core Team from the Tech Team the majority of the time. Is this going to get better? William stated this will change. The new Tech Team Lead is doing a better job then before especially on the communications end. William and Chan (Tech Team Lead) spoke at the recent LOPSA-NJ meeting. He (Chan) is getting the new Team assembled (Philip is his main Team Member). Once fully assembled Chan will delegate one team member just for the LMPT needs.

Amy mentioned she had a volunteer for the Tech team. William acknowledged this and passed the information to Chan to have him contact her. The official way to step up as a volunteer is to send an email to volunteer@lopsa.org. They should put in the email what they are volunteering for.

A chronic problem the Team has is gihub. There is a past member who is paying out of pocket for the github repository of LMPT automation code. He needs temporary admin status to move the data over. Also it has been very cumbersome to get people accounts on the LOPSA Github site. Amy recommend that there be tighter integration between the LMPT and the tech team to facillitate the handling of the needs of the LMPT.

Dan explained what is being moved to Google and what areas delegations can be made. He also explained the separation of powers between the Tech team and Committee/Program members. The Tech team handles implementation and support and the Application level administration is with the Committee/program members.

The github discussions was moved to be offline between the Tech Team and the LMPT.

Amy asked about the move to Google mail and it was explained that all mail will be handled on Google but Mailman will handle the mailing lists.

Simon brought up about outreach which goes back to the conference and community engagement. As an example with people answering questions on Stack exchange showing they are part of the mentorship program. Just advertising and marketing the program. The LMPT team would like to be part of the marketing/outreach discussions.

Amy will work with Steve M on finalizing the Charter and asks for input on their Goals and Objectives section of that document. Amy will make the document available to the entire board or a subset to solicit comments.

William or Chan will get in touch with the LMPT on the SSL certificate.

The LMPT team will communicate with the Communications Committee. The LMPT will send an email to communications@lopsa.org in reference to working on outreach and marketing of the mentorship program.

William will followup with Chan and Amy for unresolved Tickets in the RT Queue.

Ski asked Amy about the Mentorship BoF at Lisa. A discussion on times ensued with the final decision to block out a 2 hour block of time for the General Membership and LOPSA BoF. The details and Raffle times will be handled later.

It was suggested that the LMPT be part of a board meeting at a minimum of twice a year. This idea was welcomed by all Board members.

Standing Reports

Treasurer's report (Disney)

• Balance info
  • BoA Account: $25,950.83
  • PayPal Account: $3,181.16
  • TDBank: $1,989.57
  • Total: $31,121.56
  • +/- from last meeting: $387.60
• Summary of expenditures since last report:
  • No expenditures since last report
• Summary of income since last report:
  • Membership dues: $387.60
• Outstanding liabilities
  • VanDevender (report submitted, William in possession?)
  • Rich (expense list submitted)
  • Bilancio (report outstanding)
  • Murawski (report outstanding)
  • Simmons (report outstanding)
• Top priorities
  • F2F reimbursement (VanDevender, Rich)
  • Transition bank accounts
  • 2013 990
• Misc:
  • Oct 5 will be last date to submit 2014 F2F reimbursement requests.

Membership report (VanDevender)

• See CiviCRM
• Previous Month:
  • New: 15 (10 students)
  • Renew: 2 (0 students)
  • Lapsed: 12
• Month to Date:
  • New: 9 (4 students)
  • Renew: 1 (0 students)
  • Lapsed: 11
• Total: 832 (693 paying)

Conference/events activities report (Bilancio)

Ski asked William if he had anything on sCale and there has been no emails or contact with the sCale community. Ski will forward what he has to William.

Local Chapter Committee report (Bilancio)

Atlanta is having issues with getting someone to set up and run the meetings. I am going to try to get in touch with Wolfe and see what we can do to help.

Development report (Kacoroski)

Nothing to report

Project Management report (Rich)

Still waiting for updates to the Projects_2014/2015 page

Liaison reports (LC, etc.)

Technical Services Report (Bilancio)

Open tasks

Sorted by priority:

Drupal upgrade / "Website bikeshed redesign" Status 20140922: On dev.lopsa.org (currently blocked during install) Drupal-7 upgrade functional, CiviCRM upgrade in progress.

Target date of Oct 1 for production is still feasible but becoming more risky.

Migrate lopsa.org email to Google

No update since summer.

Current TSC plan

- cwilson/all: start regular comms and wiki (doc) & tech review

- cwilson: drupal/website

Leadership Committee (Kacoroski)

Playing email tag with Warner

Lisa'14 (Kacoroski)

Page for tracking LISA14 items is at on the board wiki on the page LISA_2014. We will make a quick run through this page to assign tasks

Yerkes award nominees and awards needs work.

Ski asked for Vendors or raffle donations.

Ski will get William a shipping address.

New Business

No New Business

Adjournment

William Motioned for Adjournment John Seconded