Board meeting Minutes/23 Feb 2015

From GovernanceWiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search


Prior:
9 Feb 2015 		Board meeting Minutes Next:
9 Mar 2015



Minutes approved: 9 Mar 2015


  • 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, Ski Kacoroski, Steve VanDevender, Matt Disney,John Boris,George Beech,Thomas Uphill
Apologies
Mark Honomichl
Guests
?
Opened
9:02 PMEastern Time
Closed
9:38 PM Eastern Time

Consent Agenda

  • Minutes of 9 Feb 2015 were approved without objection

Action Items

  • Budget requests for all committees need to be sent to finance@lopsa.org. The deadline is 15-Feb-2015. (Everyone)
    • Deadline extended to this Friday, 27-Feb-2015.
    • Draft budget will be shared with the Board by Sunday
  • Proposal for web site upgrade/redesign (Rich) - Due 15-Feb-2015
    • Dan would like to do more research with a potential designer
    • Expect an e-mail to the board with a rough proposal by the end of the weekend

Standing Reports

Treasurer's report (Disney)

  • Balance info
    • BoA Account: $24,499.89
    • PayPal Account: $4,875.81 (STALE)
    • TDBank: $1,989.89
    • Total: $31,365.59
    • +/- from last meeting: $4,024.02
  • Summary of expenditures since last report:
    • Budgeted operational expenses
    • Yerkes award bill
    • Kacoroski LISA 2014 reimbursement
  • Summary of income since last report:
    • Membership dues
    • Cascadia sponsorships
  • Outstanding liabilities
    • VanDevender (report submitted, William has this)
    • Cascadia start-up
  • Top priorities
    • Scott Koch refund
    • F2F reimbursement (VanDevender)
    • Confirm $1000 anonymous PayPal protest is in order
    • Cascadia accounts receivable and payable
    • Transition bank accounts
    • 2013 990
  • Misc:
    • Need VanDevender expense report from William
    • Need to fix online account access (reset admin passwords)
    • Work on the budget is progressing. The committee needs input from each of the committees on their funding requirements, please use the format from last year's budget. Please also review last years' budget, as much of the requested funding there was not used.
    • Summary of 2014 budget actuals:
      • Income:
        • Actual: $51,886
        • Budgeted $70,750
        • Summary: Less sponsorship and conference income than expected, but more memberships.
      • Expenses:
        • Actual: $39,825
        • Budgeted: $48,839
        • Summary: Conservative spending. Less program spending than expected. Debt payoff. Some unbudgeted expenses.
      • Profit/Loss: $12,061

Ski asked about the PayPal Stale transactions. Matt Disney asked Ski to get with him about resetting the accounts. Dan, Ski and Matt will speak offline to get it corrected.

Membership report (VanDevender)

  • See CiviCRM
  • Previous Month:
    • New: 26 (16 students)
    • Renew: 5 (0 students)
    • Lapsed: 30
  • Month to Date:
    • New: 15 (4 students)
    • Renew: 5 (0 students)
    • Lapsed: 34
  • Total: 819 (647 paying)
  • 14 new members and renewals from SCALE 13x. 10 fewer than last year, but the trade show seemed to have less traffic.
  • Dan explained that there are a few more that were done on line and are in the process of being tied to SCALE.

Conference/events activities report (Bilancio)

  • Ski reported on Scale

SCALE went well. We did not get as many member signups as last year, but made a lot of vendor contacts and several good discussions with attendees about LOPSA. SCALE had over 3000 attendees this year. They also changed the exhibitor hours so we really need to be there for all of Friday in the future as many exhibitors said that was the busiest day by far. Thanks to Dan and our Volunteers for helping out in the booth.

I want to make sure everyone is ok with the agreement I have with Taos. We are getting sponsorships from Taos and they help out in our booth. It is not co-branding and when they have helped out they are not pushing Taos on anyone. I plan to allow them to put a flyer about Taos at our booth for Cascadia and LISA conferences (like we currently do with Usenix). Taos will sponsor LOPSA after Dark at LISA'15 and sponsor some of Ski's students to attend Cascadia.

The board was in agreement with Ski on having Taos at our table at Cascadia and LISA. They do a great job in promoting LOPSA and supporting the organization.

  • Thomas gave an update on Cascadia and stated they are waiting on response from one sponsor and have approximately raised about $8,600. They are on track.
  • Ski spoke about other possible sponsors for Cascadia.

Local Chapter Committee report (Bilancio)

No Report

Development report (Kacoroski)

Taos has agreed to sponsor for up to four students to attend Cascadia and LOPSA After Dark celebration this year.

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

  • I am looking for LOPSAgram content. I will send it out on 3/1 as it will have stuff about Cascadia in it.
  • I would like to have a new tablecloth in time for LISA, but want to wait until the new website is done in case anything changes in the style guide.
  • Completely out of stickers, etc. Also need more blank business cards.
  • Got some of Facebook working. Problem is there are users, pages, and groups. We are posting to the group ok, but not to the page. Craig is going to work with Matt Simmons on the best way to clean this up (we both want to set up role accounts for lopsa instead of having a person who leaves and then we have transfer all the accounts over).
  • John stated he is looking into getting Craig Constantine access to LOPSA.org so he can post to the web site.

Project Management report (Rich)

I would like to request that everyone on the board review the Projects 2014/2015 list from the face-to-face meeting and select on project that they strongly believe in. They will be the "champion" for this project and drive it to completion.

When you select your project, please update the project page with your name and send an e-mail to the Board identifying what you think you can complete on the project by Sysadmin Appreciation Day. I would like to be able to announce these project goals to our membership in the next LOPSAgram.

Thomas stated that once Cascadia is over he will look at the list.

Please do this by this Friday. I will be calling anyone next week who hasn't selected a project by this Friday.

Liaison reports (LC, etc.)

Technical Services Report (Bilancio)

No Report

Usenix Liaison Report (Ski)

Touched based with David Blank-Edelman. Nothing going on right now.

Mentorship Report (Beech)

Meeting with Edward and Craig via IRC tomorrow 11AM. Will have more details and updates after this meeting. We will be setting a normal cadence for LMPT meetings there.

Dan stated that the Mentorship program was the big topic at the Table at SCALE.

George asked Dan for time to look into getting the Mentorship program more integrated with CiVi.Dan and George will get together offline to get that started.

Leadership Committee (Kacoroski)

Nothing to report Dan asked Ski for the people on the Leadership Committee. Ski answered that as of now it is just Warner Moore as he is rebuilding it. He has been speaking with a few people and he (Warner) will notify Ski when he finalizes the group.

Lisa'15 & LOPSA 10th Anniversary Celebration (Kacoroski)

  • I want to get started on this early this year. At SCALE, I lined up a sponsor for LOPSA After Dark. I also met with vendors about the idea of a break/fix contest where the people who complete it will either get a prize or be added to a pool for a prize (depends on how many vendors will chip in for prizes). Another ideas are most welcome.
  • I would also like to create a one off custom T-shirt with a special 10th anniversary logo. We can have a logo design contest associated with system admin day perhaps. I want this to be a special one-off shirt that people cannot get any other year (e.g. they would have to order during LISA (we would have some on hand to sell, but folks who do not attend LISA could order them during LISA).
  • I would also like to think of a way to thank our long term members and/or sponsors.
  • I would also like to start a membership campaign with a kickoff at system admin day that continues to the Annual Meeting at LISA with the goal of growing our membership. One idea is that we can give a tshirt to each member who gets a new member to sign up. Another idea is to give a tshirt and a year membership to any one who does a $100 sponsorship.
  • Dan spoke on why these are good ideas and to get back onto the projects so we can show we are out the debt can finally start getting work done.

System Admin Scholarship... (Ski)

  • I would like to create a system admin scholarship for students who are in system admin programs. We can start with $500 from LOPSA and I will try and see if I can get sponsors to chip in some more $$$. We can announce it on system admin day, and take applications for the 2016 semester/quarter and announce the winners at the Annual Meeting.
  • Matt Disney asked that a Bidget number be generated so we can plan for this in the upcoming year.
  • Ski will flesh out the numbers for this project and get more requirements.
  • The consensus of the board was for this project.

Scholarship For WiAC (Boris)

  • Just wanted this on the Agenda to start thinking about it. $1,500 is a large amount. Evan brought up that $1,500 could almost cover two Winners.
  • Matt Disney stated he thinks USENIX is not going to do the WiAC conference/Workshop this year. He spoke with USENIX nd we could possible donate to the scholarship fund of USENIX to sponsor a women to go to LISA. Dan suggested that we could not sponsor a full LISA but sponsor 3 days of tech sessions. John suggested we would have a ribbon for the badge of the winner.
  • Dan tasked Ski to speak to USENIX on how to accomplish our goal.
  • Once decided the WiAC Policy will have to be rewritten.

Membership/Sponsorship Revisited (Rich)

  • Dan suggested that while we continue to investigate converting memberships to paid sponsorships, this shouldn't be our primary focus until we have some of our more concrete accomplishments achieved so there is something to show for the value of their contribution.
  • Dan stated we have to have more accomplishments before we look to change our model.
  • Matt Disney agreed about moving this topic to a lesser focus. He felt we were sort of in the chicken and egg situation. We need more members to get more sponsors/benefits but we need sponsors /benefits to get more members. He was looking to raise money through other methods such as Micro investments or kick starters.
  • Thomas asked if we compare ourselves with USENIX, besides :login and a conference what does USENIX offer? Dan replied their SAGE books they publish, a suite of conferences and a publishing route if you want to publish something. USENIX doesn't seek sponsorships they seek memberships. Thomas looked at our one thing we do better than USENIX is the mentorship program.

Non Profit Status/Subsidiary Status

John asked about feedback from the lawyer. Dan has taken this over since Matt Simmons left and has not been able to get in touch with the Lawyer. John asked about the location. Dan will look up the contact information and get it to the board and if a visit to the office in New jersey is required William, George or John might be able to handle that.

Comments

= Membership Shortfall (Disney)

Matt Disney stated that we could see a shortfall of about $4,500 due to LOPSA-East not being held. Hopefully a lot of those conference attendees will renew their membership.

Meeting Time Review

  • Matt Disney suggested we reevaluate our meeting times with the new board members to see if the current meeting time is okay with them.
  • Dan stated he could put up a Doodle for a survey of meeting times again.

Notes/announcements

Matt Disney reminded the Board to get all of the Budget items into him so he can finalize the budget.

Adjournment

Ski Motioned for adjournment

John Seconded the Motion

Retrieved from "https://governance.lopsa.org/index.php?title=Board_meeting_Minutes/23_Feb_2015&oldid=3132"