Board meeting Minutes/24 April 2018

Prior:
10 April 2018

Board meeting Minutes

Next:
8 May 2018

Minutes approved: 8 May 2018

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.

Present: Move your name to Present or Apologies prior to the meeting! Andy Cowell (VP), Brian Globerman (Treasurer), Aleksey Tsalolikhin (Secretary), Scott Suehle, Drew Adams, Danielle White, Steve VanDevender

Apologies: George Beech (President)

Guests: Roger Luedecke (Community Manager, for first agenda item)

Opened: 9:07 p.m. Eastern Time

Closed: 10:40 p.m. Eastern Time

Presentation by Roger Luedecke, Community Manager, on partnership with LPI (Tsalolikhin)

Roger described progress made on developing a partnership with LPI and fielded questions. (45 minutes) The board asked Roger to continue fleshing out the partnership agreement.

Consent Agenda

Approve minutes of 10 April 2018 -- Andy moved to approve the minutes, Danielle seconded, minutes were approved unanimously.

Standing Reports

Treasurer's report (Globerman, Beech, Suehle)

Bank balance on 4/22/2018: $31,858.81 (-$363.79 over last reported balance on 4/10/2018)

Balance Sheet, April 22, 2017 - April 22, 2018 (pdf)
Cash Flow, November 22, 2017 - April 22, 2018 (pdf)
Cash Flow, April 22, 2017 - April 22, 2018 (pdf)
Profit and Loss, month and YTD (pdf)

ISSUES:

1. Debit card for Roger: Ordered, will be tied to secondary checking account with ~$300 daily balance (Discussed later, Brian will cancel the debit card.)

2. Budget (requested by Aleksey): will create for period 7/1/18 - 6/30/19 by 6/30/18 (need to work on IRS tax form due 5/30)

Membership report (VanDevender)

Total active members: 637 (previous report: 624, change: 13, pending renewal: 15)

Paying: 305 (10 new in last 30 days)

Non-paying: 332 (12 new in last 30 days)

Paying members include Individual, Charter, Founding, and Lifetime memberships. Non-paying members include Student and Complimentary memberships.

Committee reports

Conferences/Events/Chapters activities (Adams)

Drew said he'd contact USENIX to arrange a booth for LISA '18.

Marketing/Communications (Tsalolikhin)

Since the last board meeting, the April LOPSAGram was published.
Aleksey has updated the LOPSA Committees page to show who is on each committee. <https://lopsa.org/Committees> and how to reach those committees (where a mailing list exists).
Community Manager is working on creating a "Certs" page under "Resources" on the LOPSA web site, starting with LPI's sysadmin certification LPIC-1.
We've selected IRCCloud as our service provider for Community Manager to moderate the #lopsa IRC channel. Working on getting a debit card for Roger (see agenda item below) so that he can buy the service.
Aleksey has started getting quotes for professional marketing services as planned at the face to face annual director meeting. A search on Google brought up prosper-strategies.com -- we've reached out to them for a quote.
Aleksey has asked Community Manager to survey our membership -- what do they like about LOPSA, what needs to be improved, how do they want to help.

Technical Services (White)

The tech team is checking into the situation with Slack (to bring it live) to augment the IRC channel

Education, Training and Mentorship (Cowell)

29 members in the mentorship program

6 people actively engaged (3 pairs)

Recognition (Beech)

Leadership Committee (Tsalolikhin, Murphy)

We have four candidates now, and candidate statements are up for three of them. The election is on track.
Volunteer (student member) Mark Stenglein has updated the LOPSA Wikipedia page. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Professional_System_Administrators>

Locals/Chapters Committee (Tsalolikhin)

NJ looks promising, two LOPSA members stepped up, interested in getting it going again.
radio silence from Chicago
Aleksey still has it on his to-do list to publish the chapter runbook draft https://gitlab.com/lopsa/chapters/blob/master/chapter_handbook.md

Proposal to open mentorship program to the public (Tsalolikhin)

Now that we have a mentorship program, let's open it to the world. We are a public benefit (charitable and educational) organization. Opening the mentorship program will benefit the community. Let's allow anyone to sign up as a protege.

The motion was discussed. No one seconded it.

Proposal for debit card for Community Manager (Tsalolikhin)

Aleksey moved that we issue the LOPSA Community Manager Roger Luedecke a debit card (tied to a checking account) with a monthly spending limit of $300/month for job-related expenses such as IRCCloud subscription for moderating IRC, targeted ad campaigns, etc.

Danielle seconded Aleksey's motion to give Drew a debit card. Discussion ensued.

Aleksey withdrew the motion. We'll continue handling purchase requests on a case by case basis.

Director vacancy - Thomas Uphill (Tsalolikhin)

We have a vacancy on the board -- Thomas Uphill has resigned. With election a month away, Aleksey proposed leaving the position vacant.

Andy seconded Aleksey's motion not to nominate a replacement for Thomas Uphill. Unanimous.

Proposal to change board size from 9 to 7 (Tsalolikhin)

Aleksey Tsalolikhin moved that:

Let's change the LOPSA culture to more involve the membership body in LOPSA activities (i.e. not have the board of directors do most of the work). Let's reduce the cost of the annual face to face board meeting by reducing the number of directors -- we don't need 9 directors to run a membership organization of 300 paying members; it could be done by three directors.

Therefore, I move we make the following change to Article 4.2 of the bylaws, Board Composition <http://governance.lopsa.org/LOPSA_Bylaws#Board_Composition>. Change the sentence:

   The Board shall consist of nine members ("Directors").

to:

    The Board shall consist of seven members ("Directors").

Andy seconded Aleksey's motion to reduce board size from 9 to 7. Discussion ensued. The motion failed.

(Aleksey and Scott dropped off at this point due to the late time -- 10:30 p.m. Eastern. The board still had a quorum and continued the meeting.)

KPIs (Tsalolikhin)

Aleksey moved that all committees identify and start tracking and reporting KPIs (key performance indicators) bi-weekly (same as the board meeting cycle).

For example:

Finance: total balance
Communications/Marketing: number of visitors to the LOPSA web site
Leadership Committee: number of active volunteers
Education, Training and Mentorship: completed mentorships

KPI statistics and graphs (showing relative change) are to be entered in the board minutes and published to the membership.

This will give transparency, accountability, and will allow us to show progress toward LOPSA's goals.

No one seconded the motion.

Board committees vs Program committees (Tsalolikhin)

Aleksey moved that:

Whereas a) LOPSA Committees policy <http://governance.lopsa.org/LOPSA_Policies/Committees> differentiates board-level committees and program committees. But in practice, the board is holding most of the program committees (all but tech services and leadership). b) Board minutes show little to no activity on many program committees.

Therefore, to activate and re-involve our membership, and to get some healthy production happening to forward LOPSA's mission:

The current committee heads (who are Directors) should fill their committees with LOPSA members and the Directors themselves should move to a liaison role.

This applies to the following program committees:

Recognition
Conference Planning
Locals
Education, Training and Mentorship

Time target: All program committees should be led by regular members (not Directors) by the next face-to-face director meeting.