Board meeting Minutes/25 Apr 2016

Prior: 11 Apr 2016

Board meeting Minutes

Next: 9 May 2016

Minutes approved: 9 May 2016

• 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.

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Move your name to Present or Apologies prior to the meeting!,

Present

(Subject to verification) Ski Kacoroski (chair), John Boris, Steve VanDevender, William, Bilancio,George Beech, Paul English, Matt Disney, Thomas Uphill, Atom Powers

Apologies

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Guests

?

Opened

9:02 PM Eastern Time

Closed

10:09 PM Eastern Time

Consent Agenda

• minutes of 11 Apr 2016 were approved

Action Items

No action Items

Standing Reports

Treasurer's report (Disney, Kacoroski)

• Balance info
  • BoA Account: $25,321.87
  • PayPal Account: $37,921.30
  • TDBank: $2,001.53
  • Total: $65,244.70
    • +/- from last report: -$19,483.72
    • LOPSA Balance: $52,274.08
    • CasITConf Balance: $12,970.62

• Summary of expenditures since last report:
  • Budgeted operations
  • CasITConf catering payment
• Summary of income since last report:
  • Membership dues
  • CasITConf sponsorship payment

• Top priorities
  • CasITConf accounts payable (instructors)
  • CasITConf accounts receivable (billing of student attendees)
  • Transition bank accounts
  • 2014 990
  • Assuming HootSuite charges
  • Finances committee charter
  • Locals financial management

Membership report (VanDevender, Bilancio)

• Total active members: 690 (previous report: 689, change: 1)

• Paying: 455 (10 new in last 30 days)

• Non-paying: 235 (18 new in last 30 days)

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

Paul asked for assitance and Guidance on reconciling and handling membership signups in Wild Apricat. Ski agreed to help with that and get more instructions on the Square page.

Committee reports

Conferences/Events/Chapters activities report (Bilancio, Powers)

Next event will be Sysadmin Day followed by SeaGL. Paul said he may not be in Seattle for SeaGL as it is close to LISA. Thomas mentioned we have to get more people to help at the tables when we have them at conferences.

Education (Kacoroski, Boris)

No Report

Speakers Bureau (Powers, English)

• Nothing to report

Marketing/Communications (LOPSAgram, #lopsa-live, etc) (English, Uphill)

• Time for LOPSAgram content for May!
• Sysadmin Day
  • sysadminday.com
  • Paul's Postcard idea of sending a postcard to Sysadmin's bosses notifying them of Sysadmin Day with suggestions on how to honor their sysadmins.
  • Nominate a sysadmin?? - what was Paul's idea from last time meeting?
  • Easter eggs on website
  • Raffle: Put our logo on your own blog and/or blog on blogs.lopsa.org, Tweet
• Next Conference: SeaGL?
• LinuxFest Northwest report: 2 new members, LOTS of students said they would register, LOTS of interest in mentorship
• Ski mentioned about listing conferences on our Website. Thomas agreed. Paul mentioned maybe a Google Calendar that has due dates for registration discounts and submissions.
• Atom mentioned that he has seen a page or lists of IT conferences.
• George mentioned Lanyard has something like that but it is hard to find.
• Ski suggested people send Conference information to Paul so he can roll it up.

Technical Services Report (Beech, VanDevender)

Dan is moving full speed forward with migrating us to Dreamhost.

The objectives going forward are:

1. Shutdown all VPSs 2. Migrate as many services as we can to managed services (Monitoring, lists, issue tracking, etc)

He will be working with Philip to get the Media wiki sites working.

Going forward we want the TSC to focus on managing issues with our services, and working on customization work. We don't want to have them need to run another infrastructure in their free time.

Mentorship Report (Boris, Beech)

Went through and released the backlog on proteges waiting for a mentor. Paired a few up (and I hope it worked).

Will follow up and monitor the accounts to make sure things are moving along smoothly.

Ski said that if we use a targeted request for help in the LOPSAGram we might get a good response as in the past it was a success.

John will put up a Doodle for a meeting of the LMPT.

Recognition (Uphill, Disney)

• Thomas has not heard back from the owner of sysadminday.org. He spoke to SASAG and people there were still up for getting T-Shirts to hand out and maybe help them put on an event.
• NOTE: Refer to Communications section for SySadmin Day suggestions.

Leadership Committee (Warner, Kacoroski)

Warner has a few candidates. We need a few more candidates to give the members a good choice.

LOPSA-East... (Ski, William)

• People don't read their emails or LOPSAgram. People on IRC wanted to go, but didn't know about it.
• Corporate registrants pulled out
• Hotel charge $20k to cancel outright, $15k if we commit to next year
• Why this hotel?
  • Perfect location for East Coast - transit from Philly, NJ
  • Cheapest in area because we were a returning customer
• A long discussion ensued:
  • The discussion was on why we (LOPSA) was being charged $20,000/$15,000 if we cancelled the conference. It was explained that to get the Lecture/Training rooms the Hotel had to have a guarantee of a cerain amount of rooms. Otherwise we would have to pay for the use of the rooms for the two days on top of the A/V costs and Food Costs. In the contract signed by LOPSA-NJ it was stated that there would be 150 rooms. When the conference was booked LOPSA-East/PICC had always had to increase the Block of rooms. The conference attendance was pushing the 150 attendee number so that number was within range.

It was determined that the cancellation of LOPSA-East in 2015 was a big reason that the registrations did not come in as in the past. LOPSA-NJ followed what was done in the past with great success:

• • • Emailing Past attendees
    • Notices in LOPSAGram
    • Emails to Past Sponsors and instructors

• • William got the Keynote to accept $1 for payment which is a big savings.
  • There was a lack of support by prominent Sysadmins who have Taught and spoke at past conferences which did not help promote the event. The schedule of talks was good and diverse but it was not enough.
  • LOPSA had agreed to support LOPSA-NJ on this venture in the past as it has in the past and it came down to how does we minimize the damage of cancelling the conference a second year. The Hotel is holding us to the $20,000 guarantee for the rooms but agreed to drop that to $15,000 if we sign another contract for the following year. The board was in agreement that paying this amount was a big blow to the organization and that before we sign another contract we have to take a step back and review how we handle Conferences and Locals. The Board discussed at length who would have to pay the Hotel Bill. It is LOPSA's mission to educate educate the profession and CasITConf and LOPSA-East are two ways we do that.
  • The Board members expressed their commitment to support the Locals. All of the Board members did not like having to pay this money to the Hotel and the majority of the Board felt that LOPSA, not LOPSA-NJ should pay the amount. Although one Board member felt LOPS-NJ should pay the bill the majority of the board saw that an attempt that would do more harm to the organization.
  • At this point Ski put a motion to the board:

MOTION: LOPSA pay $20,000 to the HYatt of New Brunswick for the guarantee room block for LOPSA-East due to the cancellation. George seconded that motion.

There was a voice vote with 7 For and 1 against. Atom had to leave before the Motion.

The motion carried.

• • At this point Ski stated he would get Warner at the next meeting to discuss some points on conferences and our next plan of action.

Adjournment

 John Motioned for Adjournment
 William Seconded