Board meeting Minutes/6 Apr 2015

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Prior:
23 Mar 2015 		Board meeting Minutes Next:
20 Apr 2015



Minutes approved: 4 May 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, John Boris, Matt Disney, Steve VanDevender, George Beech,Thomas Uphill,
Apologies
Ski Kacoroski, Mark Honomichl
Guests
?
Opened
9:06 PM Eastern Time
Closed
9:38 PM Eastern Time

Consent Agenda

Action Items

Please review action items on RT. William asked about getting the action items into the minutes. William volunteered to review them.

Standing Reports

Treasurer's report (Disney)

  • Balance info
    • BoA Account: $28,719.38
    • PayPal Account: $0.00
    • TDBank: $1,989.89
    • Total: $30,709.27
    • +/- from last meeting: -$1,087.21
  • Summary of expenditures since last report:
    • Budgeted operational expenses
    • SCALE expenses to Ski
    • PO Box reimbursement to William
    • $1,000 anonymous Paypal reversal
  • Summary of income since last report:
    • Membership dues
  • Outstanding assets
    • Cascadia accounts receivable
  • Outstanding liabilities
    • VanDevender (report submitted, William has this)
    • Cascadia expenses
  • Top priorities
    • Cascadia: accounts receivable, contract for next year
    • Budget
    • Scott Koch refund
    • F2F reimbursement (VanDevender)
    • Transition bank accounts
    • 2013 990
    • Assuming HootSuite charges
    • Draft policy for management of locals finances
  • Misc:
    • Need VanDevender expense report

Membership report (VanDevender)

  • See CiviCRM
  • Previous Month:
    • New: 13 (7 students)
    • Renew: 5 (0 students)
    • Lapsed: 92
  • Month to Date:
    • New: 3 (1 students)
    • Renew: 2 (1 students)
    • Lapsed: 7
  • Total: 790 (620 paying)

The high number of lapses appears to be attributable to the expiration of Cascadia 2014 memberships. Adding the Cascadia 2015 memberships should offset that.Matt Disney has the Cascadia list and will forward it as soon as he reconciles the payments.

Conference/events activities report (Bilancio)

William has to reach out top Warner about Ohio Linux Fest.

Local Chapter Committee report (Bilancio)

Doug is looking for someone to help him with the NYC chapter. George responded to Doug that in a short bit he will be able to help him.

Development report (Kacoroski)

No report

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

LOPSAGram was sent out. William asked if anyone is doing Social Media. Dan commented that it is automated and John stated that Craig Constantine is doing it.

Project Management report (Rich)

No report

Liaison reports (LC, etc.)

Technical Services Report (Bilancio)

Chan has not been responding to William's calls. If Chan does not reply he (William) will reach out to the only tech team member doing tasks.

Mentorship Report (Beech)

Nothing to report

LOPSA Professional Recognition

On Hold

Leadership Committee (Kacoroski)

Warner has been contacting Board members to see who is running again. William owes him a reply and will get to him soon. Thomas asked when the elections were. Dan stated they start on June 1st and run through June 15. Thomas asked how many seats are open and Dan answered there are 4 seats open. William, Dan, Mark and Ski. Officially only Dan has said he is not coming back.

Lisa'15 (Kacoroski)

Nothing at this point.

Special Discount for Membership weekend of May 8-10 (Boris)

With LOPSA-East not happening we stand to lose members since LOPSA-East attendees would have their annual membership renewed at this time. Some attendees are getting funded by their companies and others are footing the bill themselves. But we stand to lose almost 100 members. It would be in our best interests to offer a discount for the period that would have been the date of the event. I am not sure if we can easily find the attendees from last year and do a mailing to them offering a special discount or just offer the entire membership a discount. I would make this a short window of the weekend of May 8th ending at 11:59 Eastern Time on the 10th. Our usual discount is $10 but I would make this $15 so for those days only I would make a renewal cost $35. I looked in the search module of Civi and no one created a Group for LOPSA-East 2014. Maybe the spreadsheet of imports is still available that will aid in sending out the email.

A short discussion followed. The consensus of the board was to go forward. Matt didn't see any financial issues to do that. Dan explained to John how to locate the LOPSA-East 2014 attendees. John will extract them and look into creating the discount code.

John Motioned that LOPSA offer LOPSA-East 2014 Attendees that received membership or a membership renewal a $15 discount.

Second by William

A short discussion ensued on using coupons for this.

The motion passed without objection

Non-profit status update (Rich)

Dan spoke to the lawyer regarding our non-profit status and to inform him that we were tabling the subsidiary until we had someone to drive the project. The lawyer explained there are organizations that have done this and it is fine as long as no money flows between the organizations post tax.

As long as we focus on systems administration as a profession and not as a membership services organization, we should be at little risk of losing our 501(c)(3) status during an audit. He is going to research this further just to be sure.

There was also a discussion of the non-profit status of our local groups. The locals are covered under the umbrella of our 501(c)(3) status. If need be, we can get a letter from the IRS stating this, although he was not sure of the process to do this as he has never done it himself. There are multiple other organizations with this type of setup, he gave me Junior Achievement of New Jersey as an example.

TEALS involvement (Rich)

The TEALS program helps high schools start a sustainable computer science program through partnerships between teachers and volunteer computer scientists teaching together in the classroom. Volunteers work in teams to teach a CS class 2-3 mornings per week before going to work, and help train a high school teacher from another discipline in computer science. For the 2015-2016 school year, TEALS is working with 170 high schools across the US (full map here: www.tealsk12.org/about), and is looking for individuals with a computer science background to sign up as volunteer teachers in a local high school. Learn more here: http://c.tealsk12.org/l/346.

This sounds like something we should at the very least encourage our members to be involved in. It would also be a great organization for LOPSA to be involved in both to help develop curriculums and in any other ways we can think of.

The consensus of the board was to go with this and Dan agreed to follow up with TEALS. Dan will put John and Ski in touch with the rep for their respective states.

Proposal for a workshop for LISA 2015 (Rich)

Dan forwarded an e-mail to the board for a possible workshop idea for LISA 2015. We need to move quickly if we want to do this, as the deadline for submissions is in 11 days.

What if we run a workshop that is similar to ATW but produces and publishes a document at the end of it? The idea would be that whoever runs the workshop would act as a facilitator to focus the discussion and be responsible for ensuring that all of the topics are summarized into some sort of position paper or papers. This could become a collection of LOPSA recommended practices and could form the root of a set of standards and practices for the sysadmin community.

A discussion followed. George volunteered to develop a paper for submission. He felt it should be Theme oriented. Dan gave some history on ATW and you had to submit a paper for the first time attendees. A few ideas on how to set the topics followed and will be fleshed out by George with help from Dan and some archived notes. George will try and develop a starting point paper.

The consensus of the board was for having such an event at LISA.

New Business

No new Business

Notes/announcements

No notes or announcements

Adjournment

William Motioned for Adjournment

Seconded by George

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