Board meeting Minutes/9 Feb 2015

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Prior:
26 Jan 2015 		Board meeting Minutes Next:
23 Feb 2015



Minutes approved: 23 Feb 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), Ski Kacoroski, William Bilancio, Steve VanDevender, Matt Disney, John Boris, George Beech, Thomas Uphill,Mark Honomichl
Apologies
Guests
?
Opened
9:05 PM Eastern Time
Closed
9:42 PM Eastern Time

Consent Agenda

Action Items

  • Budget requests for all committees need to be sent to finance@lopsa.org. The deadline is 15-Feb-2015. (Everyone)
  • Proposal for web site upgrade/redesign (Rich) - Due 15-Feb-2015

Standing Reports

Treasurer's report (Disney)

  • Balance info
    • BoA Account: $20,475.87
    • PayPal Account: $4,875.81 (STALE)
    • TDBank: $1,989.89
    • Total: $27,341.57
    • +/- from last meeting: -$778.75
  • Summary of expenditures since last report:
    • Budgeted operational expenses
    • Cascadia startup (USB drives $768.75)
  • Summary of income since last report:
    • Membership dues: Approx $280 (Needs PayPal confirmation)
  • Outstanding liabilities
    • VanDevender (report submitted, William has this)
    • Kacoroski LISA 2014 reimbursement (report submitted, payment pending)
    • Yerkes award invoice (payment pending)
    • Cascadia start-up
  • Top priorities
    • Scott Koch refund
    • F2F reimbursement (VanDevender)
    • Confirm $1000 anonymous PayPal protest is in order
    • Cascadia accounts receivable and payable
    • 2014 budget actuals
    • 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.

Membership report (VanDevender)

  • See CiviCRM
  • Previous Month:
    • New: 26 (16 students)
    • Renew: 5 (0 students)
    • Lapsed: 30
  • Month to Date:
    • New: 2 (0 students)
    • Renew: 2 (0 students)
    • Lapsed: 10
  • Total: 824 (651 paying)

Conference/events activities report (Bilancio)

(Ski) We have 7 members signed up to help Dan and Ski at the SCALE booth this year which is a good turnout.

OLF is interested in us providing training for them this year. William will be getting in touch with Warner by Wednesday to see about training.

Thomas reported that Lee has spoke to Matt Simmons about moving on with the conference. CascadiaIT has promises for about $12,000 in sponsorship. Approximately $1,200 in sponsorship was sent to Matt Disney. Ski reported he had about $4,000 in sponsorship that is in process.

Local Chapter Committee report (Bilancio)

William will be checking in with the New York chapter and Tom Reingold.

Development report (Kacoroski)

Nothing to report

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

  • LOPSAGram went out a few days late. Nothing else to report.
  • Ski will be getting with Craig Constantine about an issue with the Social media connection.
  • Dan mentioned that we need to review a replenishment of materials like, Buttons, Stickers etc.
  • Dan asked Ski to check on getting new table cloth that matches our Style Guide.

Project Management report (Rich)

No report.

Liaison reports (LC, etc.)

USENIX Liaison

  • Dan stated we need a replacement for the USENIX Liaison since Matt is not on the board. Ski stepped up for that as he has been in contact with them as part of the education committee. Ski will get with Matt to see what was done in the past.

Technical Services Report (Bilancio)

  • William and Chan have not been able to meet up. Chan was to be at the LOPSA-NJ meeting but didn't make it.
  • Dan stated getting us transitioned to Google mail would be a plus and get us away from managing our own mail server.

Mentorship Report (Beech)

No Report.

Leadership Committee (Kacoroski)

Nothing to report

Mail Forwarding Analysis (Boris)

I surveyed 5 Companies.

  • https://docs.google.com/a/lopsa.org/spreadsheets/d/1zsUz9Za87bUmIHLqZDgBs6x8KZjH1prSrVOP6viwTSQ/edit#gid=0
  • Monthly cost will range from a low of $22.95 per month to $129 per month.
  • Regus and Earthclass Mail are the two front runners
  • I am leaning toward Earthclass as a start as the cheapest. If we want them to deposit the checks as they come in they are still the cheapest
  • Need to get a reading on how much mail we get now.
  • Unless someone has a different company to look at Regus seems to be the cheapest in the long run. If we didn't want the hard copies of the mail then Earthclass is cheaper but when you start shipping items it is $1.25 plus $1 per item in the bundle. Regus will do this as part of the cost. The drawback is it is not scanned. Earthclass scans each envelope and then you look at the envelope and decide which item you want opened and scanned. Then those items are scanned. All at a cost.
  • A discussion followed about the report. John recommended if we were to go with a company to do this Regus would be the most economical.
  • William gave information on how much mail we get each weeks and his schedule to pick up the mail from the post office.
  • John further explained how the companies work. Regus would actually sort the mail for us based on addressee and then send it out without further cost.
  • We get very few checks to the PO Box since the address was corrected.
    • Matt Disney explained he has not received any checks.
  • After the discussion it was decided that for the time being this project will be tabled until we find a service that is more economical to use.

CiVi Data Cleanup (Boris)

I have not had as much time to work on this as I thought. I would suggest

  • If the member column of the record has information (Active, New, Expired etc) we count them as members in our numbers.
    • These are our pool of possible paying sponsors.
      • Current Members most likely to pay as a sponsor
      • Grace Members are also likely to pay as a sponsor
      • Expired is the group that we would have to do the hard sell. We might want to survey this group to find a reason why they did not reup and if we changed our membership policy would they become a sponsor.
  • The records that have no data in the member column is the group that has to be investigated.
    • Send out an email blast about login verification.
      • All bounced or returned emails would mean we delete the record

Any questions? (email me before the meeting if I am not on the call.)

  • John suggested that after we get the data analyzed a survey should be sent out to members that did not reup.
  • A discussion followed on the data pull.
  • Dan will redo the script to get better data and John will analyze the new spreadsheet.

LOPSA Discussion (Kacoroski)

There is an active thread on LOPSA Discuss about what is LOPSA and what should it be:

https://lists.lopsa.org/pipermail/discuss/2015-February/020473.html

I think the board should reply, but want to make sure we are all in agreement. This is not something we are going to resolve in the next 10 minutes, but I want folks to start thinking about it. The problem as I see is is:

  • Current Situation
    • LOPSA is a few mail-lists, IRC channels, very loose collection of locals, a conference and presence at other conferences
    • LOPSA is incorporated as an educational non-profit, not as a professional non-profit
    • LOPSA is not growing, but shrinking partially due to communication channels, but also due to items below
    • LOPSA has a dedicated core group of members
    • Many specialized groups that meet specific system admin needs needs better (e.g. VMware, ServiceNow, Puppet, EMC, Redhat, etc.)
    • Google provides system admin answers (especially places like SpiceWorks and Serverfault)
    • No standardization of core system admin concepts at high school or college level
    • No system admin training at high school, minimal at college (mostly vendor training like Cisco & Microsoft)
    • People do not know about system admins
  • Target Situation (IMHO)
    • LOPSA focuses on educational items
    • Solves problem with non-profit status
    • More in line with what LOPSA is doing today (conferences, raising awareness about system admins)
    • Makes more sense to change membership to sponsorship for educational mission
  • How to we get from Current to Target
    • Survey membership and lay out the current and target situation - see what they say. If a go then:
    • Change from membership to sponsorship
    • Get website redone with education emphasis
    • Contact colleges and get system admin outcomes done by LISA15 to correspond with LOPSA's 10th year anniversary
    • Get more members interested in talking to High schools
    • Focus more energy on mentorship program

I think we should post to that thread something like (MD comments/edits in parentheses):

"The board appreciates the everyone's comments on LOPSA and its future. The board has been struggling with many of the same questions. This is LOPSA's 10th year anniversary and as Gene and Derek state, LOPSA has not met the vision of its founders. Some of this was due to factors outside of our control (e.g. the legal issues) and some of it is (perhaps) due to the rapid change in our profession as compared to other professions. The board does not feel that we should close down LOPSA, but we do feel that LOPSA does need to (change|adapt). We plan to survey the membership in a 3 weeks to get your feedback and opinion. Thanks again for your support of LOPSA."

  • Dan suggested that we table this for people to read over the comments. and then comment in Email.
  • Dan suggested that Individual Board members can comment on the thread but reminded them they would be speaking as themselves and not as the entire board.
  • The consensus of the board was that a reply from the board is due on this topic and asked if there was any objection to finish the discussion over email.
  • The board agreed to finish this discussion over email and develop a reply from the board as a whole.

New Business

No new Business

Notes/announcements

  • Ski welcomed the two new board members and asked if they had any comments.
  • Thomas thanked everyone and asked about a "Certification program" Dan explained that was the LOPSA Recognition Program and that is under discussion with our Lawyer to see if we can still continue it with our current IRS classification.
  • Mark introduced himself, from Austin (via Michigan), he explained how long he has been doing System administration.
  • John asked about communications with the Lawyer and Dan explained how the Lawyer has been slow at responding.

Adjournment

John Motioned for Adjournment Seconded by William

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