Board meeting Minutes/10 Feb 2014

Prior: 27 Jan 2014

Board meeting Minutes

Next: 24 Feb 2014

Minutes approved: 24 Feb 2014

• 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), John Boris, Ski Kacoroski, Martin Gehrke, Matt Disney, Mike Julian

Apologies

William Bilancio, Evan Pettrey, Matt Simmons

Opened

8:00 PM Eastern Time

Closed

8:42 PM Eastern Time

Consent Agenda

• Minutes of 27 Jan 2014 were approved without objections

Action Items

Board members are reminded to update their tickets in RT.

Standing Reports

We are current on our liabilities.

• Membership report

No report

• Conference/events activities report (William)
  • SCALE is looking good. have 6 members helping out in booth.
  • Cascadia is having a slow response.
  • LOPSA-East is approving their talks and will be announcing the schedule this upcoming weekend.
• Local Chapter Committee report (Martin)
  • Committee is working on 3 initiatives:
    • yearly swag package: regular chapters get a pre-determined package of LOPSA goods to hand out for the year (stickers, shirts, etc)
    • financial management for locals: allow locals to store funds in a LOPSA account so they don't have to open their own accounts
    • dues kickbacks to locals: LOPSA gives $x per local member per attendence at local meetings

Martin is working up Budget numbers for Dan.

• Development report (Ski)
  • Contacted Puppet about renewing sponsorship and awaiting a reply.

• Communications (LOPSAgram, #lopsa-live, etc)
  • Started list of system admin blogs on board site. Will contact to see about swapping banners with them
  • LOPSAgram went out with A/B testing of different subjects to see if we can increase readership (thanks MattS for the idea).

• Project Management report
  • Items covered in other part of the meeting

• Liaison reports (LC, etc.)
  • Technical Services Report (Mike)
    • Jesse Trucks has resigned as TSC Chair. As liaison, I'll be working with him on the transition, which he is happily cooperating with. Further, as liaison, I will temporarily take on Chair duties while a replacement is sought, provided no one has any objections. I would like for us to immediately begin the search for a new Chair. (and the President should probably send Jesse a personal note of thanks for his effort and commitment to LOPSA)
    • A status report for the Drupal upgrade and status of projects will be delayed since the Chair has resigned and I am trying to get with him and the team as to the status and ongoing projects.
  • Mentorship Report (John)
    • Due to work constraints I have missed the last few meetings. I would like an update on getting them their own name space on Google Docs and also their own github account. The github account may be better as a LOPSA account with them as users as I think github would be something the Tech team would definitely use.
  • LOPSA Professional Recognition (Matt Simmons)
  • Leadership Committee (Ski)
    • They are looking for candidates. If you know of anyone, please contact them at leadership@lopsa.org

Committee Chairs and Board Liaisons (John)

While doing the minutes this past week I have come to the realization that what we lack is Project management and Prioritization skills. A board member comes on the board and has two years to get on a project or chair a committee or team and if they are not reelected a new person steps in. The biggest discussions we have had recently is about projects for the Tech Team and over burdening them. That job falls to the Chair of that committee. Maybe we have to make sure people who take these positions have the proper training and tools to manage what they chair. Matt Disney said this last meeting that there is no problem having a backlog and they should have a backlog but that backlog has to be managed. So I propose that in the case of the Tech Team we have to make sure the person chairing that group is given the tools needed to do their job and if that means providing training, guidance or tutelage to get things organized then we as a board have to insure they have it. I am not saying that the current people don't have the skills. I feel that people in our field tend to take too many jobs on and all of us are not the best at prioritizing work for the group. It is not a trait that every sysadmin has. But it is a skill that one can learn. I am not sure what else to propose but this is my feeling that if we don;t do this then we will constantly hash this out every week.

A discussion followed on what training, tools and resources we would need to provide.

Dan brought out that we should be encouraging the Committee chair to have the committee do the work.

Web site (Dan)

We need to make a decision on the direction we want the TSC to take on updating the web site.

From the e-mail discussion, do we:

1. Migrate to Drupal 7 with a version of our current theme, then move forward with a full redesign
2. Build a new theme for the site for Drupal 7 when we migrate to D7, then work to move to our new content plans
3. Roll out an entire new site with Drupal 7, a new theme and new content design

The page below is a start at the work document. I found this when I did a search for Web Site upgrade. The page was last visited in 2011.

Left in for reference. Links will come out prior to uploading to Governance. https://board.lopsa.org/Web_Site_Upgrade:New_Ideas

Another page I found was the one below but I don't have login privileges for that wiki so I can't speak to what is there. http://tech.lopsa.org/index.php/The_Great_Web_Project

A discussion of each of the options above followed. Key points of the discussion

1. The board was divided on which avenue to take.
2. The board was very sensitive to not over stepping their jurisdiction and have the Tech Team to get back to us which way is the best and quickest way to go.
3. The Tech Team and the Communications Committee will have to work together to get this accomplished.
   1. The Tech Team is responsible for the mechanism (upgrading Drupal)
   2. The Communications Committee would develop what goes on the site and how it will look. If that requires other functional changes to the site the They would work with the Tech Team to get it accomplished.
4. We recognize there will be a learning curve by our users.

Dan Moved to direct the Tech Team to bring up a Development server running Drupal 7 with a current version of our site and then attempt to develop a theme that would be similar to the theme of the current web site.

Seconded by Mike The motion passed with 5 for and 1 against.

The TSC will be asked for a deadline to achieve the motion.

Drupal 7 Theme Upgrade (John)

I have been in contact with a Christopher Rosser (crosserdevelopment@gmail.com)I sent the proposal around and also shared the proposal. It looks cheap enough for us to get started with it. If everyone is for this I would like to put him in touch with the TSC Chair and let them handle this from here.

A discussion on this followed asking if this would be concurrent as the Tech Team works on the other conversion. That is feasible and should not be done in serial.

It is reasonable for this to go to the Tech Team through Mike.

The outcome was that Mike would take the proposal and get with the Tech Team on this. John will forward the contact info to the Communications committee (Matt and Ski)

Memberships from Local Conferences (John)

While following all the work Matt Simmons has done over the last year concerning Memberships I see a recurring theme where the member has neglected to go to lopsa.org and create an account. I would like to suggest that when we do these memberships from conferences we also check the lopsa.org site for the users credentials and if the user has never logged into the site then we create the person's account or we edit the welcome message to remind them to log into lopsa.org with the same email address used for the conference. Along those same lines maybe we can get a script that would query Civi for active members who don't have accounts on lopsa.org and this can be used to validate the system especially after conferences.

The outcome of the discussion was that Dan would forward his merge script to the Tech team to have them refine it to work with Civi. A ticket will be opened in RT for the Tech Team to take over the important script.

Also a ticket will be created for a process that is to be followed after conferences that new members are sent a notice they have a new account and they should log onto lopsa.org using the same email address they used for the conference when they create an account.

TSC Chair Vacancy (Dan)

Since Jesse resigned as the TSC Chair. Dan moved to have Mike made the interim TSC chair. Seconded by John. Motion passed without objection.

Mike said he would be polling the TSC to see if any of the current members wants to step up to take the position. If none of them step up for the position he will send out a call for volunteers.

Mike named the members of the committee as Matt Harlow Atkinson(greppy), Aaron Sachs and Chris Layton. Philip Kizer is also on the committee handling Wiki related items.

New Business

No new business

Notes/announcements

No announcements

Adjournment

Motion for adjournment by ski Seconded by John