Board meeting Minutes/20-21 Aug 2016

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Prior:
8 Aug 2016 		Board meeting Minutes Next:
6 Sep 2016




Minutes approved: 18 Oct 2016


Template:Open agenda

  • 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!, Matt Disney,
Present
(Subject to verification) Steve VanDevender, Ski Kacoroski (chair), Scott Suehle, Brian Globerman, John Boris, Paul English, Atom Powers, Heather Rane, Thomas Uphill
Apologies
George Beech,
Guests
?
Opened
Closed

Consent Agenda

Saturday, Aug 20, 2016

  • 9:00 Begin (who: current board), finish any current open business
  • 9:15 Recognize the new board and transfer to them
  • 9:15 Close session with the old, re-open with the new, go over logistics for F2F meeting/agenda (e.g. hotel info, breaks, reimbursement, any questions)
  • 9:15 New Board Orientation Presentation
    • Introductions made
    • Non profit overview given
    • History of LOPSA overview (brief)
    • Overview on financials and budget
    • Overview on board responsibilities
      • Individuals speak as individuals, not the board unless specifically authorized to do so
      • Only the following people are authorized to publicly represent LOPSA: Communications Chair, President
  • 10:00 Officer Selection
    • Poll for nominations and vote (if needed) for President, Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer (call George @ 215-680-1982)
      • Officers selected by majority vote:
        • President: George Beech
        • Vice President: Atom Powers
        • Secretary: Paul English
        • Treasurer: Brian Globermann
  • 10:30 Standing Reports (these should all be filled out before the meeting so we can read them rather than spending time on them)
    • Treasurer's report (supporting materials forthcoming)
      • Glossary:
        • Revenue, income: They are the same.
        • Gross vs net: Gross is before expenses, Net is after expenses have been reconciled
        • Profit/Loss: Profit and Loss is a type of report that summarizes income and expenses. It's ok to call it this even though we're a non-profit, it's just a standard type of financial report.
      • Balance sheet (year over year comparison): See Google Drive, highlights below:
        • Current total LOPSA assets: $47,890.13 (+~$2,000 TDBank account)
          • CasITConf assets held by LOPSA: $6,813.09
            • See Cascadia 2016 P/L report in Google Drive. Available under My Custom Reports in Quickbooks Online.
            • Liabilities: Hotel deposit has not been made. Returned check from Vertical Sysadmin (Aleksey) may need to be reissued.
      • Profit and Loss report: See Google Drive. Summary: -612.74, although Disney is donating monthly expenses up to this point that have been paid on his CC, so the actual loss is more severe.
      • Budget and monthly expenses (note these are on a calendar year basis)
        • 2016 budget (show google doc): Needs updating with mid-year expense decisions and monthly expenses (e.g. Regus)
      • Risk considerations for upcoming year: LOPSA is currently financially sound but P/L is a concern
        • We seem (?) to continue to have member retention challenges
        • Only a small number of sponsors, most who do not renew
        • Last year we said "Need successful LOPSA-East conference," instead that was a huge loss. Must not repeat.
        • Legal expenses for 501c3 vs 501c6
        • Respecting boundaries between non-profit and subsidiary/501c6
        • Accounting expenses
    • Membership report (Steve)
      • See chart covering previous year in lopsa-members-2016.pdf
      • Membership has remained basically flat at just under 700 members (although it has grown slightly since the same time last year).
      • The trend toward fewer paying members and more student members has continued.
      • Have small core membership of around 450 folks that pay. Another approximately 250 non-paying students
    • Technical services report (George?)
      • Dan Rich has agreed to chair this - we need to respond to his questions
    • Conference/Events/Chapter Activities report (John, Atom, Thomas)
      • Cascadia
      • LOPSA-East
      • Need to start planning for LISA and SCALE
        • What do folks think about latest proposal for booth at LISA
    • Education (Ski)
      • Nothing happened all year on this. I ran out of gas getting the website up and working on hiring a community manager.
    • Speakers Bureau (Atom)
    • Mentorship Status report (John, George)
      • Craig Constatine is working on this, someone will need to follow up with him
      • Still a lot to do to get us where we want to go with this program
    • Marketing/Communications (LOPSAgram, #lopsa-live, etc)(Paul)
      • LOPSAgram:
        • WildApricot has largely been an improvement for the LOPSAgram
        • Engagement with LOPSAgram seems low
        • 30-40% opens. Did ~60% of people just not bother to unsub? Or is this normal?
        • Click rate of 1-8% is fairly normal/expected for marketing-type emails.
        • We can't go wrong with more engaging content - "featured sysadmin blog + entry" experiment is underway. Nudges to members (esp Board members!) to start/update blogs would be useful.
        • Despite relatively poor click-through, DataDog came back to sponsor a featured slot in the LOPSAgram (therefore also, all our social media via HootSuite) This is great! But we've got to get them their clicks to make it worthwhile.
        • Relaying LOPSAgram out via HootSuite to Social media "seems like a good thing." Usually very little response, but most recent LOPSAgram got quite a few reads/likes on Facebook. Many thanks to Craig.
      • #lopsa-live: seemed to go well. All the credit to Warner for this one. I'm only familiar with this in the context of elections - did we at one point do #lopsa-live as a non-election social/tech chat thing?
      • Other Marketing Efforts:
        • Have been really minimal overall. Sorry. I genuinely thought I would work on many of the great ideas we have available. Obviously(?) - we're not going to get new paying members without this.
        • Attempting to compile all the ideas here: https://board.lopsa.org/Marketing
        • Hopefully with Heather's help, we can follow through on many of these. This is exactly what a Marketing Intern was able to do with time and focus for Cascadia IT Conference.
        • Questions?
    • Liaison reports (LC, etc.)
      • LC Liaison will need to see if Warner Moore will stay on for Leadership
    • Recognition (Thomas)
  • Regular meeting schedule and tools to use
    • We should all be on Slack and Zoom
    • Should we continue to meet bi-weekly, or move to monthly standing meetings with the alternate meetings being planning/project/something else?
  • 11:30 Strategy/Planning Session
    • Kick-off and overview - how will this work, what is the goal of the session
    • Ok to table items for later - looking for ideas that you are interested in championing
      • What worked last year & Why (so we can repeat it)
        • New web site
        • Cascadia
      • What did not work last year & Why (so we can avoid it)
        • Lopsa East
        • Committee co-chairs
          • Communications (/Marketing): Scott & Paul
          • Mentorship: George & John
          • Membership: Steve
          • Conferences/Events/Chapters: Atom
          • LOPSA-East 2017: John
          • Lisa'16: Ski, Thomas
          • Yerkes Award: Thomas
          • Education: on hold until we know what our membership wants
          • Speakers Bureau: on hold until we know what our membership wants
          • Technical Services Report: George, Steve
          • Recognition: Thomas
          • Leadership Committee: Ski (with Warner)
        • Still very slow or no response to requests (e.g. Sony sponsorship)
        • Banking issues
        • Sysadmin Day
      • Jury still out on (Need more time to evaluate)
        • Community Manager
        • Regus mail service
  • 12:00 Lunch across the street
      • Define strategic and operational items
        • Strategic are goals that we want to reach (what is LOPSA's focus)
        • Operational are daily business (responding to member requests, conference prep, etc.)
    • Strategic Long-term planning (End result is a set of statements about who, what, why LOPSA exists)
    • Operational planning
      • What can we do to meet the strategic statements?
      • How do we carry out our mission and implement our vision for LOPSA is 1, 2, 5 years?
      • How do we work around the fact that we are all volunteers and LOPSA is not our primary job?
      • What do we want to accomplish in the coming year that furthers the above long-term plans
      • What are LOPSAs current operational problems and ideas to fix them.
      • What has worked for LOPSA, how can we enhance these items
    • What projects do want to champion that map to the above?
      • (potential continuing projects from last year...)
        • Website enhancements - forums job Boards, sigs,
      • Finance - lifetime membership investments
      • Non LOPSA conference participation
      • Membership retention benefits
      • Advertising / LOPSA awareness
      • Sponsors
      • LOPSA supported conferences
      • LOPSA – Live
      • Member participation
        • identify and keep list of key members
    • Metrics that we can publish monthly to make sure we are making progress
  • ~17:00 Finish, go have dinner

Reconvene after dinner or continue talking over drinks somewhere else?

Sunday, Aug 21, 2016

  • 9:00 Resume meeting
  • Any items tabled from Saturday
    • Set up time/dates for meetings (George is ok with Mo or Tu, 8 or 9pm EST)
  • Committee Review and Selection (http://governance.lopsa.org/LOPSA_Policies/Committees)
    • We may want to consider changing the committees to better reflect our current strategic and operational focus
    • Current committees by policy are:
      • Leadership chaired by non board member
      • Chaired by board member
        • Development
        • Partnership & Liaison
        • Policy (as needed)
        • Communications
        • Membership Development
        • Finance
      • Program committees - Not necessarily chaired by a board member
        • Recognition
        • Conference Planning
        • Locals
        • Technical Services
        • Content Services
        • Mentorship
        • Educators and Training
    • Figure out committee and committee chairs and vice-chairs:
      • Finance (typically President, Treasurer and ???). If Warner agrees to stay on the leadership, he might be a good third eye on this.
      • Membership
      • Conference/Events/Chapter Activities
      • Marketing/Communications/Recognition/Partnerships
      • Speakers Bureau
      • Liaisons:
        • Leadership (We need to talk with Warner on this)
        • Technical Services (Dan Rich is the chair)
        • Mentorship (Craig Constantine is the chair)
  • Finances - we need an audit, and we need to start work on the 2016 budget soon
    • Review current budget with the new board
  • Tasks
    • Get board full access to google docs and clean up (Ski)
    • Update policies into one document (Ski)
    • Banking
      • Create new account and set up signers
      • Set up process for smooth future transfers
      • Move auto pays away from Matt
      • Reimburse folks as needed
    • Marketing
  • Group Picture
  • 12:00 Adjourn, head to the train/airport
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