Board Meeting 2013-12-16

This board meeting is scheduled for the 16th of December 2013 at 20.00UTC through a Google Hangout and follow up voting by email.

Agenda

• roll call
• appoint meeting chair, meeting scribe/secretary
• Review and approve past minutes: Board Meeting 2013-11-14
• FOSS4G-Europe
  • Short status report
  • Can we use OSGeo logo for the "Letter for Sponsors"?
• Open discussion on Foundation's priorities for next 5 years
  • support of FOSS4G events
  • sponsors
  • revenue
  • needs / budget
  • relationship with other foundations
  • infrastructure review
• OSGeo 501c4 tax exempt status vs 990 filings (update)
• OSGeo.cz
• add your items here

Minutes

• Attending: Anne, Bart, Cameron, Frank, Jachym, Jeff, Jorge
• Presiding: Jeff
• Scribing: Anne

Assigned Tasks

• Jachym : make an official request for seed funding for FOSS4G-E
• Jeff and Anne: publish a Board press release to praise the FOSS4G LOC for the excellent results of 2013 conference [done]
• Cameron (and/or others, confirm): polls the community, charter members and project leaders for suggestions on how to make use of money available to OSGeo [done]

Motions (confirmed by email)

MOTION: Approve minutes from past meeting http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Board_Meeting_2013-11-14

• +1 all

MOTION: OSGeo logo can be used for the "Letter for sponsors" for FOSS4G-Europe 2014

• Jachym/1, +1 all

MOTION: Board to acknowledge the good work of FOSS4G 2013, including positive budget. Jeff to provide quote for press release.

• Cameron/1, +1 all

MOTION: Ask community for ideas on how we spent windfall from FOSS4G 2013.

• Cameron/1, +1 Anne, Jeff, Jorge, Bart, Gérald, Frank, Jachym. +0 Daniel

MOTION: Board still in general agreement with OSGeo Board focus from last year: http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Board_Meeting_2013-02-26#Board_Priorities

• Cameron/1, +1 Jachym, Frank, Jorge, Anne, Jeff, Gérald. +0 Bart, Daniel

Full, raw minutes notes

These minutes have been extracted from the face to face discussion on Hangout, so they are not the full minutes.

[20:05 UTC] Start

[20:06] Approve past meeting's minutes

[20:06] FOSS4G-E - Jachym's report

• weekly meetings for organisation
• program is getting ready, so there is concrete information for the sponsors
• budget is being prepared
• request for OSGeo for seed money - Board asks for an official request, using Code sprints template.
• request to use OSGeo logo on letters - see motion
• connection with OSGeo and FOSS4G is requested by the Board, as an official statement from organisers

[20:17] FOSS4G 2013 revenues - whether FOSS4G LOC shall publish the figures

• Cameron suggests that the Board publishes a press release to thank the LOC for the excellent results (see motion)

[20:21] FOSS4G 2014 Budget - no news have been communicated to the Board since approval

[20:22] Open discussion on priorities - see motion(s)

• Board members agree on spending money to make specific tasks done, given a clear plan
• Communication with sponsors: not yet agreeing on hiring someone for the task
• Jachym proposes to fill a SWOT analysis http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/SWOT-2014 to focus on what to improve

[20:30] OSGeo support to events (local and regional): agreement on developing guidelines and streamlining the process

[20:31] Revenue management: give back to projects, keeping aside money for support (seed funding) of multiple FOSS4G events per year (international and regional). Action: poll the community, charter members and project leaders for suggestions on how to allocate revenues

[20:46] Micro payments: there is too much overhead for managing small amounts of money, e.g. for marketing material at events. Consult Daniel on it, collect proposals on how to manage micropayments

[20:48] Bookkeeping: there is no agreement on hiring someone for this task, but agreement on simplifying the micro-payments procedure

[20:50] Infrastructure: it works, except for migration of Drupal (in progress) and occasional problems. Several OSGeo projects are not using OSGeo infrastructure (have moved, or have never used it) but it is not a requirement, rather an opportunity for new projects. Reconsider its role now that many hostings for code/wiki/mail/bugtrackers are available online. Cameron suggests that OSGeo shall offer what is not yet available for free to a new geospatial software project.

[20:52] Priorities: there are no significant changements to the list of priorities approved

[20:55] Mission and policies: agreement on the need of keeping them up-to-date, but no concrete action is proposed

[20:57] Marketing: there is no official pipeline, and there is no clear estimate on what benefit can be obtained from a more "professional" appearance of OSGeo website (though there is agreement on the need of update/restyle so that the messages conveyed are clearer.. e.g. the homepage has no map). Proposal to accept restyling proposals for main website, and let sponsors support it, with their name in the credits for the new graphics/structure.

[21:04] Conference committee:

• there is currently no Chair. Jeff sends an email as Board, acknowledging the situation, and proposing an election schedule for next weeks. The new Chair will take charge of RFP 2015.
• conference committee shall encourage follow up after events. The FOSS4G 2013 lessons learned are for sure a great starting point for 2014 LOC and for any regional event.

[21:08] OSGeo Czech local chapter: is now registered as a Czech association, press release is coming soon

[21:10] End: Jeff and Cameron leave

• more discussion on marketing. Anne will ask to other large FOSS organisations (Debian, Fedora) how is it managed
• OSGeo events and news: Anne will ask local chapters to send them regularly