Board Meeting 2021-04-26
This board meeting is scheduled Monday 26 April 2021 at 15:00 UTC through Jitsi, a record of motions is preserved on loomio and actions on osgeo todo issue tracker.
Agenda
Current items
- roll call
- appoint meeting chair, meeting scribe/secretary
- Review and approve past minutes
- Update on FOSS4G 2021
- Response from SAGANA about letter for sponsorship
- Sponsors (ending soon: Mundialis, not renewed for this year: aon)
- Free Software Foundation - should OSGeo make a response?
- Rajat Shinde <rajatshinde2303 at gmail.com> Google Summer of Code discussion
- add your topic here
Minutes
- Presiding: Till
- Scribing: Till, Codrina
- Attending: Angelos, Astrid, Mike, Michele, Codrina, Helena, Vicky, Till.
- Guests: Rajat Shinde (Google Summer of Code), Maria Arias (FOSS4G2021) and Regina Obe (SAC)
Google Summer of Code organization payment discussion
- participation on behalf of GSoC: Rajat Shinde - chair of GSoC
- There is a need of incentives for the mentors to join GSoC, as there is a lack of interest now.
- There must be 2 mentors (main and secondary) for each project. This year, there were 22 proposals received, out of which they must select 10, as there are only 20 mentors.
- Question: What can OSGeo do for the mentors? Until now, Google payment goes to OSGeo. What should OSGeo do? Proposals: pass money from OSGeo directly to mentor, free pass to FOSS4G
(Maria offers "We can offer discounts at least for them"), pass the money to the projects and they decide.
- ACTION: Rajat prepares email with opportunities and requests board for decision/recommendation.
Update on FOSS4G 2021 (Maria from BALOC)
- Giving up venue (to make online FOSS4G2021) negotiating was closed with payment of 1/4 of the
payment (~15k $).
- Interest is good, normal no. of proposals for talks/workshops;
- Few tickets sold (normal each year);
- Passport info is needed when buying a ticket now in order to justify money movement to authorities. Maria tries to
check and change this.
- The BALOC needs more help, as some of the team members are either infected with SARs-COV-2 or are taking care of an ill person.
- The sponsorships are at a safe level, it may even allow to give more discounts to tickets.
- There are discussions going with streaming providers to make sure that anyone from everywhere can participate;
- There were some sponsors requesting participants' data - it has been completely denied.
- ACTION: Till to push in the ConfComm to deny sharing participants data to sponsors for future conferences.
- No action from the board needed.
Review and approve past minutes
Board_Meeting_2021-03-29
- Motion on Loomio: https://www.loomio.org/d/CTMu0vRQ/approve-meeting-minutes-from-board-meeting-2021-03-29
- Motion status:
Response from SAGANA about letter for sponsorship
- Vicky talks about her ideas for getting more sponsors, i.e. having paid people to do that.
- AE is interested to work on the topic.
Sponsors
- ending soon: mundialis
- ACTION: Till to contact mundialis so that they write a mail to OSGeo about what they are doing - sponsoring FOSS4G 2021 - so extending as OSGeo sponsor.
- not renewed for this year - aon (Mike): aon has renewed for this year;
Free Software Foundation - vote passed to appoint Richard Stallman to a board seat
- https://www.fsf.org/news/statement-of-fsf-board-on-election-of-richard-stallman
- Should OSGeo make a statement regarding this matter?
- Michele proposes to give a response from the OSGeo side (https://thenewstack.io/why-almost-everyone-wants-richard-stallman-cancelled/)
- ACTION: Michele drafts statement on Google Drive and shares it with the board for comments.
LDAP/WIKI accounts movement
- Regina from SAC participated.
- problems with merging old WIKI accounts to new LDAP for people with "_" in their username;
- maybe more people have problems with merging their accounts due to other unidentified issues;
- email to OSGeo general that explains the possible problems (Regina);
- Astrid asks all board members to write write a mission for themselves, as it is possible now - and sets a good example.
IRC Log
- meeting was held on Jitsi