Board Meeting 2018-01-17

This board face-to-video meeting is scheduled for 17 January 2018 at [1] through video call and follow up voting on Loomio.

Agenda

Current items

• roll call
• appoint meeting chair, meeting scribe/secretary
• Role of Board, by-law review, orientation (1 hour)
• Executive Positions (President, Vice-Presidents, Secretary, Treasurer) (45 mins)

Minutes

• Attending: Mike, Angelos, Astrid, Jeff, Vasile, Maria A, Helena, Jody, Maria B
• Chair: Maria A
• Secretary: Jody, with assistance (shared document)

Mins initially recorded informally into a a shared google document for group editing, and cleaned up for this wiki.

Agenda trimmed as this is a focused "breakout" meeting, move additional agenda to next IRC meetings.

sidebar:

> Discussion on "skipped" regularly scheduled IRC meeting (where most of these agenda topics came from). > IRC meetings are scheduled the first Thursday of each month, these two Face-to-Video calls were "over and above" our regular schedule as an alternative to setting up a face-to-face meeting. > > Discussion covered how much is expected of board members, not to be critical (important point), and that we should clarify meeting requirements. > Indeed this was a topic for the agenda, which is pushed back to the next IRC meeting.

actions:

• Jody to update the next IRC agenda so we do not lose anything.

Role of Board and Executive Discussion

sidebar:

> Discussion on reducing this from 1 hour to 30 mins (it ended up taking slightly over an hour ...). > Do we need to review by-laws, or has this been covered during orientation of new board members? > Maria and Astrid indicated they were comfortable and have read the bylaws - so this should be quick!

Chair of the Board

• Section 5.5 Chair of the Board. The Chair of the Board shall preside at all meetings of the Board of Directors and members and shall have such other duties and authority as may be conferred by the Board of Directors.

For each meeting - currently we mix the chair up each meeting, … this is an enjoyable division of labor and allows the team to adjust based on who is present, or who has agenda topics to talk through.

sidebar:

> Previously Jeff did a great job of keeping board on track and focused. We introduced the habit of switching up meeting chair during 2016 as Venka was not always able to attend meetings, and we enjoyed the ability to be flexible. > This responsibility has previously fallen on the president, while we have split up the responsibility of chairing individual meetings across board members we are currently missing out on the follow up tasks.

But is the chair of the board useful? The role of 'chair of the board' is still useful, to track items so they are not missed between meetings, scheduling meetings, etc...

The chair-of-the-board would be responsible for keeping the board on track, following up on action items, similar how we use vice-president role to split up tasks across the president role.

Doing a better job following through on decisions was was identified during the election process, and candidate debate, as a common recommendation.

sidebar:

> Jeff lead discussion on asking community for more, rather than expecting more of our board meetings. > Jeff is concerned we are asking more and more of the board, rather than committees, and proposes .. Jeff proposes hiring a part time person to work on that.

sidebar:

> Discussion on expectations for officers workload vs committee

TLDR

Executive:

• President: María Arias de Reyna
  • Vice-president: Angelos Tzotsos
  • Vice-president: Helena Mitasova
  • Vice-president: Jeff McKenna
• Secretary: Astrid Emde
• Treasurer: Michael Smith

Board:

• Chair of the Board: Jody Garnett

Actions

• Jody: To move outstanding agenda topics to next IRC [Board_Meeting_2018-02-01] (done)
• Astrid: blogpost / news_item announcing new executive officers
• All book travel/accommodation for f2f meeting and send details to treasurer for reimbursement.
• Jody: Change time for the regular IRC meetings from 14 UTC to 15 UTC