Hey, Here are the minutes from the Board meeting at GUADEC.
Glynn == GNOME Foundation Board Meeting (GUADEC), 15th July 2007 Present: Anne, Behdad, Glynn, Jeff, Quim, Vincent Regrets: Dave, Rosanna o GUADEC There was only one proposal to host next year's GUADEC, Istanbul. Everyone agreed that it was a good solid proposal, and it would be good to get Baris sitting down during this GUADEC with Anne, Behdad, Quim and the guys from this year, Thomas and Paul. We will announce the new location at the GNOME Foundation AGM, and try and get Baris to do a little presentation for the closing. ACTION: Anne, Behdad, Quim to meet up with Baris and start talking about some of the details of GUADEC next year. ACTION: Behdad to talk to Baris about doing a presentation during the closing ceremony. o Board Candidate Dave announced his resignation from the board the previous week. The board would like to thank Dave for his hard work on the board over the past couple of years. Glynn suggested that Lucas Rocha would be a good replacement if he had time to do it. Jeff commented that it would be good to have a youthful, exhuberant and rocking replacement. Anne commented that we should use the next person in the election results. Jeff commented that we are an elected board and elected to run the organization, and that the state we're currently in is now different to the one during the election, and it should be a board perogative to appoint someont appropriate to that group. Jeff asked the question 'who do we want?' The board voted on 5 candidates, and Lucas was chosen as taking Dave's place. Quim commented that we should work with Dave to make sure his public announcement was timed with the announcement of Lucas as successor. ACTION: Glynn to talk to Dave about making sure he announces his resignation on foundation-list. ACTION: Quim to talk to John who was next in line during the election results about the situation, and decision. The board still needs to elect a treasurer. Jeff commented that he didn't feel comfortable doing that, but could possibly work with Rosanna and share responsibilities. Quim will take over responsibility of being a contact point for Rosanna. o Boston GNOME Summit Jeff has talked to Chris Blizzard and Max who had organized FUDCON in Boston University, and that it might be an ideal place. We're still hoping to organize the event for Columbus weekend. ACTION: Quim/Jeff to chat with Rosanna post GUADEC about taking on the summit organization. Jeff commented that an embedded developer summit could be tagged on to a conference in Madrid, rather than the Boston GNOME summit, and it would be good to pursue this. o Committees We currently have a number of board endorsed working committees - legal, marketing, release, membership and infrastructure. Anne asked if we had a clear mandate for these groups. Glynn commented that it would be good to write up what we currently have, along with writing up some guidelines for how people might go about getting a committee formally endorsed by the board and get this down on foundation.gnome.org. Jeff is keen to see that website moving over to a wiki. Quim is hoping that himself and Murray have time to sit down and discuss the progress of www.gnome.org this week. ACTION: Various members of the board will write up the status of our existing committees - Legal - Anne Marketing - Quim Release - Vincent Membership - Vincent Infrastructure - Jeff ACTION: Jeff/Vincent to upload to foundation.gnome.org o Foundation AGM Glynn has written some slides for the AGM, and the board collaborated on filling in the gaps. ACTION: Glynn to request financial details from Dave and Zana ACTION: Glynn to send details to foundation-list about the AGM meeting. ACTION: Glynn to forward slides to foundation-list. The rough agenda should be - Quim: Welcome Brief introduction of the board Dave's resignation and Lucas as successor Glynn: GNOME Foundation Report Quim: Announcement of GUADEC Discussion of priorities of the board for the rest of the year o By-Laws Anne commented that they were unnecessarily long and complicated, and that they were starting to show their age. Anne mentioned that it would be good to take a more international stance. Anne suggested it would be good to get a sub-committee formed to work on a new draft for the membership, and that James Vasile (SFLC) would be a good person to help with this. Jeff commented that he doesn't think they've posed a problem thus far, and suggested that if we do think about doing this, we should talk to the SFLC and see what the current template or best practices might be for new organizations. Glynn commented that by doing this, we potentially open ourselves up for people to focus more on the by-laws than the community. Quim didn't think it was a big priority for the board, and worried about spending a lot of time. He suggested to have a legal review of the current document, and find out what the issues might be. ACTION: Anne to talk to SFLC and get best practices document/suggestions. Jeff commented that the by-laws were the least interesting document right now, and that the charter was a lot more important in terms of direction. The GNOME Foundation would either strive to be a small organization to support large projects, or a large organization that strives for something more. Quim commented that it might be good to copy and paste the charter in live.gnome.org and let people edit it, and see where it gets us. o Board Plans for 6 months Numerous board members have had a busy 6 months, and haven't had the time to dedicate to board tasks. Jeff commented that we should try and recreate the energy and passion, rather than try and post-mortem why we haven't put in the time as a board. Glynn commented that the GNOME Foundation is in a much better position compared to several years ago, and that our expectations that we set are far more reaching than ever before, and consequently, we should try and focus on a few well defined goals, tackle these along with the day-to-day reactionary items that come up on board-list. Glynn commented that it might be interesting to produce a play-book for the year, detailing the goals for the GNOME Foundation for a year, and the board could focus on a few things that meet some of those goals. It would also give the opportunity of providing direction to the project for anyone else wanting to help out. The board decided to focus on 3 things - 1) Interaction between Communities and Advisory Board members We need to understand what the community is about, what the Advisory Board is about and what the perceptions are on both sides along with the role of the board. Jeff hoped that we could publish the position statements of the AB members this year. 2) Foundation Membership What is the value of the membership. We don't have enough resources for providing swag, so it needs to be about the people. How do we want to grow the membership, and provide a reason for people wanting to join. 3) Operational Reporting Many people were disgruntled by the publishing of this year's annual report. Next time around we want it to be a community initiative, and increase the transparency of operational reporting in the board. _______________________________________________ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list