Hello,
find attached the meeting notes/summary from the FOSDEM in-person board,
MC and team meeting on 2019-02-01 and 2019-01-31. The meeting took place
in private and these are now made public in accordance with our statutes.
Florian
Development mentor
+ will be advertising again at FOSDEM
+ blog post goes live, from now on ask for applications
+ this role is clearly important: need a mentor
+ fliers - we can have at the booth
AI: printed jobs-board -> put up an advert (Florian / Mike)
Visual identity
AI: coming up with a more detailed written plan (Franklin)
Legal business entity
+ Resolved: that TDF will support and fund the research needed to
create a peer not-for-profit business entity supporting TDF's mission that:
+ would transfer parts of its admin and infra to the new entity.
+ would not directly control the entity but can reset in case of
failure.
+ TDF would then cover incorporation and seed funding costs
+ Resolved: TDF will form a subcommittee to define details, budgets,
dates, and report back for decision no later than the next Board
face-to-face meeting at the conference.
+ no explicit budget - re-using Florian's discretionary budget.
Vote plus: Bjoern, Simon, Franklin, Thorsten, Michael, Cor, Eike, Marina
+ thanks for doing the work (Florian)
+ we need this, whatever it looks like.
+ Sub-committee: Simon, Michael, Thorsten, Florian, Marina
+ will circulate all E-mails to the BoD anyway (Simon)
CiviCRM
+ started to deploy it a while back
+ trained on how to enter the data.
+ booking the donations - more time-consuming than we thought
+ 2nd phase: wrt. covering MC database, donate page + live feeds etc.
+ got deferred
+ want to test it works as expected
+ longer than planned
+ newsletter-management, event management, member mgmt
+ delayed, not cancelled.
Cloud hosting
+ trying to avoid maintaining our own Gluster
+ for CI-stuff, renting resource at Amazon too expensive.
+ evaluate migrating a few of them makes sense.
+ helpful - widely shared
+ try to get rid of distributed file-system / crash-recovery
+ not strongly in favour of current setup (Guilhelm)
+ in favour of hosting ourselves.
+ not in love with Gluster.
+ independent from last 2 glitches.
+ not directly related, not the reason to look.
+ buying new H/W for CI - is it ? (Bjoern)
+ perhaps don't need more H/W but shift things around.
+ the non-CPU bound loads into the cloud, and use H/W for CI.
+ current hypervisor wouldn't make good build-bots (Guilhelm)
Incomes, diversifying income stream, recurring donations, 2018 results
+ recurring - is 14% of donations - corrected vs. cancellation (was 16%)
+ donate page - have been optimized, changed payroll providers left &
right
+ 2018 - best year so far - Eur 855k
+ next best year - Eur805k
+ last year ~Eur 730k
+ last year - drop in donations: on-line updaters disabled for a while.
+ if we go to app-stores, and people don't see donate: need
something there.
+ we should work to make donation flow less seasonal (Italo)
+ increase during summer months.
+ 60-65% autumn/winter
+ working people download this (Michael)
+ no problem with fluctuation (Cor)
+ majority northern hemishphere, southern - is sub 20% (Italo)
+ we can do something there.
+ free reserve: Eur 450k
+ whatever occurs - nearly 1/2m in the bank.
+ can pile up 10% of annual income / donations into that;
+ TDF is pretty stable.
+ do have safety - here.
+ won't find in the budget; everything except that.
+ recurring donations: topic for 2019
+ CiviCRM should handle this for us.
+ lets see.
+ our fund-raising approach before Xmas to improve it ~5-10% win
(Italo)
+ take wikipedia:
+ banner -> make a fair amount of money with that
+ adapt that model for us (?)
+ our website is too generic for fund-raising (Italo)
+ should target users by custers
+ companies -> there, individuals -> here
+ TDF is an almost useless website
+ members get members ...
+ everyone in the world can donate money for many reasons
+ find the reasons - put them into the website.
+ not changing the pages, but paths should seem made for them.
+ more diverse income stream:
+ different payment providers, if update check is disabled.
+ website in terms of structure: 5 years old (Italo)
+ sub-optimal for mobile; trying to patch it - but not good for
mobiles
+ review of the CSS: menu of 2-3 levels - improve flow
+ 2-3 levels: easier to put in the tree.
Outcome for budget, priorities and marketing strategy
Marketing guideines (Michael)
+ thanks for open-ness to change; and good ideas
+ there is a real problem here
+ consensus on this and fixing it
+ conensus on scope for improvement (Throsten)
+ guidelines
+ reasons -> not micro mgmt
+ left to marketing.
+ promote those doing the good work.
+ with news-worthy new entrants etc.
+ easy & fun -> free giveaway message:
+ harder - balancing things
+ remove the fear of doing something wrong.
+ and kill complaints.
+ fighting for scraps of relevance.
+ celebrating our whole community:
building the ecosystem for eeryone:
+ certified trainers, migrators, etc.
+ a big step change in enthusiasm.
+ for people doing good things.
+ Simon - working on the guidelines (Bjoern)
+ crediting contributions, is important (Florian)
+ focus on marketing that ...
+ uncertainties on what is allowed
+ work on guidelines to frame what we can say.
+ Create very rough marketing guidelines for Mike to include
commercially-credited content such as interviews with company reps and
case studies (Simon)
AI: Simon to draft - and whole board to comment there
+ worked boosting our twitter, facebook accounts etc. (Mike)
+ youtube 450k extra views.
+ the feature video was quite popular
+ would like %ages (Thorsten)
+ 17k -> 22k twitter
+ 47k -> 50k facebook
+ 30-40% growth on youtube.
+ twitter account: Mike, Italo & Charles
+ do different things there.
+ like to improve use of LinkedIn pages (Italo)
+ use a social media publishing platform
+ Italian Assoc. of Journalists - have direct access, 50% discount
+ around Eur 150 for team of 10.
+ see what we're publishing on each platform
+ in Italian & English.
+ don't need to spend time on it.
+ slightly more clippings (from shrinking media) (Italo)
+ 25 visitors on their playstation portables (Mike)
+ community outreach
+ infobar - 800 people to the page each day (Mike)
+ up from a negligable number (Italo)
+ is that 24k people coming ? (Cor)
+ somehow - we see that in people getting involved ?
+ any idea on that.
+ hard to tell.
AI: + track where people go from there (Mike)
+ we should track the changes caused.
+ glitch in thunderbird (Italo)
+ if t-bird page doesn't load
+ request for donation loads anyway.
+ can disable it, but its the default.
+ get involved page had 50/day (Mike)
+ now went to 800
Certification program
+ approved a change on the pre-requisites
+ makes it easier to understand if you fit or not.
+ training can be for end-users (as or up-to-today)
+ or may be training targetted to outside developers
+ people supposed to do development in some org.
+ in this case can apply for development-training
certification.
+ know that people in our community can do this.
+ barrier: an increase of applications.
+ from people who didn't understand pre-requisites
+ I do regular trainings, but don't care about the
community.
+ want to certify people who are contributing to the
community - they have to contribute back.
+ doesn't mean only devs adding patches etc. but something.
+ Happy too see training for developers:
+ 1 GSOC student - is not training.
+ if have them all - have 25 certifications for that.
+ a meta-skill needed: not only able to train, but to build a
training programme, to build the materials, and training is
different.
+ never use the same slides for training; change them.
+ published in the next couple of days
+ document is ready.
+ don't like the category or how it was introduced (Michael)
+ request for certification - not able to answer (Italo)
+ people who had requested - but not fitting our profile.
+ improve in a way - people not qualified.
+ increase the workshops
+ China, Japan, Indonesia, and today request for Greece.
+ at the end - drive the good ones to become contributors at large
+ for every kind of activity in the project
+ not just trainin, but migrations.
+ Development beyond migration training capabilities.
Extensions and templates site
+ invested in improving plone
+ doesn't make much sense to invest in improving that
+ have a few CMS' running
+ plone is a CMS for large scale & for a big company etc.
+ there perhaps suitable.
+ for other things - likely overkill.
+ following two off these - likely to give results.
+ poked by WordPress consultants/developers
+ they're wordpress developers.
+ Heiko presented requirements.
+ what we have & want to improve.
+ consider tendering instead ?
+ would be open-source ...
+ OpenDesktop - another option -> moved to own company
+ also offered someting;
+ likely one of these will be the outcome.
+ GNOME shell extensions another option (Michael)
+ have wordpress developers in the community (Italo)
+ time spent on reviews, source-hosting (Bjoern)
+ would like not to replicate if we can avoid it.
+ separate the index of extensions from the hosting.
+ 2 things: not one thing.
+ for the hosting: github can host extensions - it's a solved
problem.
+ move to community review / rating.
+ not a "TDF stamp" -> extension free of malware: can't really do
+ can have a community of checkers ? (Simon)
+ have a few people download it first.
+ focus on index: of existing extensions, review & feedback channel.
+ think there is some need - but do we need to act today? (Thorsten)
+ can we get more input first?
+ would prefer to discuss at least the technical details in
public (Thorsten)
+ getting plone -> Wordpress has social advantages (Bjoern)
+ get interested people involved:
+ Heiko, OpenDesktop, Buovjaga, etc.
+ Bjoern is interested in making this happen
+ Buovjaga tried to install Plone but failed to.
+ Guilhelm takes care of updating this.
=> Bjoern share technical details with involved people.
Community building and focal points
1. Hackfests: Tirana, Paris
2. LibreOffice Conference
+ Almeria 9th-15th September
3. Community focus: India, Africa (Italo)
+ try to nurture the local community a bit.
+ can we get to one event later in the year
+ thanks to contacts with OSI
+ collected contacts in Africa
+ start with E-mail outreach
+ can we go anywhere ?
+ Tanzania - using LibreOffice in schools
+ trying to put them together
+ get more information, and be at FLOSS events
+ invited year after fork in
+ tell us about it 10 years afterwards.
+ suggest events in Europe, place call for papers
+ LibreOffice after 10 years.
app stores
+ no technical reasons not to do this.
+ has a tool to convert this to make it suitable
+ need to adapt install so it's not just English.
+ we would be ready to go and publish it
+ donation income is mostly from the download page.
+ should we offer it in the app-store.
+ if we do should we offer it for free
+ can we make it a paid version ? (Mike)
+ need to see how - but can be (Florian)
+ some apps - for free on Android etc.
+ download free - but donation, remove popup (Cor)
+ another option - ecosystem companies do it (Thorsten)
+ for a fee, donating that - part / all of income to TDF.
+ not doing anything is not an option
+ itunes - from 400/day to 50/day (Michael)
Quick update on COSM
+ Francis Cave driving this to getting a complete 1.3 spec.
+ Going through the edits in the weekly TC meetings.
+ By end of Feb. publishable ODF 1.3 spec expected.
+ A number of bits have been punted to ODF 1.4
+ several places need improving in the spec.
+ ISO approval - needs some travel budget etc.
+ looking good, pleasure to deal with Francis
* Hosting vs. Cloud
+ suggest to prefer moving service to cloud before buying new HW
(Thorsten)
+ suggest not CI / compile at Amazon (Michael)
+ prefer not to have to run clustered FS ourselves (Florian)
+ does Guilhelm have experience of cloud-iness (Bjoern?)
+ can he look into moving simple websites to Amazon.
+ free up existing hardware for CI
=> investigate migrating Gluster using workloads to Amazon / elsewhere
--
Florian Effenberger, Executive Director (Geschäftsführer)
Tel: +49 30 5557992-50 | Mail: flo...@documentfoundation.org
The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE
Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts
Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint
--
To unsubscribe e-mail to: board-discuss+unsubscr...@documentfoundation.org
Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/
Privacy Policy: https://www.documentfoundation.org/privacy
