Wiki location: https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20180114
= Foundation Board Minutes for Monday 14 January, 16:30 UTC =
== Attending ==
* FedericoMenaQuintero
* KatGerasimova
* CarlosSoriano
* RobMcQueen
* PhilipChimento
* NuritziSanchez
* AllanDay
* RosannaYuen
== Regrets ==
* NeilMcGovern
== Agenda ==
* Improving board elections (Allan)
* Board meeting frequency, attendance, and priorities (Nuritzi)
* FOSS North email, see board-list (Philip)
* Invitation to Kavayitri Bahinabai Chaudhari North Maharashtra
University, see board-list (Philip)
== Minutes ==
* Improving board elections
* Allan: We want to have elections where it's easy for all Foundation
members to meaningfully engage and debate with the candidates, so that the
Foundation members feel like they're having more of an influence over the
election. It feels like the last election or two haven't really lived up to
that. Some candidacy emails were quite short on detail. We want to have a
process where it's clear what the candidates stand for, so that Foundation
members know who they're voting for.
* Allan: Some ideas:
* Have a template for candidates to fill in, with sections including
things like relevant expertise, priorities as directors, and time
commitment.
* Have voting forms link to the candidacy statements, for easy
reference during voting.
* Have candidates send their candidacy statements in to the membership
committee so that they determine beforehand, rather than after the fact, if
a candidate is eligible to stand for the board.
* Allan: Also consider how we can encourage debate? Do we encourage
people to ask questions? If there haven't been any questions after a week
or three days, do we send an email to the membership to get the questions
rolling?
* Nuritzi: should the old board prepare questions that the candidates
can answer?
* Allan: If they are the same questions for each candidate, that might
be repetitive for >7 candidates.
* Philip: I was surprised to get no questions at all during the last
election, given the candidate statement that I wrote.
* Allan: Are there any other open source projects whose elections we can
learn from?
* Kat: It would be good for the board to prepare questions for
candidates. However, we don't want to discourage potential candidates with
a form.
* Allan: It doesn't have to be a whole essay, but maybe short
questions like "How many hours a week can you commit?"
* Rob: Aren't we planning to change the term lengths for board members?
We would only need three candidates if that went through.
* Kat: If we change the terms this year, then we would still need
seven candidates and only three/four the following year.
* Nuritzi: We discussed changing the term lengths during the Foundation
hackfest, but I didn't find anything in our GitLab issues about it. Neil
had a plan worked out, and would know how this is progressing.
* Federico: Can we encourage people to run for the board by reminding
them that we need board members as chairpeople or liaisons on the
committees?
* Carlos: Maybe we can highlight things the board has done over the
past years, so people can realize what they can do in the board. (e.g., the
quote from Didier on how he wasn't aware of just how much stuff there is to
do and how much impact it has.)
* Philip: Does it ever happen that candidates stand who are ineligible?
* Allan: That's maybe less related to engagement, it was more a
question I had last time when a lot of candidates announced themselves at
the last minute and if any of them had been ineligible there wouldn't have
been time for the membership committee to validate their candidacies before
the deadline, causing confusion among the members.
* Rob: In Debian, for example, the project secretary assembles the
candidacies on a webpage.
* Nuritzi: Would like the Foundation's web page to have up to date bios
on the staff.
* Nuritzi: Until now, the Engagement team has been running the gnome.org
web site. Now that we are expanding, should we have staff working on it?
Rob: That seems like a question for Neil.
* ACTION: (Neil): Present to the board on how the board term length
change is progressing.
* ACTION: (Carlos): Figure out with the membership committee what would
be involved in a change in the election process.
* Board meeting frequency, attendance, and priorities
* Nuritzi: We started discussing this at the hackfest. As the Foundation
expands, it's not necessary for all the staff to attend the meetings. It
also seems like we have been getting fewer items each meeting - or is that
just the beginning of the year? In any case, it seems like we have more
work to do, rather than items to discuss. With the Foundation expansion,
relatively more tasks will be taken over by the Foundation staff.
* Rob: I also struggle to make time for some items, and it's not always
the case that the board meeting time is as efficient as it could be. We
could consider meeting every two weeks, and having a work session in the
off weeks.
* Rob: It would also clarify things to create a RACI (Responsible,
Accountable, Consulted, Informed) list for every task, so that it's clear
what Foundation staff is responsible for and what the board is responsible
for, and who needs to approve things or not.
* Nuritzi: Likes the idea of having a hack week and then a meeting week.
* Allan: This used to happen some time ago.
* Rosanna: This was mostly aspirational; people met on IRC on the
off-weeks.
* Nuritzi: The type of work may also make a difference. The type of
work that we are doing now is very different from the type of work we were
doing when I started serving.
* Rosanna: focused working groups (only people working on a particular
topic need to meet) may work better than all-hands every time.
* Allan: We should aspire to not have meetings if there's nothing on the
agenda.
* Philip: In my recollection it's only happened once this term that
there was nothing on the agenda. We do sometimes have only a few things.
* Nuritzi: Regardless, we should stick to the scheduled hour.
* Nuritzi: We'll try this approach, starting with a "hack week" next
week, and so the next board meeting will be January 28th. The topics for
the hack week will be the definition of GNOME software and the travel
policy. We'll keep the first meeting of the month for the ED's report.
Additionally, during the hackfest we had discussed making the discussion
board-only after the presentation of the ED report.
* ACTION: (Allan) Write up the discussion from the board hackfest about
gnome-software, so other people can see if it's relevant to them.
* ACTION: (Nuritzi) Set the first board meeting of each month to include
30 minutes executive director update and 30 minutes board-only discussion.
* FOSS North email, see board-list
* Philip: We've received an email from FOSS North and I don't entirely
understand what's being asked.
* Kat: The email is asking us to organize GNOME hackfests co-located
with FOSS North. It's not something we've done before, but I don't see a
reason not to. We have a long relationship with FOSS North and have been
invited to speak there often. The board can send out an announcement that
if people want to have a hackfest during FOSS North, they can provide a
venue. We also used to have a booth at that conference, so we could at the
same time ask for a volunteer to staff the booth.
* Nuritzi: This would be a great opportunity to get the program manager
involved.
* Rob: It's important to consider that the board does not direct the
Foundation staff, so we cannot direct the program manager to become
involved.
* ACTION: (Kat) Make Kristi (program manager) aware of the request from
FOSS North.
* Invitation to Kavayitri Bahinabai Chaudhari North Maharashtra
University, see board-list
* Philip: We've received an email with two requests:
1. Release a new version of the GIMP (forward this to the GIMP
maintainers)
2. They would like someone to give a speech to inaugurate a
university course about the GIMP. Maybe we can find a community member who
lives more close by to give this speech.
* Philip: This is also something that does not need to be handled by the
board.
* Nuritzi: it would be good to comb the GNOME web pages and remove
board-list as the first point of contact.
* Carlos: it would be nice to show info in the staff/board pages what
each person can do for people in the community.
* ACTION: (Rob) Discuss with Neil how we want to handle forwarding
requests from the board to the staff.
* ACTION: (Philip) Forward the request for a release to the GIMP
maintainers.
* ACTION: (Neil) Update the contact info on the gnome.org Foundation
page so that it's not board-list, and see if there are any other places
where the contact info should be updated.
== Actions ==
* Neil - Present to the board on how the board term length change is
progressing.
* Carlos - Figure out with the membership committee what would be involved
in a change in the election process.
* Allan - Write up the discussion from the board hackfest about
gnome-software, so other people can see if it's relevant to them.
* Nuritzi - Set the first board meeting of each month to include 30
minutes executive director update and 30 minutes board-only discussion.
* Kat - Make Kristi (program manager) aware of the request from FOSS North.
* Rob - Discuss with Neil how we want to handle forwarding requests from
the board to the staff.
* Philip - Forward the request for a release to the GIMP maintainers.
* Neil - Update the contact info on the gnome.org Foundation page so that
it's not board-list, and see if there are any other places where the
contact info should be updated.
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