Re: Minutes of the Board meeting of September, 26th, 2017

[Benjamin Berg]

Hi Cosimo,

On Tue, 2018-01-23 at 21:00 -0800, Cosimo Cecchi wrote:
> I just went ahead and published all the remaining minutes of our 2017
> meetings. They're already available on the wiki [1], and should also
> reach the list soon.

Thanks a lot, great to see that the backlog is getting a lot shorter!

Benjamin

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Re: Minutes of the Board meeting of September, 26th, 2017

[Cosimo Cecchi]

Hi Germán and all,

On Tue, Jan 23, 2018 at 4:53 PM, Germán Poo-Caamaño  wrote:

> In the past, there was an Etherpad instance running during the meeting,
> where every board edited the text during the meeting. Sometimes, some
> members did the heavy writing, while other edited the text, tagged
> properly, added references, and so on.
>
> Thus, the heavy work was done during the meeting, sharing the workload.
>
> Once the meeting was over, the content of the Etherpad instance was
> copied to the private section of wiki.
>
> After a week, if no objections were raised, they were considered
> approved. That meant, moving the content from private to public.
> That way, there was a time when the minutes were available promptly.
> Timing matters.
>
> When did this method stop being useful?
>

That's still how we take minutes; indeed, the heavy lifting is done during
the meeting and board members generally share that duty, with the Secretary
being the main contributor.
We admittedly have not done a great job with the publishing part that comes
after that so far this year.

As the Vice-Secretary, I take my share of responsibility for that, and want
to take this opportunity to extend my apologies to the community for the
delay, and thank you all for your patience.
We'll work to make sure that such a long delay does not happen again.

I just went ahead and published all the remaining minutes of our 2017
meetings. They're already available on the wiki [1], and should also reach
the list soon.

[1] https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes

Cheers,
Cosimo
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Re: Minutes of the Board meeting of September, 26th, 2017

[Germán Poo-Caamaño]

On Wed, 2018-01-24 at 00:37 +, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 18, 2018 at 10:32 AM Allan Day  wrote:
> 
> > Hi Benjamin,
> > 
> > Benjamin Berg  wrote:
> > ...
> > > I have noticed that the lack of board minutes has not been
> > > resolved so
> > > far and I am hoping that the community can get a quick action
> > > from the
> > > board with regard to this matter. Can every board member please
> > > work on
> > >  publishing the minutes at their respective earliest convenience?
> > 
> > ...
> > 
> > Thanks for raising this issue again. I agree that it needs to be
> > resolved and we discussed it during a board call this week. We'll
> > do
> > our best to get the minutes published and update the list once it's
> > happened.
> > 
> 
> Why not just ask an ex-director or board member to join the call and
> take
> notes for everyone. :-)
> 
> They can always drop out if there are sensitive topics.

In the past, there was an Etherpad instance running during the meeting,
where every board edited the text during the meeting. Sometimes, some
members did the heavy writing, while other edited the text, tagged
properly, added references, and so on.

Thus, the heavy work was done during the meeting, sharing the workload.

Once the meeting was over, the content of the Etherpad instance was
copied to the private section of wiki.

After a week, if no objections were raised, they were considered
approved. That meant, moving the content from private to public.
That way, there was a time when the minutes were available promptly.
Timing matters.

When did this method stop being useful?

-- 
Germán Poo-Caamaño
http://calcifer.org/

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Re: Minutes of the Board meeting of September, 26th, 2017

[Sriram Ramkrishna]

On Thu, Jan 18, 2018 at 10:32 AM Allan Day  wrote:

> Hi Benjamin,
>
> Benjamin Berg  wrote:
> ...
> > I have noticed that the lack of board minutes has not been resolved so
> > far and I am hoping that the community can get a quick action from the
> > board with regard to this matter. Can every board member please work on
> >  publishing the minutes at their respective earliest convenience?
> ...
>
> Thanks for raising this issue again. I agree that it needs to be
> resolved and we discussed it during a board call this week. We'll do
> our best to get the minutes published and update the list once it's
> happened.
>

Why not just ask an ex-director or board member to join the call and take
notes for everyone. :-)

They can always drop out if there are sensitive topics.

sri


> Allan
> --
> Vice-President, GNOME Foundation Board of Directors
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Re: Minutes of the Board meeting of September, 26th, 2017

[Allan Day]

Hi Benjamin,

Benjamin Berg  wrote:
...
> I have noticed that the lack of board minutes has not been resolved so
> far and I am hoping that the community can get a quick action from the
> board with regard to this matter. Can every board member please work on
>  publishing the minutes at their respective earliest convenience?
...

Thanks for raising this issue again. I agree that it needs to be
resolved and we discussed it during a board call this week. We'll do
our best to get the minutes published and update the list once it's
happened.

Allan
-- 
Vice-President, GNOME Foundation Board of Directors
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Re: Minutes of the Board meeting of September, 26th, 2017

[Benjamin Berg]

Hi board,

I have noticed that the lack of board minutes has not been resolved so
far and I am hoping that the community can get a quick action from the
board with regard to this matter. Can every board member please work on
 publishing the minutes at their respective earliest convenience?

Thanks,
Benjamin

On Mon, 2017-11-27 at 09:14 +, Ekaterina Gerasimova wrote:
> Hi board,
> 
> we have not seen any meeting minutes in over two months now.
> 
> As a foundation member, I do not feel that I can weigh in on any
> matters if I am not aware that they are being discussed. I would have
> thought that with hiring an ED, some of the workload should be lifted
> off the board which should have given the board more time to ensure
> that minutes are sent out promptly.
> 
> I would like to propose to the board that if the board is not able to
> publish the minutes within a reasonable period of time, you should
> consider calling for a secretary outside of the board who has the time
> to do it or making it part of an employee's job description.
> 
> Additionally, one of the requirement for the ED which was being
> discussed when I was on the board was that the ED should blog about
> their work on a weekly or fortnightly basis to make it more visible.
> Is this still something that the board could consider? I follow most
> GNOME channels, and I have not seen what the ED has done since GUADEC.
> 
> This is a comment on the lack of communication from the board rather
> than on the work being done. I realise that this is only the second
> time that I've raised the issue this year, but I feel that this is
> something so trivial that it should not be a problem. When I was
> helping the Secretary send out minutes some years ago, it was a 15
> minute job at most for me. I'd be happy to share my workflow from back
> then if that would help :)
> 
> 
> Thanks!
> Kat
> 
> 
> On 7 October 2017 at 16:24, Cosimo Cecchi  wrote:
> > = Foundation Board Minutes for Tue, September 26th 2017, 17:00 UTC
> > =
> > 
> > Next meeting date Tue, October 3rd 2017, 17:00 UTC
> > 
> > Wiki: https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20170926
> > 
> > == Attending ==
> > 
> >  * Allan Day
> >  * Alexandre Franke
> >  * Carlos Soriano
> >  * Cosimo Cecchi
> >  * Neil McGovern
> >  * Rosanna Yuen
> >  * Zeeshan Ali
> >  * Nuritzi Sanchez
> >  * Meg Ford
> > 
> > == Regrets ==
> > 
> > 
> > == Missing ==
> > 
> > 
> > == Agenda for 2017-09-26 ==
> > 
> >  * Foundation hackfest processing
> >  * CoC workshop sponsorship decision
> >  * Zazzle store
> >  * Feedback request: spending Foundation money
> > 
> > == Minutes ==
> > 
> >  * Foundation hackfest processing
> >   * Misunderstanding has been confirmed
> >* TC thought we had allocated a special budget, outside of TC
> > fund
> >* Alexandre hasn’t booked yet, still waiting for confirmation
> > since there
> > were questions about his initial request
> >* TC is also busy with GNOME.Asia
> >* Situation is complicated, deadlines are close. We should do
> > better with
> > processes in the future.
> >* VOTE: handle that budget ourselves, and allocate up to $8000
> > for the
> > total
> > * +1 Unanimous, PASSED.
> > * Directors and officers will follow the Foundation Staff
> > Travel Policy.
> >* ACTION: Cosimo to help Rosanna processing receipts after the
> > event.
> >* ACTION: Cosimo to get back to the TC and let them know how
> > we’re
> > dealing with this
> >* ACTION: Cosimo to tell Shaun he’s welcome to join
> > 
> >  * CoC workshop sponsorship decision
> >   * Timing not ideal
> >   * Would help establishing a relationship with a local community
> >   * Cost is high
> >   * We’d prefer more planning
> >   * ACTION: Nuritzi to work on planning something in the same vein
> > 
> >  * Zazzle store
> >   * We have a link on the page where we list vendors
> >   * Andreas confirmed that Stormy is the one with access
> >   * ACTION: Allan to try to reach out to Stormy
> >   * ACTION: Nuritzi to assess the quality of the products and check
> > whether
> > we want to continue using them
> > 
> >  * Feedback request: spending Foundation money
> >   * Question in the thread: does/will the board help organizer
> > raise
> > sponsorship?
> >* This should be part of our discussion at the Berlin hackfest
> > next week.
> >* Could be part of the responsibilities of a new committee
> >* ACTION: Nuritzi to get back to the list
> > 
> >  * New committee
> >   * The two names that were being discussed were “Sponsorship” and
> > “Partnership”.
> >* People don’t seem to have a strong preference for either one
> > of them
> > * Alexandre feels strongly against “Sponsorship”
> >   * VOTE: approve the creation of the Sponsorship Committee with
> > the
> > following terms and members:
> >* Committee description: The GNOME Sponsorship Committee is
> > responsible
> > for ensuring corporate sponsorship for GNOME events and
> > 

Re: Minutes of the Board meeting of September, 26th, 2017

[Ekaterina Gerasimova]

On 27 November 2017 at 11:21, Alexandre Franke  wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 27, 2017 at 10:14 AM, Ekaterina Gerasimova
>  wrote:
>> Hi board,
>
> Hi!
>
>> we have not seen any meeting minutes in over two months now.
>
> Indeed. I’m only addressing this in this email, setting the lack of ED
> reports aside for now.
>
>> As a foundation member, I do not feel that I can weigh in on any
>> matters if I am not aware that they are being discussed.
>
> Yes, that is clearly an issue and I share your concerns.
>
>> I would have
>> thought that with hiring an ED, some of the workload should be lifted
>> off the board which should have given the board more time to ensure
>> that minutes are sent out promptly.
>
> While having an ED certainly helps with the workload and facilitates
> other things, I don’t think it impacts publishing the minutes at all.
>
>> I would like to propose to the board that if the board is not able to
>> publish the minutes within a reasonable period of time, you should
>> consider calling for a secretary outside of the board who has the time
>> to do it or making it part of an employee's job description.
>
> The problem is not exactly lack of time. If you look at the dates, you
> may notice we haven’t published minutes since we had the hackfest in
> Berlin. As I said in [my blog
> post](https://www.alexandrefranke.com/blog/20171010-Foundation-hackfest-in-Berlin/)
> we agreed on new policies, and there are pending announcements. Now
> the reason the minutes have not been published is because some items
> read as “ACTION: X to announce Y” or “ACTION: A to talk to B” and we
> decided to delay the minutes a bit because it would be weird for
> people to learn about Y or for B to see it in the minutes before the
> announcement/contact actually took place. Unfortunately some of those
> actions took longer than anticipated and we’re now lagging behind
> quite a bunch. We did acknowledge the issue during last meeting and
> what needs to happen now is going over the minutes and checking
> whether these announcements/contacts have been done, and eventually
> publish the minutes.

What we used to do about this was to have two sets of minutes: public
and private. The private minutes contained items such as you raised
there. For example, the whole of the groupon discussion was in the
private minutes for months. In the mean time, that enabled us to
continue communicating public matters with the Foundation.

While it wasn't generally done because of the amount of work involved,
but on occasion, items were moved from private to public minutes at a
later date.

Maybe this could be an option to work around such restrictions in the
future? A private item shouldn't block communication about other work
:)

>> This is a comment on the lack of communication from the board rather
>> than on the work being done. I realise that this is only the second
>> time that I've raised the issue this year, but I feel that this is
>> something so trivial that it should not be a problem.
>
> Right, and we should have communicated what the underlying reason was.
> Sorry about that.
>
>> When I was
>> helping the Secretary send out minutes some years ago, it was a 15
>> minute job at most for me. I'd be happy to share my workflow from back
>> then if that would help :)
>
> Well in normal circumstances it takes me about 10 minutes to process
> the minutes, so I guess we’re good.
>
>> Thanks!
>> Kat
>
> Thank you for raising this!
>
> --
> Alexandre Franke
> GNOME Hacker & Foundation Director
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Re: Minutes of the Board meeting of September, 26th, 2017

[Alexandre Franke]

On Mon, Nov 27, 2017 at 10:14 AM, Ekaterina Gerasimova
 wrote:
> Hi board,

Hi!

> we have not seen any meeting minutes in over two months now.

Indeed. I’m only addressing this in this email, setting the lack of ED
reports aside for now.

> As a foundation member, I do not feel that I can weigh in on any
> matters if I am not aware that they are being discussed.

Yes, that is clearly an issue and I share your concerns.

> I would have
> thought that with hiring an ED, some of the workload should be lifted
> off the board which should have given the board more time to ensure
> that minutes are sent out promptly.

While having an ED certainly helps with the workload and facilitates
other things, I don’t think it impacts publishing the minutes at all.

> I would like to propose to the board that if the board is not able to
> publish the minutes within a reasonable period of time, you should
> consider calling for a secretary outside of the board who has the time
> to do it or making it part of an employee's job description.

The problem is not exactly lack of time. If you look at the dates, you
may notice we haven’t published minutes since we had the hackfest in
Berlin. As I said in [my blog
post](https://www.alexandrefranke.com/blog/20171010-Foundation-hackfest-in-Berlin/)
we agreed on new policies, and there are pending announcements. Now
the reason the minutes have not been published is because some items
read as “ACTION: X to announce Y” or “ACTION: A to talk to B” and we
decided to delay the minutes a bit because it would be weird for
people to learn about Y or for B to see it in the minutes before the
announcement/contact actually took place. Unfortunately some of those
actions took longer than anticipated and we’re now lagging behind
quite a bunch. We did acknowledge the issue during last meeting and
what needs to happen now is going over the minutes and checking
whether these announcements/contacts have been done, and eventually
publish the minutes.

> This is a comment on the lack of communication from the board rather
> than on the work being done. I realise that this is only the second
> time that I've raised the issue this year, but I feel that this is
> something so trivial that it should not be a problem.

Right, and we should have communicated what the underlying reason was.
Sorry about that.

> When I was
> helping the Secretary send out minutes some years ago, it was a 15
> minute job at most for me. I'd be happy to share my workflow from back
> then if that would help :)

Well in normal circumstances it takes me about 10 minutes to process
the minutes, so I guess we’re good.

> Thanks!
> Kat

Thank you for raising this!

-- 
Alexandre Franke
GNOME Hacker & Foundation Director
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Re: Minutes of the Board meeting of September, 26th, 2017

[Ekaterina Gerasimova]

Hi board,

we have not seen any meeting minutes in over two months now.

As a foundation member, I do not feel that I can weigh in on any
matters if I am not aware that they are being discussed. I would have
thought that with hiring an ED, some of the workload should be lifted
off the board which should have given the board more time to ensure
that minutes are sent out promptly.

I would like to propose to the board that if the board is not able to
publish the minutes within a reasonable period of time, you should
consider calling for a secretary outside of the board who has the time
to do it or making it part of an employee's job description.

Additionally, one of the requirement for the ED which was being
discussed when I was on the board was that the ED should blog about
their work on a weekly or fortnightly basis to make it more visible.
Is this still something that the board could consider? I follow most
GNOME channels, and I have not seen what the ED has done since GUADEC.

This is a comment on the lack of communication from the board rather
than on the work being done. I realise that this is only the second
time that I've raised the issue this year, but I feel that this is
something so trivial that it should not be a problem. When I was
helping the Secretary send out minutes some years ago, it was a 15
minute job at most for me. I'd be happy to share my workflow from back
then if that would help :)


Thanks!
Kat


On 7 October 2017 at 16:24, Cosimo Cecchi  wrote:
> = Foundation Board Minutes for Tue, September 26th 2017, 17:00 UTC =
>
> Next meeting date Tue, October 3rd 2017, 17:00 UTC
>
> Wiki: https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20170926
>
> == Attending ==
>
>  * Allan Day
>  * Alexandre Franke
>  * Carlos Soriano
>  * Cosimo Cecchi
>  * Neil McGovern
>  * Rosanna Yuen
>  * Zeeshan Ali
>  * Nuritzi Sanchez
>  * Meg Ford
>
> == Regrets ==
>
>
> == Missing ==
>
>
> == Agenda for 2017-09-26 ==
>
>  * Foundation hackfest processing
>  * CoC workshop sponsorship decision
>  * Zazzle store
>  * Feedback request: spending Foundation money
>
> == Minutes ==
>
>  * Foundation hackfest processing
>   * Misunderstanding has been confirmed
>* TC thought we had allocated a special budget, outside of TC fund
>* Alexandre hasn’t booked yet, still waiting for confirmation since there
> were questions about his initial request
>* TC is also busy with GNOME.Asia
>* Situation is complicated, deadlines are close. We should do better with
> processes in the future.
>* VOTE: handle that budget ourselves, and allocate up to $8000 for the
> total
> * +1 Unanimous, PASSED.
> * Directors and officers will follow the Foundation Staff Travel Policy.
>* ACTION: Cosimo to help Rosanna processing receipts after the event.
>* ACTION: Cosimo to get back to the TC and let them know how we’re
> dealing with this
>* ACTION: Cosimo to tell Shaun he’s welcome to join
>
>  * CoC workshop sponsorship decision
>   * Timing not ideal
>   * Would help establishing a relationship with a local community
>   * Cost is high
>   * We’d prefer more planning
>   * ACTION: Nuritzi to work on planning something in the same vein
>
>  * Zazzle store
>   * We have a link on the page where we list vendors
>   * Andreas confirmed that Stormy is the one with access
>   * ACTION: Allan to try to reach out to Stormy
>   * ACTION: Nuritzi to assess the quality of the products and check whether
> we want to continue using them
>
>  * Feedback request: spending Foundation money
>   * Question in the thread: does/will the board help organizer raise
> sponsorship?
>* This should be part of our discussion at the Berlin hackfest next week.
>* Could be part of the responsibilities of a new committee
>* ACTION: Nuritzi to get back to the list
>
>  * New committee
>   * The two names that were being discussed were “Sponsorship” and
> “Partnership”.
>* People don’t seem to have a strong preference for either one of them
> * Alexandre feels strongly against “Sponsorship”
>   * VOTE: approve the creation of the Sponsorship Committee with the
> following terms and members:
>* Committee description: The GNOME Sponsorship Committee is responsible
> for ensuring corporate sponsorship for GNOME events and conferences. A
> representative from each of the main conferences (GNOME.Asia, GUADEC, LAS)
> will be appointed in order to provide a bridge of support to the local
> teams.
>* Committee responsibilities:
> * Maintain a list of contacts and entities whom the GNOME project has a
> relationship with
> * Work with event organizers to coordinate sponsorship levels and perks
> * Provide quarterly reports to the GNOME Foundation board
> * Maintain confidentiality of sensitive information
>* Powers that the board is devolving to the committee:
> * Issue sponsorship agreement forms
> * Make statements on behalf of the GNOME Foundation, relating to events