Board/Minutes/2015-12-12

Minutes for the

OSMF Board Meeting

Location: Mumble, 2100 London time, 2015-12-11

Participants

Board members

• Peter Barth
• Kate Chapman
• Martijn van Exel
• Mikel Maron
• Paul Norman
• Frederik Ramm
• Ilya Zverev

Not Present

Everyone is okay with recording the meeting for internal usage within the board and to create minutes from.

Introduction of board members to each other.

Administrative

Paul to explain administrative items on list.

Previous minutes

http://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Board/Minutes/2015-10-25

Accepted by Kate, Paul, and Frederik. Other board members are new.

Circular Resolutions

I am attempting to give a bit more context to circulars in the minutes.

Circular resolutions are for information only and publication to members. No additional information is required.

Going over rules of order for passing circulars. Changed to have circulars end after a time because we were having trouble getting a majority of board members replying to them.

We can take decisions by circular or at a meeting. Circulars are on Loomio, used to be on email but changed for more structure

2015/07: Become a "supporting member" of CiviCRM

Proposed we become a "supporting member" fopr 216 USD/year.

In spirit we have a lot in common (open source/open data; non-commercial organisation; supported by a community; many users vs few members, etc)

Also look at the list of benefits on their page about membership. I think we could benefit from this.

… since we’re saying that companies who use our data should become member, we should do the same with CiviCRM. Leading by example.

Accepted 2015-10-11 with ultimately 5 votes in favour.

Become a "supporting member" of CiviCRM for 216 USD per year.

2015/08: Amend rules of order to cover travel reimbursements

This circular implements the 2015-08-22 decision to add a rule on expensing travel.

Accepted 2015-11-23 with ultimately 3 votes in favour.

Amend the rules of order to add this section to "Gifts and Reimbursements" Economy travel to and accommodation to State of the Map International and face to face board meetings is covered. Other events are considered on a case-by-case basis. In all cases, the board member shall bring an estimate to the board before incurring the expenses.

2015/09: Disband the Local Chapters Working Group

The LCWG has been inactive for over a year, with the last item on its agenda the question of what to do with the process and template agreement in place. Its original goal was to put in place a framework for local chapters. This is done, with one local chapter agreement and three proceeding through the process.

We should have a group for consulting with local chapters, but as it’s presently constituted, the LCWG isn’t it. We may also want to wait until we have more LCs in place.

Simon Poole the chair of the inactive WG is in agreement with disbanding the WG.

Defeated 2015-11-28 2-2.

Disband the Local Chapters Working Group, thank them for their contributions, and remove it from the list of WGs.

Previous action items

2015-06-15: Henk to follow up on status of sending email to those who signed up at SOTM US
2015-08-22: Frederik to draft selection process and process of working with hire later on
2015-08-22: Paul to write circular about travel (Done)
2015-09-30: Paul to set up Doodle for AGM dates (Done)
2015-09-30: Dermot to set up AGM voting (Done)
2015-09-30: Kate to contact Francis about proxy voting and adequate voting time requirements with virtual GM (Done) (Done)
2015-10-25: Paul to draft AGM agenda, targeting Nov 1st formal announcement (Done)
2015-10-25: Dermot and Kate to talk with Francis about members in arrears paying up at the last minute and voting platform limitations (Done)

Discussion

Action items are items carried over from the last meeting and new items. No detailed discussion is needed.

AGM-related items

All AGM tasks are done.

Admin help

Frederik to resend documents to the new board. Information is also on board wiki.

SOTM US email

Martijn to take over this item as he has the list.

Plan was to send email to those who expressed interest, remind them that they did so, give link for becoming member, and explain benefits.

New board member administrative

• Any new board members still requiring accounts?
• Anything that needs adding to new board member primer?

CiviCRM

Nothing on primer about CiviCRM. Need to discussion how to handle membership lists in the future.

All board members to have CiviCRM read access.

Kate to set this up with Henk.

Obliged to give regular membership list to those who send in a request, and obliged to give regular+associate membership list to members who request.

Other information like billing information we don't give out.

Discussion

• First time using new board primer, so if new members feel something is missing, please add it

• Steve has access to board@ as chairman emeritus. Michael Collinson had access as management team chair, but the wiki page might be outdated now. We had discussed removing access last year, but it never came to conclusions. As CE, Steve is invited to board meetings

• No previous members of the board retain access

• board@osmf alias is not archived except to large archive of all OSMF messages

• Paul to put non-board access to mailing list on agenda for next meeting, and check if Michael Collinson still has access.

• Paul and Frederik included information in welcoming emails that would be useful in the primer. Ilya to add this information to it.

• Link to be added for Mumble

• Appointment form information to be collected by Paul

Division of labour in board

Decided to continue with Kate, Frederik and Paul as chair, treasurer and secretary respectively. Elected by acclimation.

Peter to be a backup for Frederik so more than one person has access.

F2F meeting

Not given that we need a F2F meeting.

Discussion

• Last F2F meeting and meeting everyone in person made it easier to communicate within the board.

• Hard to point at other items from the F2F which we couldn't of accomplished offline.

• No substitute for meeting in person to get to know each other.

• Working together in person boosts productivity when you're not together.

• Could have F2F at SOTM. Link broken between AGMs and SOTM, but SOTM is towards the end of this board term. Could have value for getting work done, but not getting to know each other.

• Last F2F minutes have many items, but most didn't get picked up and completed by now.

• F2F cost is not significant for an organization our size.

• Could be good with a new excited board

• Kate to be in Australia mid-jan to mid-march and not able to attend.

• Like to see a list of what we'd like to accomplish. Didn't go into last meeting with a good idea of what we wanted to get out of it.

• Had good facilitation but bad planning

Conclusions

Kate to start page on board wiki on what we would like to accomplish at a potential F2F.

Italian LC application

Discussion of process for LC applications.

• Out of last work done by LCWG, we have a standard template agreement.
• Only dealing with existing organizations for now
• Documents collected
• Consult with community
  • Raise on osmf members list, and medium local community uses
• Board considers application, decides to accept/reject/do something else
• Iceland gone through process
• In the pipeline, Italy, Japan (trademark complications), Switzerland.
• Contacted US, they replied, but they haven't gotten documents back.
• Contacted others, but no replies - to retry after holidays

Things to consider as a board

• What the community thinks
• Functioning organization
• Past board member felt that we should never accept a local chapter which was a sub-group of a Wikimedia Local Chapter
• Some minor concerns raised for .it application, resolved.

Main question for .it application is on WM application.

How do we ensure it represents the local community.

Mainly been looking for not having a majority or substantial minority of local community object to the application.

• Organization not opposed by community
• Support from most of the active community
• Use what means the local community uses to talk, be it mailing list, FB, etc.

Why not ask the OSMF members from that country?

We ask OSMF members as well as local community to cover anyone interested.

Benefit not seen of asking a third question to OSMF members in country only.

Haven't had a chance to make private objections. Future applications will include a note about sending objections privately.

Paul to create circular to give everyone a chance to review the documents.

Upcoming work

Based on My Goals for 2016 thread from Ilya.

What do we know we want to be working on in next 6 months?

Take up the issue by email.

AOB

Continue to schedule meetings approximately monthly.

Good to put out a blog article on new board stuff. Peter to write one.

Github

Discussion on how OSM US uses github on the board.

Not certainty that Github would be a great fit for what the board does.

Paul has used Trello for OSMF secretary for tracking his work, but stopped since it didn't add value.

Some would prefer to stay with email.

Could see Github for some stuff, but not general discussions.

Try github and say for this particular thing we can use github to experiment with it.

Martijn to organize trial experiment with Github.

Next meeting

Kate leaving to .au on Jan 14th. Mikel will be back in states in Jan. Paul to target first full week of Jan.

Meeting End

12:13 Pacific