Board/Minutes/2017-01-17

Location: Mumble, Tuesday 2017-01-17, 20:00 London time

Participants

Board members

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

Guests

Open to all members

Administrative

Previous minutes

• Board/Minutes/2016-12-16 Accepted

Previous action items

2016-05-28: Paul to put out call for EWG volunteers
2016-05-28: Martijn to find someone to work with to distill action items and next steps for diversity objectives
2016-05-28: Martijn/Kate to draft diversity policy
2016-05-28: Ilya to compile a draft of an OSMF monthly newsletter from WG & board minutes
2016-08-19: Mikel to review his notes for an agenda/list of topics for the last F2F
2016-08-19: Mikel to put LC discussion notes on the board wiki
2016-05-28: Frederik/Paul to prepare transparency doc from transparency session
2016-08-19: Mikel to send round bullet points on diversity policy proposal
2016-08-19: Ilya to look at implementing means for members to view the membership register
2016-09-16: AOB: Announce Dorothea
2016-09-25: Martijn to talk to Grant about doing recurrent donations during membership sign-up and/or renewal
2016-09-25: Martijn to notify board when US has done policy on smaller grants
2016-09-25: Mikel to find diversity text
2016-10-28: Peter to create a page on the wiki, listing software products which are used by OSMF and aren't open-source
2016-10-28: Kate to introduce Dorothea to the WGs
2016-12-16: Frederik to incorporate discussion points about Advisory board and continue the discussion in the board mailing list
2016-12-16: Frederik to ask WGs to provide an estimate for their 2017 budget up to 30 days afterwards

Setting up the Advisory Board

There was discussion about setting up the Advisory Board, an entity separate from the OSMF Board of Directors, composed of individuals - either nominated by corporate members of the OSMF or invited directly by the OSMF board.

Intercommunication model

Prior discussions about the Advisory Board (AB) centered around the idea that the AB will discuss topics of their choice via a dedicated mailing list, and whose collective input will be asked from time to time by the Board of Directors.

In this meeting it was suggested that the OSMF Board of Directors might also like to ask for input from specific AB members in some cases, drawing on their individual experience and expertise. The text description of the AB will be updated to reflect that additional possibility.

Potential topics

Initially, the Advisory Board might provide input on topics such as:

• setting up the AB
• moving OSMF to another country
• potential changes in the Articles of Association for the next Annual General Meeting

In the not so distant future, it could provide input on topics such as:

• diversity - soliciting ideas and research on what takes place in other communities
• how to build a global organisational relationship with the Local Chapters - input from people who are used to work with these kinds of configurations
• fund-raising

Visibility of AB discussions

There might be further discussion on whether the whole OSMF Board of Directors will be able to view the AB mailing list messages (please consider message visibility to be separate from mailing list active participation). Concern has been expressed on whether such visibility of the AB messages by the OSMF Board of Directors might create a feeling of surveillance.

Participation of Directors in the AB

Directors might be present in the AB, but their participation will be limited to only offer background factual knowledge.
Additionally, it has been suggested that in cases where a Director is an employee of a Corporate Member that will join the AB, then the Corporate Member AB representative should be someone else rather than that Director.

Transparency

The OSMF Board of Directors will publicly minute, in the board meeting minutes, any communication sent to, or received from, the AB.

Plan

After agreement of the OSMF Board of Directors on the draft text describing the AB, this text be put out on the osmf-talk mailing list for additional input.

Announcing New/Renewing Corporate Members

The CWG asked for the board's input on its proposal to streamline the way the new Corporate Members (as well as those that change from the old membership program to the new one) are introduced, now that the new Corporate Membership program has been implemented.

The board agreed with the following proposal by the CWG:

• Gold and Platinum Corporate Members will be welcomed with individual blog posts once they join or renew their membership.
  
• New or renewing Corporate Members from the rest of the tiers will be welcomed all together with a blog post once every 3-4 months.

Potential Face-to-Face Meeting in 2017

The majority of the board thinks that the Face-to-Face (F2F) meeting in Amsterdam was useful and a F2F meeting in 2017 would be beneficial. If a F2F meeting is going to happen, it should be planned well in advance.

Cost

A question arose regarding the cost of the previous F2F meeting in Amsterdam and Frederik mentioned that its cost was less than budgeted, as many board members did not ask for reimbursements.

Timing

It was proposed that the F2F meeting should not be directly before or after a conference, as everyone was stressed out during the SotM F2F.

Next steps

• Get the financial report from last year's F2F.
• Do a light-weight assessment of what happened on last year's F2F and subsequently.

Any other business

Next AGM

The next Annual General Meeting should be planned ahead of time, especially if there are going to be any changes in the Articles of Association (i.e. election period of board members, time limits).
The person that will run the election would have to be someone who will not run for the election this year.
The possibility of using a UK company to run the elections was also mentioned.

Closed portion of meeting

The OSMF board had a closed session portion of the meeting.

Review of Admin. Assistant's work

The OSMF board reviewed the Admin. Assistants work. The Admin. Assistant did not participate in that part of the meeting.

Next meeting

Tuesday, 2017-02-21 at 20:00 London time

The day and time of the monthly meetings has changed.
Meetings are now recurring,

3rd Tuesday of each month, 20:00 London time,

unless rescheduled.