Board/Minutes/2017-11-16

Location: Mumble, Thursday 2017-11-16, 21:00 London time

Participants

Board members

Kate Chapman (Chair)
Frederik Ramm
Ilya Zverev
Martijn van Exel
Mikel Maron
Paul Norman
Peter Barth

Guests

Open to all OSMF members.

11 guests present :)

Guests are welcome to speak at the end of the meeting on the topics that have been discussed. Please note that text messages sent on Mumble chat may not be seen by people who join using mobile apps.

Not Present

Administrative

Previous minutes

Board/Minutes/2017-10-26 Accepted

Circular Resolutions

None

Previous action items

The list is sortable and items that were assigned to two persons appear twice.

Name	Date	Action item and status
All	2017-10-26	to go back to the State of the Map Working Group about what a statement regarding the SotM policy might look like. # If a reply takes longer than anticipated the announcement might have to be made anyway, as timing is crucial.
Frederik/Paul	2016-05-28	to prepare transparency document from transparency session
Ilya	2016-08-19	to look at implementing means for members to view the membership register # Got key from Tom for accessing the server. Administrative work done, programming not yet.
Kate	2017-10-26	~~to notify the State of the Map Working Group that their request for 100 hours of Dorothea's time has been accepted.~~ #Done
Kate/Paul	2017-09-21	to write to F. Davey and see if he's still available to offer legal advice regarding conflicts of interest
Kate	2017-08-24	to write to the Advisory Board list about microgrants
Kate	2017-08-24	to contact Michael about closing inactive mailing lists that she is an admin of
Kate/Martijn	2016-05-28	to draft diversity policy # No progress to report. Low priority.
Martijn	2017-10-26	~~to follow up with Dermot about the voting process for the 2017 Board election~~ # Done. Connected him with Dorothea.
Martijn	2017-10-26	to raise the question to the Advisory Board about whether they would like to have an archive of the AB mailing list. # Martijn will prepare a brief orientation document for the AB and will ask then.
Martijn	2017-07-18	to look at the process of regular reporting by the Local Chapters to the board and vice versa.
Martijn/Kate	2016-05-28	to draft diversity policy # No progress to report. Low priority.
Mikel	2017-10-26	to check with Rob about the State of the Map 2018 lead # In progress
Mikel	2017-08-24	to send email on the list to find businesses that would like to offer input on the Welcome Mat
Mikel	2016-08-19	to send round bullet points on diversity policy proposal
Paul/Kate	2017-09-21	to write to F. Davies and see if he's still available to offer legal advice regarding conflicts of interest
Paul	2017-02-21	to separate the State of the Map (SotM) net profit discussion items and start the follow-up discussions
Paul	2016-10-28	to create a page on the wiki, listing software products which are used by OSMF and are closed-source and/or are externally hosted # Was Peter's
Paul/Frederik	2016-05-28	to prepare transparency document from transparency session
Peter	2017-04-18	to make a list of requirements for email self-hosting and discuss them with the OWG

Planning the 2017 Annual General Meeting (update)

Annual General Meetings are held once per year with the main order of business being to present the financial accounts for the last year, and election of new board members. The 11th Annual General Meeting of the OpenStreetMap Foundation will be held online in the IRC chat room #osmf-gm on the IRC network irc.oftc.net, at 16:00 UTC on Saturday, 09 December 2017.
Lead: Martijn

Renewing memberships prior to the AGM

Voting: Only those who have already become members 30 days prior to the AGM date are eligible to vote. Members in arrears (who haven't paid their membership up to 1 year after its end date) don't have a right to vote. However, if they renew their memberships in time they could become eligible. In previous years we had a deadline of renewing members being eligible to vote only if they renew up to 24 hours before the Annual General Meeting, because otherwise it's impossible to update the voting registry.

Suggestions

Look at the AGM and election process early next year, to be ready by the 2018 AGM. In addition to the issue above we could look at how candidates present themselves (Discussion on the 2017 election to Board wiki page).
Do an amendment to the Articles of Association. This would mean that the new system could be implemented after two AGMs.

Action item: Martijn to send email to people with memberships in arrears or soon to expire, to renew them as soon as possible.

OSMF join date of election candidates

On the election page of the OSM wiki there is a column where candidates add the date they joined the OSM Foundation. However, in the past candidates were confused and added the date they joined OpenStreetMap.

Action item: Martijn to check the dates that candidates for the board have joined the OSMF.

Question and Answer session

Suggestion: Add a Q&A session to the AGM's agenda.

The agenda cannot be changed at this point, but can be changed at the meeting.
We already have a simple Q&A session after the Chairperson's and the Treasurer's reports.

Special resolutions from members

The board would like to see more direct democracy.

Action item: Next year send an email to members, months in advance of the AGM, encouraging them to discuss and perhaps propose their own resolutions.

Membership Drive (update)

Members are vital to our project and we welcome all who support our goals to join us. We are running a Membership drive to increase the number of members and -as importantly- to try to increase the representation from all places where people are mapping. Join the Foundation - the future of the project should be shaped by the people who care about it the most. Previous discussion: August 2017 The Membership drive was proposed during the Face-to-Face board meeting in May.
Lead: Mikel

Successful: ~254 people joined since it started.

Suggestion: Summary blog post before the AGM.

Travel policy update

Discussion about updating the current travel policy and possibly having a yearly standing budget for small travel grants, available to mappers and developers who would like to attend an OpenStreetMap event. It has been proposed that the process should be standardised, the budget limited and the amounts claimed -as well as the name of the persons- public. The updated travel policy would not be for events where there are already scholarships available, like State of the Map, but rather for smaller events like hack weekends or developer meetings, or occasions when someone involved in OSM backend coding would like to receive funding to attend (for example) a Ruby conference. Previous discussion: September 2017
Lead: Martijn

A draft addressing both the microgrants and the travel policy was attempted but the board felt it's best if the documents are separate.

Points mentioned during discussion:

Microgrants will have specific deadline dates for applications, while the travel grants will not.
Centralised judging of the requests.

Action item: Martijn to do the microgrants policy first.

Question from Simon Poole (guest) whether travel should mostly be in the Working Group (WG) budgets.

- Probably not, as we would like to avoid every WG setting their own different rules regarding travel and then people applying

Welcome Mat (update)

The Welcome Mat will be a guide to organisations and corporations that want to be involved with OpenStreetMap. It will have information to familiarise themselves with the project, the community and especially to learn our expectations and their responsibilities. Previous discussions: September 2017, August 2017, July 2017. The Welcome Mat was proposed during the Face-to-Face board meeting in May. Please note that the name might change.
Lead: Martijn

Nothing new at the moment.

Action item: Martijn to schedule a working session about the Welcome Mat.

Grant for hardware

Grant which we got for operations (new hardware). Related osmf-talk message and closed-session discussions June 2017, Jan 2017.
Lead: Martijn

Hardware is in place and operational.

Action item: Martijn to work with the Communication Working Group on a blog post about the new hardware and the grant.

Any other business

Financial-related

We will switch to a new accountant who will start on January 1st. Frederik has met them in person.
Frederik is currently the Treasurer and Peter is the second person with access to the bank accounts. Both are likely to serve one more year on the board.

Call to any candidate for the board that is interested in doing financial tasks: they can learn the ropes in the following 12 months and then could be the Treasurer if re-elected. Please note that roles are decided within the board, once a new board is formed.

Thanks to Ilya

Thanks were expressed to Ilya by Imagico (guest) and others, as this was Ilya's last board meeting.

Membership waiver program

Question from Joost Schouppe (guest) about whether there is any sort of timing on the membership waiver program.

- The Membership Working Group (MWG) will integrate feedback and then send the draft program around if necessary or to the board.

Next meeting

Meetings now take place on the 3rd Thursday of the month, at 21:00 London time, unless rescheduled.

The next monthly board meeting will be on the 16th of January, at 21:00 London time.

Meeting end

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