Board/Minutes/2025-01-16
Draft minutes.
Date: Thursday 16 January 2025s
Time: 13:30 UTC.
Video room at https://osmvideo.cloud68.co
using BigBlueButton.
Participants
- Craig Allan (Chairing)
- Dani Waltersdorfer
- Guillaume Rischard (joined 30' after start)
- Héctor Ochoa Ortiz
- Maurizio Napolitano
- Laura Mugeha
- Roland Olbricht
Officers and board historic
Biographies historic
Minutes by Dorothea Kazazi.
Not Present
Guests
Meeting not open to observers.
OSMF internal enquiry for covering Tom Hughes' (OWG volunteer) expenses for attending the Karlsruhe Hack Weekend (2025-02)
Board internal reference: https://gitlab.com/osmfoundation/board/-/issues/729v
Dani discussed the topic with Grant during one of their weekly meetings as his manager, and OWG has a budget line for travel expenses. These weekly meetings are also attended by Sarah Hoffmann, as the technical expert.
Laura joined ~ 5 minutes after start.
Suggestion: The board to vote on this issue, as the Operations Working Group (OWG) has not submitted a budget for 2025 yet.
Other points mentioned during discussion
- Dani and Sarah Hoffmann approved Grant travelling.
- Roland indicated to Tom that his travel expenses to the Karlsruhe Hack Weekend will be covered.
- According to the current OSMF policies, the OWG could have spent between EUR 500 and EUR 1000 on travel last year without requiring a board vote. (post-meeting note. See Procurement policy - section for small amounts).
Suggestion by OWG on OSMF covering the expenses of Andy Allan to attend the Karlsruhe Hack Weekend
Suggestion: Dani to ask the OWG to provide the estimated expenses.
Other points mentioned during discussion
- Dani and Sarah have approved Grant's travel expenses.
- Grant, Tom and Andy would be departing from London via train.
On the people to be mentioned on the board circular
- Suggestion: for all members of OWG.
- Comment that Andy is not in the OWG.
- Proposed working: "members of the Operations Working Group and maintainers of openstreetmap-website".
Action item
The board to create a circular to approve the travel expenses of OWG members and maintainers of openstreetmap-website to attend the Karlsruhe Hack Weekend (2025-02).
Status of the transfer of the Meta and ESRI funds to OSGeo Oceania and other approved regional SotMs
| Background |
|---|
The board has agreed to facilitate the distributions of sponsorships of two OSMF Corporate Members to 8 regional SotMs via OSMF. More specifically:
-- FOSS4G/SotM Oceania 2024 - Bronze, EUR 1547.54 Meta sponsorships: selection of regional SotMs The list of proposed SotMs and amounts was approved by Meta. Meta will also carry the 5% overhead fee specified in the SotM distribution agreement. On sponsorship processing status
Discussion will be on the status and the processing. About the distribution of sponsorships to regional SotM conferences |
We have received emails from organisers of regional SotMs (e.g. SotM Rwanda 2024 and SotM Oceania 2024) which are enquiring about the status of the transfers.
Roland has a backlog, due to being offline until January 6th, 2025. The transfers will likely take place tomorrow or on Sunday.
Treasurer's to do list includes:
- Various invoices awaiting processing
- DMCA renewal
- SotM Rwanda 2024 conference reimbursement
- SotM Oceania 2024 conference reimbursement
Facilitating the Meta sponsorship to SotM Japan in 2025
Board internal reference: https://gitlab.com/osmfoundation/board/-/issues/730
Post-meeting note: The conference will take place in 2025.
The OSMF received the documents from the organisers yesterday, so a board vote is needed.
Action item
Héctor to create a circular for OSMF facilitating the Meta sponsorship to SotM Japan.
2025 Annual General Meeting - setting the date
Board internal reference: https://gitlab.com/osmfoundation/board/-/issues/732
On timing
- The board usually sets the Annual General Meeting (AGM) date in the fall _(northern hemisphere)_.
- Board members were asked to identify any major holidays, such as Thanksgiving or Hanukkah, that should be avoided between November and December.
Suggestions
- Hold the AGM in October, to allow sufficient time for preparing the 2026 budget.
- October 18th was suggested, but it is close to the SotM 2025 conference, which will likely take place from 3-5 October 2025.
Other points mentioned during discussion
- Dorothea has proposed a timeline of the 2025 board election, on the board GitLab repository.
Action item
Dani and Dorothea to finalise the 2025 AGM date.
External formal appeal for OSMF Board intervention on moderation inaction
Not publicly minuted.
The board subcommittee (Héctor, Laura and Maurizio) that is looking into the issue of the appeal, is waiting for a response from the moderation team for talk and osmf-talk mailing lists and 3 categories on community.osm.org.
Board 2025 face-to-face meeting
| Background |
|---|
| The board is looking into having a face-to-face board meeting in 2025.
Board internal reference: hhttps://gitlab.com/osmfoundation/board/-/issues/717 Previous board discussion:
|
On facilitator
- Many of the previous meetings were facilitated by Allen Gunn (Gunner) of Aspiration Tech.
- The board should be mindful of Gunner's availability, who will likely travel from California.
On selection of city
- Héctor has conducted research on potential locations and mentioned that he has proposals for cities in Western Europe, such as Rome, as well as Istanbul.
- Location should be cost-effective in terms of travel.
Decisions seemed to be
- Dani to create a poll with potential weekends for the face-to-face meeting, starting March 2025.
- Héctor to take the lead on the locations, as requested by Dani.
- Maurizio to look for a potential venue near him.
- Dani to contact hotels, once the city has been selected.
Other points mentioned during discussion
- Last year we had a meeting room at a youth hostel.
Any other business
OSMF participation in SotM Latam 2024 conference
Topic mentioned by Dani.
- Dani submitted her expenses for her participation as a Director in SotM Latam 2024. These have been approved by Roland, as visible on the Xero book-keeping platform, and Michelle Heydon (OSMF accountant) will pay them.
- Dani wants to publish a post on blog.osm.org about SotM Latam 2024 and what we and the community have gained from the conference. She started a collaborative document with participants' thoughts and offered to share it with the board.
Guillaume joined ~30 minutes after start and Roland briefly mentioned the topics that had been discussed so far.
Recurring time of board meetings and chats
Topic mentioned by Guillaume.
Guillaume cannot join before 09:00 local (NY).
December 2024 osm.org outage write-up
Topic mentioned by Guillaume.
Discussion on the OWG write-up about the December 2024 three-day osm.org outage.
Other points mentioned
- Dani and Craig had a meeting with Grant.
- Sarah is the technical manager of Grant, for project-specific items.
- The internet provider responsible for the 3-day outage will reimburse us with USD 63.60
- Tom, Grant and Andy are working to get the second data center closer to a hot spare.
- One year ago we didn't have out-of-band access, but we do now.
Consensus seemed to be
- Dani and Guillaume to work together to see what can be provided by the OWG as a write-up on the outage.
- Dani to provide to the board Grant's draft report on the outage, after the meeting with Grant and Sarah tomorrow.
- Guillaume to prepare the resolution for the January board meeting.
- The board to wait for the meeting of Tom Hughes (OWG volunteer), Grant Slater (SSRE) and Andy Allan (volunteer osm.org maintainer) during the Karlsruhe Hack Weekend and see what they propose for dealing with such outages.
Chat ended ~ 50 minutes after start.