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PSF Meeting Minutes for Oct. 17, 2011

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The Python Software Foundation
Minutes of a Regular Meeting of the Board of Directors

October 17, 2011


A regular meeting of the Python Software Foundation ("PSF") Board of Directors was held over Internet Relay Chat beginning at 16:00 UTC, 17 October 2011. Steve Holden presided at the meeting. Pat Campbell prepared the minutes.

All votes are reported in the form "Y-N-A" (in favor — opposed — abstentions; e.g. "5-1-2" means "5 in favor, 1 opposed, and 2 abstentions").

1   Attendance

The following members of the Board of Directors (9 of ll) were present at the meeting: Raymond Hettinger, Steve Holden, Marc-Andre Lemburg, Doug Napoleone, Jesse Noller, Tim Peters, Allison Randal, Jeff Rush, and Gloria Willadsen. Also in attendance were Kurt Kaiser (Treasurer) and Pat Campbell (Secretary & Administrator).

2   Minutes of Past Meetings

The 19 September 2011 Board meeting minutes were voted on and approved.

RESOLVED, that the minutes of September 19, 2011 should be accepted as a fair and accurate record of the meeting.

Approved, 8-0-1.

3   Votes Taken Between Meetings

There were no votes taken between meetings.

4   Treasurer Report

The monthly Treasurer's Report was provided to Board members by K. Kaiser prior to the Board meeting and produced from Quickbooks Online.

Here is an exerpt from the treasurer's report on a few of the activities the treasurer has been focused on:

"YTD income was down by 13K in September. Please refer to the P&L for the full details. Some highlights:

AR is down by 18K due to PyCon 2012 Sponsor invoicing/collection activity.

Donations for the month were $483.

Grants:
Miro Community $ 900 PyTexas 750 PyCon UK 1,500 Python Brasil 1,600 PyCon Argentina 1,500
Outside Expenses:
Wendroff $1,150

We continued invoicing PyCon 2012 Sponsors and began collecting receipts. We're well into the process, as can be seen by a further 104K increase in Deferred Revenue and a matching increase in our current asset account balance."

Kurt concludes his report with a list of financial business items he will be focused on, he said:

"My focus is on PSF Sponsor invoicing, Federal taxes, PyCon invoicing, the Associate Member program, and AR reduction. I'm also looking into fiscal sponsorship issues."

Board Discussion:

S. Holden: "Our total equity remains satisfactory, and with luck, the next PyCon is going to bring a boost to our funds and reserves."

5   Progress Reports

The following board reports were submitted to the board mailing list one week prior to this month's meeting. Please see a summary of each board report listed below and a possible board discussion at the end of the report(s):

5.1   Communication Status

D. Hellmann, Communication Officer, reported on continued activities from last month. He said:

1. Send announcement email about the blog to various mailing lists (c.l.py, c.l.py.announce, etc.).

No progress.

Doug also reported on new activities for the month. The list of activities included the following:

  1. PyCon PL Grant by Paulo Nuin

    http://pyfound.blogspot.com/2011/09/psf-grants-pycon-pl-2011.html

  2. WebOb Port Grant by Mike Driscoll

    http://pyfound.blogspot.com/2011/09/psf-provides-grant-to-port-webob.html

  3. Van Lindberg Community Service Award announcement by Paulo Nuin

    http://pyfound.blogspot.com/2011/09/van-lindberg-receives-psf-community.html

  4. Benjamin Peterson Community Service Award announcement by Paulo Nuin

    http://pyfound.blogspot.com/2011/09/benjamin-peterson-receives-psf.html

  5. Laura Creighton Community Service Award announcement

    http://pyfound.blogspot.com/2011/10/laura-creighton-receives-psf-community.html

  6. Tarek Ziadé Community Service Award announcement

    http://pyfound.blogspot.com/2011/10/tarek-ziade-receives-psf-community.html

  7. Nick Coghlan Community Service Award announcement

    http://pyfound.blogspot.com/2011/10/nick-coghlan-receives-psf-community.html

  8. Arc Riley Community Service Award announcement

    http://pyfound.blogspot.com/2011/10/arc-riley-receives-psf-community.html

  9. PyCon 2012 proposal deadline announcement

    http://pyfound.blogspot.com/2011/10/pycon-2012-proposals-due-12-oct.html

As far as the ongoing projects for the month are concerned, he reported:

  1. Recruiting other people to help write for the blog.

    A few volunteers have expressed interest, but things are getting off to a slow start. I hope to have some more interesting topics to give them after the August Board meeting.

  2. Mike Driscoll is working on a retrospective post summarizing all of the funding we have provided for conferences over the last year. We will wait to publish until closer to the end of 2011.

For tabled activities, D. Hellmann said:

  1. PyCon video equipment loan/rental program post

    There was some discussion of offering the PyCon video equipment to PUGs for their meetings, but the mechanism to do it isn't in place, yet.

5.3   Infrastructure Committee

S. Reifschneider, Infrastructure Committee Chair, reported on continued activities from last month. He wrote:

  • Hosting Project: Discussions are still ongoing with regards to OSU/OSL and other hosting provider (whos name I can never remember). Plans are percolating.

  • Arc Riley has transferred and renewed domains:

    jython.org Transfer completed 2011/Sep/22 planetpython.org Renewal completed 2011/Jun/23 jythonbook.org Transfer completed 2011/Mar/12 jythonbook.com Transfer completed 2011/Mar/12 pythonpulse.org Transfer completed 2011/Mar/12 pythonpulse.com Transfer completed 2011/Mar/12 planetpython.org Transfer completed 2010/Jun/23

  • Arc Riley does not have a contact for the ironpython domains.

  • The pound-python.org domain contact cannot be reached, Arc is giving up on this.

Sean also reported on the new activities for the month. H said:

  • Arc Riley is transferring jython domains to the new registration regime so that the Board doesn't have to deal with them.

The activities planned for next month included:

  • Continue on migration of services to their new homes.

  • Arc Riley is planning to transfer these domains yet:

    jython.com jython.net psfb.org psfmember.com psfmember.net psfmember.org python3.org

As far as the ongoing and the tabled activities are concerned, Sean reported:

  • None

5.4   Marketing Material

M.A. Lemburg, Marketing Material Project Manager, provided a summary of his work. He said:

The project is lead by Marc-André Lemburg who is in contact with the people behind the Plone brochure created by the German Zope User Group (DZUG): Jan Ulrich Hasecke and Armin Stroß-Radschinski.

We started working on the concept a few weeks after World Plone Day in April 2010 and had several meetings and conference calls to take the idea forward.

For more details, please see the brochure support site at:

http://brochure.getpython.info/learn-more

Marc-André also reported on the progress of this project when he said:

We have met up to discuss layouts and progress on getting text and image data from the leads. Progress on that is still slow, but the material is starting to trickle in.

Due to this lag time, we had to adjust the schedule for print and are now looking to have the first edition out and printed in time for Python US 2012. This means that we can accept success stories for the printed version until end of October or early November.

Layout, getting approval and translation will then take up most of November and December.

In January, we'll get the brochure printed, so that the 1500 copies reserved for PyCon US 2012 can be sent out in time for the conference.

In the next few weeks, we'll also set up the sponsorship signup and payment pages on the support website and start to actively look for sponsors.

These are the available sponsorship plans we have available:

http://brochure.getpython.info/sponsorship

and here's the media data for the brochure:

http://brochure.getpython.info/mediadata

Esp. the reference entry sponsorships should be interesting for smaller Python companies:

http://brochure.getpython.info/mediadata/reference-entry-guidelines

Registration for sponsorship will be open until end of November.

M.A Lemberg reported on the current issues the project is faced with. He said:

As always, additional help in finding interesting projects would be greatly appreciated. Please consider signing up as contact scout:

http://brochure.getpython.info/signup/contact-scout-signup

and, if you're interested in the project, please consider signing up to our newsletter:

http://brochure.getpython.info/

Thanks !

As far as future plans are concerned, he reported:

If the project goes well, we'll follow up with a Python flyer, translated versions of the brochure and also consider creating marketing material more targeted at specific user groups or application fields.

In the long run, we'd also like to take the idea of producing marketing material beyond printed material and develop booth setups, giveaways, CDs, etc. to support conference organizers and local user groups wishing to promote Python at their events.

Board Meeting Discussion:

S. Holden: "M.A. Lemburg, do you think the marketing project needs help, or can you find all the input you need?"

M. A. Lemburg: "We are having problems getting the leads to submit usable content, but I don't think anyone can really help with that. We'll be in touch once we have the sponsoring page with payment options set up."

S. Holden: "Okay. There is a Brazilian media company that has replaced a large amount of its infrastructure with Python, can give you a contact if you need one."

M. A. Lemburg: "Yes, please. We could use some more media related success stories. If you know more in the marketing sector that would be a plus as well."

5.5   Moving PyPI to Amazon CloudFront

The project leader, M.A. Lemburg, Moving PyPI to Amazon CloudFront, reported on progress for the month:

"The project is currently on hold, since the team members don't have time to put into this."

In terms of having any issues surrounding his project, M. A. Lemburg reported no issues except one: he said, he just does not have enough time to devote to his Moving PyPI to Amazon CloudFront project.

    1. Lemburg also reported on future plans for the project:

"Check to see whether a trigger based approach to S3 syncing wouldn't be easier to implement right from the start."

5.6   PyCon Chair

J. Noller, PyCon Chair, provided us with information on when and where the next two PyCon US conferences will be held, in addition to the web location of the official PyCon 2012. Please see below:

PyCon 2012: March 7th — 15th, Santa Clara, CA PyCon 2013: March 11th — 21st, Santa Clara, CA Official Site: http://us.pycon.org/2012

He also provided "notes" for this month. He said:

We are officially capping registration at 1500 attendees. The team feels that this is beneficial to the conference as a whole, and allows us to maintain the feel PyCon has grown into. We also feel this will encourage other regional conferences to grow in turn.

I am working on a draft document to present to the board of directors that clarifies PyCon's position as a key fundraising entity for the Foundation. As the planning and execution of PyCon 2012 has continued, this has become more and more true. More later; some thoughts here: http://jessenoller.com/2011/09/23/pycon-2012-sponsorship-making-the-case-for-sponsorship/

For the month of October, Jesse reported on "Issues and blockages." He said:

1. We are still waiting on AV/Recording vendor responses to our request for quotes. This is a concern - I'd like to lock these contracts down quickly, but can not make the bidding parties move more quickly.

As far as the continued activities from last month, he reported:

1. Sponsors continue to line up for PyCon 2012: We have now achieved a record 64 sponsors signed up. I continue to drive efforts on this front. We have closed the Diamond level sponsors (3) as well as the Lanyard levels. We will close Platinum at 10 total, and leave Gold and Silver and FOSS open.

  1. Financial updates will be sent to the private board list.

3. CTE negotiations and discussions have completed. We are now entering the registration implementation phase.

  1. Room commission rate negotiations with the Hyatt are done.

5. The on-site visit with the Hyatt and the Convention center are complete. The space looks amazing and the staff has been exceedingly friendly and polite.

6. The call for proposals for PyCon 2012 has closed - We broke all records on the number of talks (374 as of this writing) and tutorials (89). The Program Committee is staffing up and beginning to do reviews. See: http://pycon.blogspot.com/2011/10/pycon-2012-announcing-new-diamond.html

7. Management of the program guide has been passed off to Yannick, Ewa, Van and Doug N. Idan Gazit has been tapped to do the artwork for the Program Guide and T-Shirts.

  1. Negotiations with Elegant Stitches are ongoing.

9. Reached out to PyLadies, and other organizations to help put together a plan for talk mentorship; and a potential dedicated diversity grant fund for PyCon. This discussion is ongoing, and currently sitting in my court.

10. Site fixes and improvements continue - Eldarion has been amazing through this process and exceedingly responsive to needs and changes.

Jesse also listed three (3) new activities for the month. Please see below:

  1. Ramp up of the Program Committee.
  2. Resolve book store negotiations.
  3. Get solid quotes on t-shirt costs.

The last two PyCon US items reported on by Jesse were the "planned for next month" where he listed two (2) items and included a list of the "current Heads/Staff for PyCon 2012."

[see above]

  1. Continue sponsor drive.

2. Push on registration integration with CTE completion and launch ASAP. There is a lot of pent-up demand for registration to open.

Current Heads/Staff for PyCon 2012

Chair: Jesse Noller Co-Chair: Yannick Gingras Accountant/Sponsors: Van Lindberg

Event Coordinator: Ewa Jodlowska/CTE Public Relations Lead: Brian Curtin

Tech Lead: Doug Napoleone Tech Co-Lead: Noah Kantrowtiz

Volunteer Lead: TBD

Program Committee Chair: Jacob Kaplan-Moss Program Committee Co-Chair: Tim Lesher

Tutorials Chair: Stuart Williams Tutorials Co-Chair: TBD

Posters Chair: Vern Ceder Tutorials Co-Chair: Zac Miller

Financial Aide Chair: Peter Kropf Financial Aide Co-Chair: TBD

However, under "tabled activities," he provided the following:

None

Board Meeting Discussion:

  1. Noller: "Does anyone have any PyCon related questions for me?"
  1. Rush: "The status of AV negotiations, perhaps?"
  1. Noller: "See my report, I have yet to get anything from any vendor."

S. Holden: "Let me know if I can help at all -- perhaps inquire of other vendors?"

  1. Noller: "I plan on chasing AV down in the next 20 days."
  1. Holden: "The sponsor recruitment is going amazingly well."
  1. Noller: "Total Sponsorship: $324000."

5.7   Sprint Committee

J. Noller, Sprint Committee Chair, provided a summary of activities for this month, he reported:

Three sprint events occurred this month, which we're currently working on reimbursing. We've also picked up a new opportunity to help a UK based group by sponsoring the travel costs for a core CPython developer to join them for a sprint.

As far as the continued activities for the month, he reported:

None

On his report of the new activities for the month, J. Noller said:

PyCon UK, PyCon Finland, and the Boston Twisted sprints all occurred this month, and we've received UK's reimbursement request which we're processing. Finland and Boston occurred just a few days ago so we're waiting to receive their details.

We're also working out the details of sponsoring a sprint for Python Sheffield in the UK. The user group and myself have talked with CPython developer Tim Golden about travelling from London to Sheffield to educate them on the processes and examples of contributing to core, and he's on board with doing it. There's no set date yet, but we'll be working with Tim on how to cover his train expense to get there.

Since there was no "new business" to be discussed or voted on in the October 2011 board meeting, S. Holden took the opportunity to extend a hand by asking fellow board members and officers if they had any specific issues they wanted to discuss.

The board meeting ended with a brief discussion on the available space and the floor plan at the convention center in Santa Clara, CA where the 2012 PyCon will be held.

7   Adjournment

  1. Holden adjourned the meeting at 16:33 UTC.