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PSF Meeting Minutes for July 16, 2012

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

July 16, 2012

A regular meeting of the Python Software Foundation ("PSF") Board of Directors was held over Group Video Calling via Skype and Internet Relay Chat beginning at 16:00 UTC, on 16 July 2012. Van Lindberg presided over 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").

Contents

1   Attendance

The following members of the Board of Directors (6 of ll) were present at the meeting: Brian Curtin, Marc-Andre Lemburg, Van Linberg, Jesse Noller, Jessica McKellar, and Tim Peters. Also in attendance were Kurt Kaiser (Treasurer) and Pat Campbell (Secretary/Administrator).

2   Minutes of Past Meetings

The 18 June 2012 Board meeting minutes were voted on and approved.

RESOLVED, that we approve the minutes at http://mail.python.org/ mailman/private/psf-board/2012-July/018377.html as representing a true and accurate record of the June 2012 meeting.

Approved, 6-0-0.

3   Votes Taken Between Meetings

There were no votes taken between meetings.

4   Votes Taken Over Email

There were two votes taken over email:

4.1   PyCon UK 2012 Conference Grant

RESOLVED, that the PSF provide conference grant funding of USD $2320 to sponsor the PyCon UK Conference 2012, to be held in Coventry UK, and sprints held at the conference.

Approved on 2012-07-26, 11-0-0.

RESOLVED, that the PSF provide funding of UKL £300 (approximately $450) to provide the PyCon UK Conference 2012 with ten Model B Raspberry Pis.

Approved on 2012-07-18, 11-0-0.

5   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:

For the month of June 2012, the treasurer provided a sumation of the financial activities by saying:

Our net assets were down by 1K in June to 699K.

Accounts Receivable was down by 35K, reflecting payments by PyCon and PSF sponsors.

He reported on the revenue and expense below:

Revenue:

Donations for the month were $2,059.

Grants/Sprints:

Software Freedom Conservancy $5,000 PyPy STM PyCamp Argentina 350 PyCon Philippines 580 SciPy 2012 1,375

Expense:

Outside Services:
Wendroff 1,150

The treasurer goes on to say:

In the month of June, YTD income was down by 1K.

The fraud attack on our donation system continues to require a lot of time to resolve with our payment processors, but the attack itself has been halted.

Concerning the Associate Member Program (AM), he said:

Associate Member program:

The Associate Membership program was featured at EuroPython. An improvement was made to the navigation following site registration.

The website is available to accept Associate Member registrations. We still need to link psfmember.org to python.org, improve the attractiveness of the offering by adding content on python.org relating to the Associate Membership, and make the community aware of the opportunity.

Kurt concluded his report with a list of items the treasurer's office will be focused on, he said:

My focus is on AR/AP reduction, the increased activity and strong interest in fiscal sponsorship shown at PyCon, and the annual Federal Tax filing.

6   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):

6.1   Communication Status

B. Curtin, Communications Officer, reported on continued activities from last month. He said:

1. We're going to gather up details from all of the committees and initiatives around the PSF and put together somewhat of a newsletter. This was previously just going to be a sprints thing, then O&E, then PyCon kicked up, so it's snowballing into everything, which is a good opportunity to cover how the first half of 2012 went for the foundation.

Brian also reported on the new activities for the month. He said:

Mike Driscoll wrote up two posts on our recent sponsorship of several conferences. The first covered EuroPython, PyCon AU, Kiwi PyCon, and PyCon Argentina. The second covered the first PyCon Philippines.

He reported the following information on the planned activities for next month:

1. Now that Lincoln Loop has responded to the interview request, we'll be writing about them as a new sponsor member.

2. Now that we have pictures of the booth from EuroPython, we will be writing up questions to Marc-Andre Lemburg about the PSF conference kits. We'd like to cover what the plans are for them.

3. We will be reaching out to Armin Rigo to ask about our funding of PyPy's STM project, how it's going, how the sponsorship will help, etc.

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

1. Pending the return of several interview questions, we have posts in the queue introducing Van Lindberg as chairman, Ewa Jodlowska as PSF Event Coordinator, and details of the relationship between OSU/OSL (due to our donation to them).

2. As details surface about the Raspberry Pi purchase and distribution, we'll be writing about them. A plan for distribution is due out soon which we'll be following.

3. Brian Curtin is working on a post about the video equipment purchased by the PSF and how it has been used to record conference talks and other events.

For tabled activities, B. Curtin 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.

6.2   Google Summer of Code (GSoC)

A. Riley, Google Summer of Code (GSoC), reported on the issues and/or blockages this program is currently faced with. He reported:

  1. There were some permissions issues in Melange (the Django-based software that runs Google's Summer of Code site) which prevented a few mentors from entering their midterm evaluations themselves, I and other mentors had to do so on their behalf.
  2. Two mentors needed to be reminded directly regarding the deadline, one had changed his email, another was in the middle of a move. All evaluations were completed on time.
  3. One student dropped out due to other commitments.

Arc also reported on the continued activities from last month when he wrote:

  1. Google Summer of Code 2012 work continues.
  1. Riley reported on new activities for the month. He wrote:

    None.

As far as the planned activities for next month, he reported:

None.

Additionally, Arc reported on "ongoing projects" with the GSoC project and on "tabled activities", respectively:

6.2.1   Ongoing Projects

Summer of Code 2012 will be ongoing until August.

6.2.2   Tabled Activities

1. Discussion with rejected mentors regarding why they were not accepted this year. This was again delayed due to involved parties being on vacation.

6.3   Infrastructure Committee (IC)

N. Kantrowitz,Infrastructure Committee Co-Chair, reported on continued activities from last month. He wrote:

Still bringing the new server cluster fully online. Several major services have already been moved from Dinsdale to the private cloud at OSL. I would like to give a very public round of applause for Martin, who has taken ownership of several of the more gnarly service moves and is generally being awesome. We have also formally relinquished control of Ximenez and sent it to the great datacenter in the sky.

Noah also reported on the new activities that are planned for this month. He said:

Working with OSL to improve their (and therefore our) Postgres cluster with some additional hardware donations.

In addition, he reported on the activities that are planned for next month. He said:

Continuing the evacuation of Dinsdale and improving our global services. Also working with Sean to continue to improve our backup system.

As far as the "ongoing" activities are concerned, he reported:

Service migrations.

Noah reported on "tabled activities" in the final section of his report. He said:

Our first potential external guest project, pydoc.net, is currently on hold pending some improvements to his codebase.

6.4   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 his project when he said:

We showed a pre-production version of the brochure at EuroPython and people were very excited about the project. We've made quite a few contacts to potential ad and reference listing sponsors as well as for subscription and educational sponsorships.

The new PSF booth has helped a lot with getting the attendees attention.

We're now following up with the new contacts and at the same time working on getting the final approval from the content providers. We also plan to put more emphasis on actively marketing the brochure on mailing lists, blogs, etc.

Here's the link to the PDF of the teaser version, in case you missed it: http://brochure.getpython.info/media/flyer/python-brochure-pycon-us-2012-teaser-booklet/view

The online payment solution has been up since the start of PyCon US 2012 in March. There are only a few ads places left, but we do still have quite a few reference listings available and would really like to fill them with Python consulting companies around the world (not just Germany :-)).

If you are interested in signing up as reference sponsor or know someone who might be interested, please refer them to the brochure site:

http://brochure.getpython.info/

Once we have the sponsors all signed up, we'll go to print with the brochure and have it distributed to the ad sponsors, reference sponsors, subscription sponsors and Python conferences, user groups, etc. via on-demand shipping.

If you are the lead of a local user group, conference, educational institution and interested in receiving boxes with the brochure delivered to you at no additional costs, please contact the PSF or our team directly via brochure at getpython.info.

6.4.2   Educational Sponsorship

In case you missed it in the last report: we have also added a new sponsor option: the educational sponsorship.

This works much like the subscription sponsorship where a company can order extra brochure copies at very reasonable prices. The difference is that companies can order extra copies for educational institutions of their choice or of the PSF's choice. The bill will be paid by the company and the boxes will go straight to the institution.

6.4.3   Please Help find Sponsors

If you know possible sponsors or are interested in sponsoring the brochure yourself, please check the available sponsorship plans we have available:

http://brochure.getpython.info/sponsorship

If you have questions, please ping me directly or write to brochure at getpython.info.

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

If you know of interesting projects or companies using Python to great things, please contact us and consider signing up as contact scout to provide on-site help at conferences or other events:

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 the future plans for this project are concerned, he reported:

If the project goes well, we'll follow up with a second edition of the brochure, Python flyers using material extracted from the brochure, 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.

6.5   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."

According to M. A. Lemburg, there is nothing new to report for this month. He said:

"I'm beginning to believe that doing a sprint of sorts would likely be the best way to move this forward, but I currently don't have more cycles to spare (the brochure project has turned out to be very work intense), so can't lead such an effort at the moment.

I'm currently looking for a new project lead with more time available."

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 the future plans for this project:

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

6.6   Outreach and Education Committee (OEC)

J. McKellar, Outreach and Education Committee Vice-Chair, provided committee activities to be reported on for the month of July.

Please see Jessica's report below:

6.6.1   Grant proposals

  • Covering PyLadies materials @ OSCON

    Lynn Root requested funds to cover PyLadies promotional materials at OSCON 2012, which is running the week of July 16th in Portland, Oregon. No receipts were ever submitted for a $1,220 grant made by the Board to PyLadies on 05Jun11, so that allocation was reused to cover this request.

6.6.2   Discussions

6.6.3   Updates on previous grants

6.7   PyCon Chair Report

J. Noller, PyCon Chair, provided us with information on when and where the next PyCon US conference will be held, in addition to the web location of the official PyCon 2013. Please see below:

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

Jesse reported on "Issues and blockages." He said:

  • None

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

  • None

Jesse also listed the new activities for the month. Please see below:

  • PyCon 2013 is in full launch mode (https://us.pycon.org/2013/). We have fully launched with 26 sponsors, and growing. The call for proposals is live and we are getting proposals.

The last item reported on by Jesse was the activities "planned for next month" where he listed the four (4) items below:

  • Wrap up budget planning, get board approval
  • Continue driving sponsorship
  • Get phase two website (program committee tools) in place
  • Email out CFP to all the places

He also concluded his report with the following "notes":

"Ewa's monthly report will be sent separately from this."

6.8   PSF Event Coordinator

E. Jodlowska, PSF Event Coordinator, reported on her activity involvement with "Other PSF Conferences". She reported on the following:

Other PSF Conferences

  • Attended EuroPython. My notes on EuroPython follow.

    They have booths in a tent that does not have air conditioning. Do not put sponsor booths outside in a tent during 95 degree weather. The space allocations have to be revisited.

    The sponsor booth are in a section that does not receive consistent traffic... only at opening. Breaks are in a separate part of area. They have buffet style lunches. They work well. Should consider putting in Sponsor area.

    They have bright staff shirts. PyCon needs to bring those back!!

    They have help desks for a variety of Python Projects... we should attempt this for popular ones at least.

    They have tutorials during the conference. We may want to consider this for the future (maybe have one tutorial day prior the conference and the rest spread out during the conference) because then PyCon itself will not be as long as then we do not need to rent space/rooms over so many days. Just an idea to think about.

    Most of my time I have spent at the PSF booth sweating. The Associate Members category is a good idea. But it has to be revisited. By joining you support the PSF, that is a given. But there have to be some benefits added in order to sell this. Otherwise people can just give donations instead of becoming associate members. I strongly believe this should be changed. The signing up process for Associate Members needs to be changed as well. This I have addressed with MAL and he has asked Andrew to change it.

    The feeling of EuroPython is very similar to PyCon. At least outside of talks. People hang around, code, talk, discuss ideas, etc. Identical to PyCon.

    I do not know the statistics, but it seems to me that the gap between male and female attendance is a lot larger than at PyCon. Lynn from PyLadies is here though and also doing a huge talk this afternoon about this issue

    As a side note... for AM breaks they only serve sweet stuff. I think we worry too much about people complaining about our food ;)

    Had a good talk with Giovanni (conference chair) about EuroPython. We discussed many things. They fear moving the conference to another committee. They have financial fears that need to be changed so each committee is not purely responsible for the possibility of going bankrupt Culture and language barriers were discussed.

    We will be making a EuroPython committee to be a constant for the conference in order to keep the knowledge bank and distribute it to next committees. Laura Creighton used to run this committee but she is stepping down this year. We are meeting about it at 6:30pm. I have joined the group as an advisor.

Ewa also reported on other event activities for the month. Please see the following report:

6.8.1   PyCon AV Management

Nothing to Report for June 2012

6.8.2   PyCon Budgeting

I have finished and finalized the budget for 2013

6.8.3   PyCon Catering

  • Have begun the process for getting menus ready for 2013. These will be posted online on the registration website and should probably be posted somewhere on the PyCon 2013 website.
  • I have started working with ARAMARK on this. I am hoping to stay to the 2012 prices.

6.8.4   PyCon Contract Negotiations

  • 2014 contract with the Convention Center has been signed. I have asked for an electronic copy to be sent to me. I am still waiting on this. I have also signed an addendum in order to move some space around and to prolong access to certain rooms.
  • CTE contract has been negotiated and signed for 2013.
  • Working on signing the contract for new decorator that will replace Freeman. Should be signed this following month.

6.8.5   PyCon Electrical

Nothing to Report for June 2012

6.8.6   PyCon Exhibit Hall

  • It has been decided this month that we will have the buffet lunch and the expo hall going together. The wall between Exhibit Hall A and B will be removed for lunch Friday-Sunday.

6.8.7   PyCon Financial Aid

Nothing to Report for June 2012

6.8.8   Future Event Planning

Nothing to Report for June 2012

6.8.9   PyCon Hotel/CC Management

Nothing to Report for June 2012

6.8.10   PyCon Housing Management

A contract has been signed for 2013 with CTE. I will be the only contact between the PSF and CTE in order to help keep things running smoothly.

6.8.11   PyCon Internet

Nothing to Report for June 2012

6.8.12   PyCon Printing

Nothing to Report for May 2012

6.8.13   PyCon Registration Management

A contract has been negotiated and signed for 2013 with CTE.

6.8.14   PyCon Site Visits

Report on Montreal Site Visit follows

6.8.14.1   City

The city is amazing! There are endless things to do and great food to try. The venue page will be swamped with information. Most of the hotels we looked at have underground tunnels connecting them to the convention center so if we get bad weather, most people do not have to go out into it if they do not want to. There are many areas with plenty of food options in walking distance from the convention center.

6.8.14.2   The Convention Center

This is a huge Convention Center. We are spread out between a few floors, but I think we can make it work because the structure of the building is straight forward unlike the Santa Clara Convention Center. We have to be very careful to make signage and maps clear. Below is the break down:

On the 2nd Level we have the Exhibit Hall space. It is very large. It was intended for our lunches, but onsite I switched (signed addendum for it) what we reserved for the expo hall to the large space on the 2nd level. I think it would be wise to put registration outside of this area. We also decided on having the buffet lunch in the same area as the exhibits. The space that used to be the expo hall on the 4th floor will now be a break out room for our conference sessions. On the 4th Level we have the green room. On the 5th Level we have the tutorial rooms and the sprint rooms. We also have breakouts on this level along with the plenary. On the 7th Level we have two breakouts.

6.8.14.3   The Hotels

These hotels are all within walking distance. I walked to every single one of them. Additionally, there are under ground tunnels that will take you from the hotels to the Convention Center and vice versa. All of the hotels below are Free Internet for all of our attendees.
6.8.14.3.1   Hyatt Regency [169$ CDN]
The farthest away. It is a nice hotel just like the one in Santa Clara. In my option, if they do not lower it to $149, we shouldn't get any rooms there. Not worth the walking.
6.8.14.3.2   Holiday Inn Select [163$ CDN]
The quality of the hotel is not worth the nightly rate. Maybe if it was $90/night then it would be considered.
6.8.14.3.3   Le Dauphin - [158$ CDN]
This is perfect for our attendees. It is contemporary, clean, close, and at a good rate. I want to take all of their rooms. Unfortunately, they only have about 100 of them.
6.8.14.3.4   InterContinental [179$ CDN]
Across the street from the CC. This property is a 4 diamond property. They are willing to work out an early bird price for us that is 179$ CDN ($176 USD) up to 60 days prior and then 199$ CDN after that (with a two year contract). There is going to be a one night guarantee charged and that is also the penalty for the cancellations. Beautiful property though and great food. Corporate attendees will love it. I think getting this place to 169$ CDN would be a great deal. I am working on this.
6.8.14.3.5   The Westin [243$ CDN]
Across the street from the CC. This is a nice property. They may lower to $179. It is a nice property, but the InterContinental is much fancier so I do not think they should be the same price. I will see if I can lower it another $10/night.
6.8.14.3.6   Le Place D'Armes [196$ CDN]
Great place, but working to get a lower price. A few rooms at this hotel would be nice, but not huge block. (they do not have many to offer anyways)
6.8.14.3.7   The Delta [149$ CDN]
This property used to be a Hyatt so it looks very similar to what our attendees are familiar with. This property has good food. It is $149 CDN per night and about a 5 minute walk to the Convention Center. I definitely want to get a decent room block at this hotel. It's not super modern like the Hyatt in Montreal, but it is A LOT cheaper and it is an average property.

6.8.15   PyCon Sponsors

  • The prospectus has been finalized and is being circulated
  • Sponsors started being signed up this month.

6.8.16   PyCon Website Management

  • PyCon 2013 website was prepared and finished this month. It was launched July 9th.

6.9   Sprint Committee (SC)

B. Curtin, Sprint Committee Chair, reported that there were no issues or blockages surrounding any sprint activities for the month.

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

None

On his report of the new activities for the month, he reported:

This was our biggest month yet by a long shot. We sponsored five sprints at an estimated $1200, which on paper puts us a hair over budget. Because of that, a resolution was proposed for the 2012-07-16 board meeting to replenish the Sprints budget with another $5000.

In terms of the new activities planned for next month. He wrote:

Publicity on what we supported with the first $5000 grant (likely on the PSF blog first, then covered on pythonsprints.com), along with outreach and what we hope to cover in the future (if the resolution is passed).

As far as the ongoing projects and the tabled activities for this committee, he reported:

None

7   Fiscal Sponsorship for PyLadies

RESOLVED, that the PSF provide fiscal sponsorship for the "direct project" PyLadies. The PSF will collect targeted donations and reimburse properly receipted expenses on their behalf up to the level of the donations made to this project. This project must not represent that they are independent legal entities.

Approved, 6-0-0.

8   2012 PyCon India Conference Funding

RESOLVED, that the PSF provide funding of USD 3,000 to sponsor the PyCon India Conference to be held in Bangalore.

Approved, 6-0-0.

9   Membership Application for DreamHost

RESOLVED, that the board recommends DreamHost as a new pending sponsor member.

Approved, 6-0-0.

10   Engage Kilburn and Strode as UK Counsel

RESOLVED, that the PSF engage Kilburn and Strode as UK counsel for at least the following items: 1) Register the PSF's marks in the United Kingdom and Europe, including "Python," the two-snakes logo, and the "Python Software Foundation; 2) file an opposition to the use of the term "Python" by the owners of Python.co.uk.

Approved,6-0-0.

11   Earth Class Mail

RESOLVED, that the PSF engage Earth Class Mail to act as a contact address and letter/package reception point.

This board discussion was tabled until more research & data collection into the Earth Class Mail system was explored in order to provide a better understanding of their mail system and how/why the PSF would want or need to utilize the Earth Class Mail Services.

13   Adjournment

  1. Lindberg adjourned the meeting at 17:00 UTC.