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PSF Meeting Minutes for Feb. 28, 2014

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

February 28, 2014

A regular meeting of the Python Software Foundation ("PSF") Board of Directors was held over Group Conference Call via phone and Internet Relay Chat beginning at 18:00 CET/ 12:00 EST, on February 28, 2014. Van Lindberg presided over the meeting. Ewa Jodlowska prepared the minutes.

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

1   Attendance

The following members of the Board of Directors (08 of 11) were present at the meeting: Van Lindberg, Tim Peters, Brian Curtin, Jessica McKellar, Brett Cannon, Marc-Andre Lemburg, Lynn Root, and Alex Gaynor (joined after the PyCon APAC 2014 vote). Also in attendance was Ewa Jodlowska (Secretary/Administrator).

2   Minutes of Past Meetings

The 14 February 2014 Board meeting minutes were voted on and approved.

RESOLVED, that the PSF approve the minutes at https://mail.python.org/mailman/private/psf-board/2014-February/024460.html as representing a true and accurate record of the February 14, 2014 meeting.

Approved, 6-0-1.

3   Votes Taken Between Meetings

There were no votes taken between meetings.

4   Votes Taken Over Email

There were no votes taken over email.

5   Reports

5.1   Event Coordinator Report

  1. Continued Activities from Last Month
  • Attendee Housing Management: Continuing to monitor rooms with CTE. We have added two more hotels this month and completed maxed out the Westin and the Hyatt. We have added Le Place d?Armes and Hotel Nelligan.
  • Financial Aid Housing Management: We have also send the Financial Aid Housing requests to CTE. It turned out that 32 of those people were not even registered yet so Laurens and I have been reaching out to them this entire week. We are sending a batch of FA housing changes to CTE tonight after gathering the first round of editions/cancellations. Financial Aid will not deal with housing in 2015. We will simply factor in the housing amount into the travel grant.
  • AV Management: Worked with David W. to get him, Frischkorn, and Karine with the CC ready for their site visit. They were able to iron out everything and also decided on not splitting the plenary room into two break outs since it could cause major delays and disruption.
  • Attendee Registration: Sold out, but we are filtering special requests.
  • Childcare: Registration is containing. I have finalized a menu for the childcare group to include two breaks and one lunch per day.
  • Sponsor Reg and Housing: This is continuing. Sponsors are still coming in needing to register and find housing.
  • Expo Hall: The expo floor plan has been finalized this month. Will send to our designer so that it may be included in our printed program.
  • Budgeting: I continue to invoice incoming sponsors and updating the google spreadsheet with invoice numbers. Pushing CTE to resolve outstanding commission.
  • Sponsor Management: I am continuing to answer emails and special requests from sponsors. This month I collected all items needed for the printed program from sponsors. The designer has all of the items and now I will spend next week contacting those that do not have proper files submitted or are missing fonts from their printed ads.
  • Future Planning: Continuing to work on 2016/17. It is really hard to find space for 2016 at this point. We should keep that in mind for next time we go out to bid. Currently working with Portland, New Orleans, and Philadelphia. Denver is still working on getting us the adequate space needed. I plan on doing site visits after PyCon while I am still on the same continent.
  • Edu Summit: I have finalized the location and logistics with the Westin and Naomi Cedar. Everything is set.
  • Board Game Social: Signed with Randolph Pub to host the board room social.
  1. New Activities
  • PyCon Friday Dinners: The staff has launched these with speakers, they are available to add through CTE?s site.
  • 5K: Contract has been signed. Locals are doing a sit visit this weekend. I am working on getting water and tables ordered. Waiting for Kurt to arrange the insurance for the 5K and the Convention Center.
  • Convention Center Management: I created my resume for the entire conference. I worked with Karine (from the CC) for the last two weeks going day by day of each conference day and each room set. We have almost everything finalized, just need to finalize Sprints.
  • Software Carpentry: I have been working on the budget to help them financially with the AM and PM breaks. I also helped them with their space allotment.
  • Signage: I have started working on a list of signs. The coming month I will create the meter board for all of the sessions.
  • Reg Onsite: I have worked with GES to create a working floor plan for reg and swag. This includes a location for swag bag stuffing and storage and distribution. I have also worked with CTE regarding their shipping logistics for the show.
  • Badge: I have started to work on the design. I have sent the access logistics to CTE for input but still need to finalize the design. I will work on this with Diana this coming week.
  • Website: The staff has been working with Caktus and Noah on issues that pop up and also new software needed to export data from the website. This is all complete.
  1. Planned for Next Month
  • Expo Hall: Have to work on finalizing floor plan for Job Fair and Poster Sessions so we can include it in the program.
  • Convention Center Management: Work on logistics for rigging, for placement of power throughout the sessions, and for placement of registration throughout. Will have to create key access assignments for the CC.
  • Software Carpentry: Help their team finalize logistics and F&B for their event.
  • Internet: I am hoping to finalize everything this coming month.
  • T-shirts: Find a vendor for t-shirt printing in Montreal. Waiting to get the design finalized first.
  1. Ongoing Projects
  • Financial Aid
  • Budget: Updating PyCon 2014 budget ledger with invoices that need to be paid and new funding
  • Emails, Emails, Emails. There seems to be a special case for every case :)
  1. Tabled Activities
  • None
  1. Issues / Blockages
  • None

5.2   Administrator Report

  1. Continued Activities from Last Month
  • Worked on project managing for the launch of pydotorg
  • Organized PSF Members? Lunch with the convention center and sent out RSVPs to the members? list.
  • Worked with Van to finalize the Terms and Conditions for PSF Sponsor contracts.
  1. New Activities
  • Signing all of the necessary paper work for PyLadies trademark, PyCon trademark, and two snake logo trademark applications.
  • Managing Van to get a PSF Privacy Policy in place for the new pydotorg :)
  1. Planned for Next Month
  • Finalizing PyCon 2014
  • Working on a PyCon Staff Proposal to the PSF for 2015
  • Plan dinner for PSF Board for Sunday April 13
  1. Ongoing Projects
  • Board Agenda / Minutes: I continue to write up the Board Agenda and keep it up to date. I continue to write up the Board Meeting minutes.

  • Grant and Award Notification: I continue to notify respective parties of board resolutions.

  • Email and Communication: I am continuing to monitor all PSF Board/Members mailing lists also making sure emails are being answered/followed up on. I am continuing to read through all of the email threads that occur on the board/members mailing lists.

  • Contributor Agreements: I continue to collect agreements coming through EchoSign and marking them in bug tracker.

  • PSF Infrastructure (notes combined from weekly meetings):

    Noah - Worked on Tutorial ingestion for the us.pycon.org site. Organizing with Dyn to get SAN up and getting new pydotorg ready to go. Worked with Fastly to get SSL for python.org apex.

    Ernest - Continuing to bring up more PyPI stuff. Worked on better logging and stats on pg. Latency spikes are leveling off, need to keep watching. Trying to get MdP to setup EVote, if there is no response Ernest will try to use the old manual to deploy _something_.

    Donald - Emailed RS for more cloudbux. Packaging.python.org setup proxying to RTD

    Ben - Worked on getting new pydotorg ready to go. Got new infra ready, need to swap DB creds and copy DB from staging. Lots of misc fixes to the new site.

  • Bylaws: the Bylaws were finalized and voted on by the board.

  • pydotorg Redesign: The site launched on February 19. All current items that need updating or fixing on the new site should be directed to the github repository: https://github.com/python/pythondotorg. Other items that the vendors need to get us is how we can determine the rotation amount of logos and success stories.

  1. Tabled Activities
  • PSF Budget: Update the PSF budget with recent spending (since the last time we edited it). I am not going to update the budget because Kurt and I are working on a solution to use from QBOL, which will always provide the current data. We are thinking that this report would be generated monthly and sent to the board. Perhaps Kurt and I will have enough time to go over a good plan onsite during Sprints when it is quieter.
  • Finish updating CiviCRM with current sponsors and canceling those that are outdated. This information is current in my spreadsheet I have created to track PSF sponsor payments. Still working on updating CiviCRM; PyCon duties take up 10 hours of my work day. This may have to wait until after PyCon 2014 and the site visits for 2016/17.
  1. Issues / Blockages
  • None

5.3   Sprint Workgroup Report

  1. Summary
  • No new action.
  1. Issues / Blockages
  • None
  1. Continued Activities from Last Month
  • None, everyone is currently paid and up-to-date
  1. New Activities
  • Nothing new, but keeping an eye on PyCon sprints. Projects are starting to get interested in putting their plans on the wiki, so we're just waiting right now. Brian will put together a blog post for pythonsprints.com to push some additionally publicity from our side.

5.4   Communication Status Report

  1. Summary
  • The website launch and a few recent blog posts have brought some increased readership and people around the web seem to be really happy with these last few pieces of news.
  1. Issues / Blockages
  • None
  1. Continued Activities from Last Month
  • None
  1. New Activities
  • Three new blog posts went out [0][1][2], and the GSOC post[0] has 3,000 views within 24 hours, which is excellent for any of our posts, especially that one.
  • There will be a call to action to rejuvenate this as a committee so we can increase the PSF's profile, because this has mostly become a solo project and has not kept up with the actions of our community and foundation.
  1. Twitter
  • 39.5K followers, up from (an estimate off the top of my head) 38K. The website launch brought a lot of followers and a lot of activity. While there were some direct responses or mentions that were critical, an overwhelming majority of people were positive.
  1. Facebook
  • 101,849 followers, up from (an estimate off the top of my head) 94K. This was mostly the same reaction as Twitter, although people were more specific and mentioned more site issues.
  1. Google+
  • 89,700 followers, not sure what it was before, but I think it has increased. This was mostly the same as Facebook over the last few posts.

[0] http://pyfound.blogspot.com/2014/02/python-in-google-summer-of-code-2014.html (by Jessica McKellar)

[1] http://pyfound.blogspot.com/2014/02/python-job-board-call-for-volunteers.html (by Marc-Andre Lemburg)

[2] http://pyfound.blogspot.com/2014/02/psf-python-marketing-brochure-last-call.html (by Marc-Andre Lemburg)

6   SciPy 2014 Sponsorship

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation sponsor SciPy 2014 in the amount of $4,000, which corresponds to a Gold Level Sponsorship

Approved, 7-0-0.

7   PyCon APAC 2014 Sponsorship

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation sponsor PyCon APAC 2014 in the amount of $1,500

Approved, 6-0-1.

8   Rackspace Sponsor Member

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation accept Rackspace as a pending sponsor member based on an in-kind trade with the deal terms listed here: https://mail.python.org/mailman/private/psf-board/2014-February/024607.html

This vote was done by voice because IRC stopped working for everyone during the time of the vote.

It was Approved, 5–0-3.

9   Other Business

  • The board has agreed on a new policy for workshop grant requests. This policy will be added to the grants page http://python.org/psf/grants/.
  • Based on this policy, the board has decided that the amount granted (on January 31) to Cyberjutsu Girls Academy Python Programming Workshop was sufficient and no further voting is needed. Jessica will be contacting the group to let them know.

10   Adjournment

Van Lindberg adjourned the meeting at 16:45 CET/ 12:45 EST.