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PSF Meeting Minutes for July 29, 2016

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

July 29, 2016

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 [1:00 UTC (GMT/Zulu, on July 29, 2016)]. Betsy Waliszewski took notes/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 (10 of 11) were present at the meeting: Diana Clarke, Van Lindberg, Kushal Das, Annapoornima Koppad, Lorena Mesa, Trey Hunner, Carol Willing, Naomi Ceder, Younggun Kim, Jacqueline Kazil, Carrie Ann Philbin, (by proxy). 10 directors were present and 1 director sent in proxy votes.

Kurt Kaiser (Treasurer), Betsy Waliszewski (Event Planner and Administrator), Mark Mangoba (IT Manager), and Ewa Jodlowska (Director of Operations) were also in attendance.

2   Minutes of Past Meetings

The 12 July 2016 Board meeting minutes were voted on and approved.

RESOLVED, that the PSF approve the minutes at https://mail.python.org/mailman/private/psf-board/2016-July/038600.html as representing a true and accurate record of the July 12, 2016 meeting.

Approved 11-0-0

3   Meetup Expenses Approved

Below is a list of Meetup expenses the PSF has approved since the July 12 board meeting:

  • $89.94 - PyLadies PDX for 6 months
  • $89.94 to cover the cost of Pyladies Chicago's Meetup.com subscription for six months, July 2016 through December 2016.

4   Board and Staff Monthly Reports

Note: Reports are received once a month.

4.1   Betsy Waliszewski

Attended Meetings Quest in Minneapolis/St. Paul to attend sessions and research PyCon venues for 2020-2021. Spent one day with PyBay organizers on site to share my experiences helping with conference and tradeshow organization. Completed work on Cleveland Convention Center contracts for Ewa to sign. Negotiated a lower deposit for the convention center contract. Sent proposal to Brandon for alternate dinner venue for PyCon 2017. Updated PSF board membership roster page by year, name, and title. Finalizing PSF Sponsor Prospectus and getting bids on creating the pdf. Continuing to evaluate new PSF Sponsor applications with working group (approved Saleduck). Continuing Django admin and financial aid training with Ewa. Created google form for PyCon 2017 Media Registration. Began process of reworking expo hall layout for 2017.

4.2   Ewa Jodlowska

Emailed with Grace about incorporating financial aid and diversity into PyBay. Also created a skeletal budget for Grace to use to better track spending and goals they should be aiming for. I sent feedback to the Packaging-wg re: initial budget and then I reviewed the revised proposal that Nicole & Sumana had put together. I took July 5 - 8 off. Worked on keynote for PyGotham and attended PyGotham. At PyGotham, I met with an organizer from San Juan to discuss ways we can help. Also met with someone who is interested in growing the Python community in Iran and connected with a group local to Iran. I worked on closing up PyCon 2016 budget items: resolved final invoice from Oregon Convention Center and from FMAV. Attended two board meetings and acted as proxy when needed. Started to work on PyCon 2017 by creating a new Sponsor tracking spreadsheet and new template for the PyCon 2017 budget. We received two proposals for us.pycon.org work. We are in the process of selecting designer and dev vendor. Worked on updating the PyCon 2017 Sponsorship benefits and revised the prospectus with new benefits. Created a PSF code of conduct committee and started to work on policy with committee members. Continuing to work on Code of Conduct incident. I continue to have regular meeting with individual staff personnel as planned. Had a meeting with PSF Treasurer and PSF IT Manager about CiviCRM to gain knowledge of setup and history.

4.3   Kurt Kaiser

Continued the diverse, but routine, activities needed to process all the incoming and outgoing financial transactions (checks, wires, PayPal, ACH, charges) for the PSF and PyCon, working with payees to get their wire or credit card details as needed. Paid bills and grants. Made deposits. Created Quickbooks Online (QBO) transactions for all of these. Updated the grants, PyCon Tutorial/FA, PyCon Sponsor, and PSF Sponsor status spreadsheets to reflect activity. Reconciled and reviewed the seven PSF bank/credit accounts. Reviewed the donations and allocated them to our eleven fiscal sponsorees. Transferred donated funds to the Boston Python PEX card. Reimbursed fiscal sponsoree expense and meetup.com expense. Reviewed open invoices and designated those needing statements sent. Processed the biweekly payroll and matched those transactions in QBO. General review of financial status. Attended Boardmeeting and staff coordination meeting.

Current: Advised the Board on a prospective Model C fiscal sponsoree. Worked with the Operations Manager to define a job description for an Assistant Treasurer / Accountant. Met with the Operations and IT Manager to begin discussions regarding an overall approach to CRM and donation system requirements as the PSF grows. In conjunction, wrote a high level description of the transaction and acknowledgement flow in the current donation system. psfmember.org: renewed the ssl certificate. Cloned the site, upgraded test site to Wheezy LTS, and began resolving problems found. Passed the server credentials to the IT Manager. Advised the Board regarding due diligence requirements for hiring non- profit employees. Competed the PyCon financial aid payments. Discussed online wire transfer requirements/setup with SunTrust security personnel and also reviewed configuration changes to improve fraud protection and enable access by the new hire.

4.4   Mark Mangoba

Besides the day to day IT support duties for the PSF, this month, I focused on updates to python.org; managing the workflow of content and code changes to the site. Feel free to report any issues with python.org at: https://github.com/python/pythondotorg/issues. In principle, we kicked off the CRM improvement project with Kurt Kaiser, our Treasurer. We spent a vast amount of time documenting the current procedures, getting to know the history of the current system (CiviCRM), and its various connections to key operational components, such as donations, membership and contact management. We hope to let the community know more updates on the CRM project in the next upcoming months. From recent feedback about our volunteer page/process at python.org, I am also working on getting more meaningful content such as what volunteer and working groups you can join. We hope to have an electronic form on the page so we can keep track of prospective volunteers and their interest.

4.5   Diana Clarke

In addition to the usual grants oversight, I have continued to work with Nicole Harris on the pycon.org redesign which we hope to launch next month. I have also continued to hand off the tasks I used to do regularly as the Communications Officer (emailing psf-community, coordinating blogs posts, updating the PSF award pages, etc), and have started taking on Chair responsibilities (like leading the board meetings).

4.6   Van Lindberg

Did not provide report for July.

4.7   Carol Willing

Attended SciPy 2016 in Austin, TX. Many great talks and tutorials about Python’s use in the science and data science. I gave an inspirational talk at SciPy's Diversity and Inclusion Lunch about the impact of mentoring on building inclusive and productive community.

4.8   Annapoornima Koppad

Attended the monthly board meetingds of PSF. Did one "Intro to Python programming" workshop for 10 standard students from St Angels English School, Yeshwanthpur, Bangalore. Sent report to psf-board@python.org, psf@python.org. One "Intro to Python programming" workshop at National Academy for Learning, Basaveshwarnagar, Bangalore.

4.9   Carrie Ann Philbin

This month, I've been fostering discussion within the Python Education Working Group on the topics of good documentation for learners and Python teaching materials. I've also been continuing the support of Micro Python on the BBC Microbit through the Micro-Python mailing list.

4.10   Jackie Kazil

I was invited and attended and spoke at PyCon Russia on User-centered Open Source and on a panel on open source. There were 350 attendees, which is the largest PyCon Russia to date. It was 2 hours outside of Moscow. Russia has a population of about 144 million, which is just under 1/2 the size of the United States. It is interesting to note the difference in the size of the conference to population. In my humble opinion, there is a lot of potential for growth of Python in Russia. I attended Scipy as both a member of the community and because my employer was a sponsor. While I didn't deliver a talk directly, I had a lot of great conversations with members of the community on improvements for diversity for the next conference. PyLadies DC - I have started to delegate and onboard new organizers. This has been interesting because it was mainly Katie Cunningham and I for many years. After the first meetup or two, I will document this in a blog post for others to learn from. We are in the process of recommitting Grants WG voting members and creating a method for individuals to step down. This will lead to new members being added, because at least one person is stepping down.

4.11   Kushal Das

Sent out the first two Board meeting minutes mail to the community. From now on I should be able to do it faster, as I have few scripts to help me out :) Working in the grants WG. Helping in the talk selection team for PyCon India. Helped out PyLadies Pune chapter for a reboot, more info is at https://anweshadas.in/coming-out-of-hibernation-pyladies-pune-chapter/

4.12   Lorena Mesa

Continued to attend PSF board meetings as well as discuss with Betsy and Trey the Marketing Work Group. Attended EuroPython - I gave a beginners machine learning talk and offered assistance to Naomi in running the EuroPython PSF meeting. PSF Blog Content Curation - Trey and I have outlined a plan for developing some content for the PSF blog starting with a focused article on how to fundraise for your first Python workshop/event. We plan to roll some of these beginner "how to" articles into a larger set of articles that ideally may be able to be documented somewhere on the Python website. PyCon Organizers' Manual - I've been working to settle a time for interested BoD members - Naomi, Trey, Annapoornima - to meet in early August to discuss and start the creation of such a manual. Communications update - Facilitated the announcement of June CSA winners with Jesse writing one recipient's announcement and I, given shortage of bloggers time, writing the other. The second announcement should ideally be completed end of month. Working with Ewa to hire another PSF blogger to prevent said blogger shortage / bottleneck. Code of Conduct WG - Offered feedback to Ewa's outline for the Code of Conduct WG policy. Meeting with Ewa and Carol this week to continue discussions of the policy.

4.13   Naomi Ceder

Managed grants WG in early July while Jackie was out and gave feedback on new grants WG membership policy. Reviewed student work from Cameroon project of Ngansi Richard. Attended EuroPython - met with new organizer of LondonPython Meetup, ran PSF member meeting (with Lorena's help), gave keynote on Python Community and PSF (raw streamed video at https://youtu.be/JIAXHEqjuNA?t=22m37s). Also (thanks to MAL) handed out PSF member stickers to new PSF basic members, discussed how to start a Python community with someone from Bosnia, connected someone from Colombia to Facundo B. to discuss forming community, and directed someone who wanted to revise beginner materials on python.org to MAL.

4.14   Trey Hunner

I started drafting a PSF blog post with Lorena and I brainstormed PSF marketing ideas with Lorena and Betsy. I also spent multiple late nights at DjangoCon discussing PSF ideas and issues with concerned Django community members. I am attempting to start conversations with other directors about specific usability concerns with PSF resources.

4.15   Younggun Kim

Preparing my talk for PyCon APAC 2016: PSF and our community. Preparing PSF Booth at PyCon APAC 2016. Start discussion about Compensation Committee.

5   Work Group Reports

Note: Reports are received once a month.

5.1   Trademark

We continue to field trademark requests and walk users of the logo through the process of adhering to the rules. Everyone has been cooperative and there have been no problems. At some point I will compile another list or work out data storage system for requests.

5.2   Scientific Python

No activity to report since the last board meeting.

5.3   Marketing

We decided that the responsiblility for making changes to the PSF Sponsorship levels move to the new Sponsor WG. Our group is working on building a complete marketing strategy around Python, which includes marketing material, but also things like how we approach press, which events we engage with to promote Python and/or the PSF and how we can enable Python user groups and conferences to help with the PSF mission to promote and further the use of Python. It is a work in progress.

5.4   Bundle Sponsorship

No activity to report since the last board meeting.

5.5   Cuban Pythonistas

SciPyLA 2017 - Announcement of the conference next year in Cuba. Working on landing page, CFP; design of the visual identity of the event; starting preparation for 1st PyCon Cuba 2017. Two candidate magazines for publishing conf papers. Participated in a podcast recorded by Cachivache Media. Participated in activities related to the most recent US-Cuba summit. Guido mentioned in his keynote at PyCon US about his interest in going to a PyCon in Cuba next year.

5.6   Grants

Worked on grant requests. Assessment of who is continuing through 2017 was made. Continuing... Jackie, Christopher, Fernando, Nicholas, Riaz, Vicky. Not continuing... Anna and Facundo. Up for discussion -Naomi.

5.7   Packaging

Nicole Harris and Sumana Harihareswara were working with Donald Stufft to create a grant to submit to the PSF. Soon we realized that the scope of the grant was too large for the PSF. Ernest W. Durbin III worked on connecting the WG with someone from Mozilla to help us apply for a MOSS grant (https://wiki.mozilla.org/MOSS/Foundational_Technology). The original grant will be split between a grant to the PSF and a track 1 MOSS grant. This will help the WG get the funds that are needed to get PyPI moved to the warehouse software by the end of the year. Mark Mangoba is currently assisting with the draft application for the MOSS grant. Once we have that grant structured properly, we will work on the grant to send to the PSF.

5.8   PSF Sponsor

The working group voted in the following new PSF members: FusionBox (Iron level), HostingFacts.com (Bronze Level), and Saleduck (Iron Level). We are working on ways to attract and screen new sponsors. To that end, we have created a draft PSF sponsor prospectus that (once it's turned into a PDF) will be posted online and also sent to prospective sponsors. Deadline: August 2016.

6   Votes Approved by Working Groups

Below are resolutions approved by the various PSF Working Groups since the July 12 th board meeting:

6.1   Django Girls Lagos

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation's Grants Working Group grant a sponsorship of $600 to Django Girls Lagos for their second event, September 9-10, 2016 in Lagos, Nigeria.

Approved 7-0-0 on July 15, 2016

6.2   PSF-Grants membership changes

RESOLVED, that the PSF-Grants Working Group will make the following changes to PSF-Grants membership:

  • psf-grants voting members are required to confirm continuing participating in the working group within one month of a new board election. This will be led by chair/co-chair. If there is no response, then the individual is automatically removed.
  • A member of psf-grants, can step down at anytime, and psf-grants will work to replace that voting member.
  • With the passing these resolutions and submission to the PSF board, we will allow the board to make adjustments to these recommendations without back and forth. (This is to resolve this quickly.)
  • With the passing these resolutions and the confirmation by the PSF board, we will do an inventory of participation with each psf-grants member. This will be led by chair/co-chairs of psf-grant and will consist of off group emails, so that if someone choses to step down, that they don't feel like they are doing it on a public podium. Each person has two weeks to respond otherwise they will be purged from the group.

Approved 8-0-0 on July 25, 2016

6.3   New PSF Sponsor - HostingFacts.com

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation's Sponsor Working group approve HostingFacts.com at the Bronze Sponsor Level.

Approved 8-0-0 on July 27, 2016

6.4   Bagalkot, and Koppal, Karnataka Workshops

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation's Grants Working Group not grant Rs1,08,000 (~1608 USD) to Annapoornima Koppad for workshops in Bagalkot, and Koppal, Karnataka.

Approved 6-0-0 on July 27, 2016

7   Approvals / Votes by Email

7.1   PyOhio Young Coders Workshop

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation grant $1,000 USD to the Young Coders workshop happening at PyOhio 2016.

Approved 11-0-0 on July 19, 2019

7.2   PyOhio

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation sponsor PyOhio 2016 in the amount of $4,000 USD.

Approved 11-0-0 on July 19, 2019

8   New Business

8.1   Django Girls Milano

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation grant 300 € (~$330 USD) to Django Girls Milano for their event happening in Milan, Italy, on November 26, 2016.

Approved 11-0-0

8.2   PyConES 2016

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation grant $3320 USD to PyConES 2016 that is happening October 7-9 on the campus of University of Almería, Spain.

Approved 11-0-0

8.3   PyCon HK

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation grant $2300 USD to PyCon HK that is happening October 29-30, 2016.

Approved 11-0-0

8.4   PyCode Carrots Koszalin workshop #2

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation grant $825 USD to the PyCode Carrots Koszalin workshop #2 that is happening Sept. 30 - Oct. 2.

Approved 10-0-1

8.5   PyBCN in Barcelona

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation grant 600€ ~$665 USD to PyBCN in Barcelona that is happening September 12-18, 2016.

Approved 10-0-1

8.6   Django Girls Masvingo, Zimbabwe

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation grant a $500 USD sponsorship to Django Girls Masvingo, Zimbabwe, that is happening on August 20, 2016.

Approved 11-0-0

8.7   PyData Carolinas

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation grant $2000 USD to PyData Carolinas, happening September 14-16, 2016 at IBM in Research Triangle Park, NC.

Approved 8-0-3

8.8   PyMove3D Translation

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation grant €1262 (~$1398 USD) to b3d101 to make the updated PyMove3D free tutorials available in the Dutch language.

Approved 11-0-0

8.9   Django Girls Santo Domingo

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation grant $1000 USD Django Girls Santo Domingo taking place on September 17, 2016 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

Approved 10-0-1

8.10   ITIE Academy, Bangalore training

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation grant $600 USD (Rs. ~40,202) for a short term training program/ National Workshop on Python Programming , conducted in collaboration with ITIE Academy, Bangalore (Nanded, Maharashtra, India). The workshop is happening August 12-17.

Approved 10-0-1

9   Other Business / Discussions

  1. Follow-up on Russell Keith-Magee regarding his request for fiscal sponsorship. Ewa and Kurt will do further research to determine viability of taking on this project.

10   Meeting Adjournment

The meeting was adjourned at 02:02 UTC (GMT/Zulu).