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PSF Meeting Minutes for May 10, 2017

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

May 10, 2017

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 15:00 UTC (GMT/Zulu, on May 10, 2017. 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 (7 of 10) were present at the meeting: Diana Clarke, Van Lindberg, Lorena Mesa, Naomi Ceder, Younggun Kim, Carol Willing, and Jackie Kazil.

Ewa Jodlowksa (Director of Operations), Kurt Kaiser (Treasurer), Betsy Waliszewski (Event Planner and Administrator), Phyllis Dobbs (Controller/Assistant Treasurer Accountant), (Mark Mangoba (IT Manager) were also in attendance.

2   Minutes of Past Meetings

The 03 April 2017 Board meeting minutes were voted on and approved.

RESOLVED, that the PSF approve the minutes at https://mail.python.org/mailman/private/psf-board/2017-April/042958.html as representing a true and accurate record of the April 3, 2017 meeting.

Approved 6-0-1

3   Meetup Expenses Approved

  • $180.00 USD for Watpy for 12 months
  • $29.94 USD PyLadies São Paulo for 6 months

4   Board and Staff Reports

Note: These are received once a month.

4.1   Ewa Jodlowska

  • PyCon
    • Working with designer to get badge design, and schedule printed. Worked on sign changes after errors were discovered.
    • Worked with other designer on t-shirt
    • Continued to proof signs from GES
    • Worked on updating PyCon 2017 resume
    • Collected and recorded 5k waivers
    • Took bi-weekly counts of tutorial registration, took weekly counts of conference registration
    • Updated AV needs as changes and additional events happened
    • Continued to help with financial aid; sent out disbursement details to all financial aid applicants with a grant amount.
    • Showed Phyllis more about PyCon financial aid and how she can help track receipt received.
    • Continued to work on Guidebook app with Felix’s help.
    • Worked with printer on t-shirts, 5k shirts, PyLadies shirts, and tote bags
    • Planned executive board meeting for PyCon 2017
    • Worked on PyCon insurance for convention center, 5K, and Portland Art Museum
    • Helped with doing catering review and taking notes for Betsy
    • Contacted all Halal and Kosher requesters for confirmation
    • Created a breakdown of all special food needs for conference and dinners
    • Ordered lanyards and badge holders
    • Reviewed Louisville bid that Betsy had worked on
    • Reviewed floor plans from AV
    • Helped with Sprint planning and coordinated a meeting
    • Ordered community service awards for PyCon 2017
    • Continue to update the resume so all of our PyCon information is as up to date as possible
    • Created thank-you-gift list for PyCon 2017 staff
    • Reviewed, signed, and filed addendum from the Oregon Convention Center for additional space.
    • Reviewed floor plans that the OCC created and sent back needed changes to OCC
    • Worked on internet order for PyCon 2017
    • Worked on check list for PyCon 2017 captions and discussed it with the Captioning Coordinator
    • Helped Betsy improve her sponsor statistic spreadsheet
  • PSF
    • Helped with PSF blog content
    • Continue to chair the Grants WG and help with PSF grants
    • Continue to work with IT Manager and Treasurer on CiviCRM project management
    • Helped launch the Humble Bundle and saw the online special through completion
    • Assisted Mark with CiviCRM project management
    • Continuing to work on solution for PSF staff insurance plan and have decided for new financial controller to take it on.
    • Continue to have scheduled calls with staff and daily Slack communication
    • Created a time-off tracker for PSF employees to use since Benefits took that benefit out of our priced access

4.2   Betsy Waliszewski

  • PSF
    • Working on proposal plan to bring in new PSF sponsors (to be completed after PyCon)
    • New PSF Sponsor Tivix. Evaluating 2 other applications.
    • Continued routine tasks of taking notes at board meetings, posting minutes and approved resolutions, notifying grant recipients and special award winners, as well as recording contributor forms and self-certifications.
    • Facilitated the Unixstickers April promotion: Newsletter interview here: http://www.unixstickers.com/blog.
    • Worked with marketing WG to complete Sponsor Feedback Form and creation of new sponsor badges
    • Worked with our StickerMule contact to receive a complimentary pass to Sustain, a one day conversation for Open Source Software sustainers.
    • Worked with Christy Heaton, one of our bloggers, on a post about PSF Sponsorship, to encourage new sponsor signups.
  • PyCon 2017
    • Continued sponsor communication in preparation for event.
    • Redesigned expo hall floor plan to incorporate StartUp Row into main area of the hall. Added StartUp Row participants to Job Fair (new this year).
    • Continued to respond to registration questions.
    • Worked with Intel to facilitate their sponsorship of the PyLadies Lunch as well as their hosting of a Women in Big Data Meetup.
    • Finalized convention center banquet event orders.
    • Finalized logistics, attendee counts, and menus for PyCon Dinners.
    • Working with volunteers on the Newcomer Breakfast - sent check-in information about onsite events.
    • Worked with GES to create a PSF Lounge Area, complete with bean bag chairs
  • PyCon 2018
    • Evaluating decorator proposals (3) for 2018-19
    • Offsite dinner locations confirmed: Roll & Roll Hall of Fame and Greater Lakes Science Museum
    • Completed 2018 prospectus and expo hall floor plan. Handouts will be provided to sponsors onsite. Floor plan will be on display in the PSF Lounge Area in the expo hall.
    • Communicated with select sponsors about early sign up.
  • PyCon 2020-21
    • Continued to evaluate proposals for 2020-21 sites.
    • Completed draft F&B for Louisville
    • One more site visit planned before we make a decision.

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 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 Board meetings.

Working with the IT Manager, completed the upgrade of psfmember.com. Contributed some solutions to problems that arose during the upgrade. Monitored user activity following the upgrade. Worked through some configuration issues that were causing users to be blocked following the upgrade. The site is fully online.

Continued to integrate the SunTrust Treasury Manager facility for online wire transfers and also ACH Fraud Control to monitor our accounts. ACH debits will now be rejected unless approved. Initiated ACH transmission capability on our wire account. This caused a change in the authorization procedure, requiring switching SunTrust Cash Manager to Trusteer. It turned out that conflicted with Treasury Manager in a subtle way, requiring further debugging and tech support calls. This is pretty much behind us at this point, I hope - except that my Linux workstation and Air no longer work with Cash Manager. That will have to be addressed.

Registered for a PayPal Giving account. This also was more time consuming than it should have been, as PayPal support was unable to quickly resolve a simple issue that was blocking our registration.

Documented the Grants Payment procedure:

https://github.com/python/psf/wiki/GrantPaymentProcedure

Initiated transfer of the Grants payments to our Controller. At this point, she is handling all the wire and PayPal payments. We have had to deal with several returned wires due to missing information, but the process is smoothing out. The wire transfers are set up for dual authorization - one of us enters the wire, the other approves it.

Transferred the meetup.com payments responsibility to the Controller.

Fixed a small problem with the donation acknowledgement due to a PayPal email change.

It appears at this point that PayPal Giving donation acknowledgements will have to be handled manually, as it seems we have to log in to their website to determine what was donated for the month. Perhaps something more efficient can be set up, but that will require some research.

Acquired a current Delaware Certificate of Good Standing at the request of the Operations Manager.

Processed a number of PyCon Sponsor and Registration charges - activity here is higher than in previous years. PyCon payment activity is picking up!

4.4   Mark Mangoba

  • Continued to support the Python Community with Infrastructure Request. From website support to access requests.
  • Working with various vendors on possible Infrastructure Credits.
  • Preparing for the next BOD vote June 1, 2017. Working with our Elections Team (Ian, Massimo, Betsy and Ewa) on various application testing, voting requirements and bylaws changes.
  • Completed the psfmember.org CiviCRM upgrade project, worked alongside with Kurt on QA with the support of Ewa.
  • Starting the CiviCRM Grant Tracking project to launch this month.

4.5   Phyllis Dobbs

  • Reconciled February-March 2017 PayPal and September 2016-March 2017 PEX card transactions in QuickBooks Online. Includes researching and classifying transactions with the assistance of Kurt, Betsy, and Ewa.
  • Process & record grants and meetup expenses via PayPal and wire transfer.
  • Create or update process documentation for PEX and meetup payment and PayPal reconciliations.
  • Organize Pycon financial aid spreadsheet to track both expenses & per diem along with eventual payment inputs. Review submitted receipts for completeness/accuracy and enter into financial aid spreadsheet.

4.6   Diana Clarke

No report submitted.

4.7   Van Lindberg

No report submitted.

4.8   Carol Willing

Spoke on an Open Source Panel at Codeland conference in New York City. Served on Program Committee for SciPy 2017. Served on Program Committee and organized Diversity Outreach for the first JupyterCon conference.

4.9   Carrie Ann Philbin

No report submitted.

4.10   Jackie Kazil

No report submitted.

4.11   Kushal Das

No report submitted.

4.12   Lorena Mesa

Spoke with ZimboPy in remote Q&A for their mentorship program detailing how to build a Python community with remote resources. Organized PyLadies Chicago speakers series at Chicago Python User Group monthly meeting and grave a brief PSF update. Additionally began to publicize and answer Q&A around the PSF election process in various communities (e.g. ChiTechDiversity, PyLadies Chicago) with a special emphasis on the nomination process for PSF directors. Participated in board meetings as normal. Wrote and published Brian Costlow 2017 PSF CSA Award announcement on PSF blog.

4.13   Naomi Ceder

Taught a workshop on Python for Data Cleaning as The Escape Conference in Chicago (data science conference), active in board and grants mailing list discussions, attended Google Women Techmakers in Chicago and local Python meetup, chaired April PSF board meeting.

4.14   Trey Hunner

No report submitted.

4.15   Younggun Kim

  • Continue organizing PyCon KR 2017. We just opened a brand new website! https://www.pycon.kr/2017/
  • Attend the biggest game developer conference in KR, Nexon Developer Conference, and have chances to talk with speakers who presented about Python in game developing. I've been attending NDC for 4 consecutive years. In the past, there was a few Python talks and mostly covered data analysis with Python. In the game industry, Python has been known as a non-popular language for the server. A few company have been used Python for their server. This year, however, I found that there is a substantial movement in game servers to take advantage of Python, especially the advantages of Python 3. The speakers talked about relatively recent changes, like asyncio, and room-filled audiences proved its popularity.
  • Helping PyCon APAC/MY team to diversify their nationalities by having more talks from outside of the country. I already submitted my talk proposal and asked past speakers to submit a proposal. KR team considering to raise a fund for the promotion and encouragement of talk proposals from the APAC region for PyCon APAC/MY 2017.

5   Work Group Reports

Note: These are received once a month.

5.1   Sponsors

We continue to do outreach for new PSF sponsors. We approved 1 new sponsor at the Iron level and one copper sponsor in March.

5.2   Marketing

Last month, the marketing group finished up the sponsorship feedback form and created a badge to be used by PSF sponsors. These are core components of our overall goal to continually improve sponsor relations.

5.3   Grants

See Grant WG resolutions

5.4   Trademarks

No report submitted.

5.5   Cuban Pythonistas

No report submitted.

6   Votes Approved by Working Groups

Below are resolutions approved by the various PSF Working Groups since the February 6, 2017 board meeting:

6.1   Sponsors

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation approve the sponsor application from Tivix at the Copper Level.

Approved 6-0-0

6.2   Grants

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation Grants Working Group grant $750 USD to the Django Girls event happening in Ribeirão Preto, Brazil June 23, 2017

Approved 8-0-0, April 3, 2017

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation Grants Working Group grant $2,100 USD (Silver Level Sponsorship) to the PyConZA event happening October 5-6, 2017 in Cape Town, South Africa.

Approved 8-0-0, April 13, 2017

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation Grants Working Group grant $500 USD to the PyCon DRCongo event happening May 14, 2017.

Approved 7-0-0, April 17, 2017

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation Grants Working Group grant $315 USD to the Django Girls event happening in Seattle, WA April 21-23, 2017

Approved 9-0-0, April 24, 2017

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation Grants Working Group grant $500 USD to the Django Girls event happening in Gdańsk, Poland May 27, 2017

Approved 9-0-0, April 24, 2017

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation Grants Working Group grant $750 USD to the FrogLabs workshop happening at FrOSCon 2017 in Sankt Augustin, Germany

Approved 9-0-0, May 1, 2017

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation Grants Working Group grant $4,000 USD to the PyOhio 2017 Conference, happening July 29-30, 2017.

Approved 7-0-0, May 3, 2017

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation Grants Working Group grant $875 USD to the Django Girls event happening in Ekpoma, Nigeria July 21-22, 2017.

Approved 8-0-0, May 9, 2017

7   Approvals / Votes by Email

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation add the following member to the Grants Working group: Sayan Chowdhury (PyCon Pune & PyCon India volunteer)

Approved 10-0-0, April 28, 2017

8   New Business

8.1   PyData Barcelona

  • RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation grant $1750 USD to PyData Barcelona that is happening in Spain, May 19-21, 2017.

Approved 7-0-0

8.2   Moscow Python Conference

  • RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation grant $3000 USD to Moscow Python Conference, happening on October 20, 2017 in Russia.

Approved 7-0-0

8.3   Afro-Django Initiative

  • RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation grant $1250 USD to the Afro-Django Initiative: Python, Django and Raspberry Pi introductory training, that is happening May 19-21, 2017 at Gulu University, Nkumba University and Mountain of the Moon University in Uganda.

Approved 7-0-0

8.4   PyCon Nigeria

  • RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation grant $2600 USD to PyCon Nigeria that is happening September 15-16, 2017 in Lagos.

Approved 7-0-0

8.5   Argentina DevDay 2017

  • RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation grant $800 USD to Argentina DevDay 2017, happening in September 2017 at Technical University of Mendoza.

Approved 7-0-0

10   Meeting Adjournment

The meeting was adjourned at 8:16 UTC (GMT/Zulu)