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PSF Meeting Minutes for July 29, 2020

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

July 29, 2020

A regular meeting of the Python Software Foundation ("PSF") Board of Directors was held over Group Conference Call via phone and Internet Relay Chat/Slack beginning at 21:00 UTC (GMT/Zulu), on July 29, 2020. 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 (11 of 13) were present at the meeting: Lorena Mesa, Jannis Leidel, Katie McLaughlin, Marlene Mhangami, Anna Ossowski, Jeff Triplett, Christopher Neugebauer, Nina Zakharenko, Thomas Wouters, Dustin Ingram, and Ewa Jodlowska.

Betsy Waliszewski (Event Planner and Administrator), Jackie Augustine (PyCon Manager), Phyllis Dobbs (Controller), Joe Carey (Accounting Manager), and Laura Graves (Financial Analyst) were also in attendance.

2   Resolutions

Minutes from prior meetings: June 30, 2020:

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation approve the minutes at https://mail.python.org/archives/list/psf-important@python.org/message/OW4DKOKJ62PZR6N3DSAIKRYYOWSQ4WPV/ as representing a true and accurate record of the June 30, 2020 meeting.

Approved 11-0-0

3   Board and Staff Monthly Reports (July)

3.1   Ewa Jodlowska

June 22 - July 20 Report

  • PyCon

    • Attended weekly meeting for meeting planners
    • Continued to help review staff’s work related to PyCon
    • Attended meeting with PyCon AV vendor to begin discussing 2021
    • Attending a meeting with the DLCC to continue discussing what food and beverage may look like
  • PSF

    • Attended first PSF Funding Work Group meeting
    • Working on updating the on-boarding documents for new board members
    • Working on getting Python setup for GitHub Sponsors
    • Working with Hidden Genius on ways the PSF can help support their mission by attending a meeting with their curriculum lead
    • Worked with Psf-grants WG and PSF Board on draft Grants Program launch
    • Worked on free resource list for virtual events and will be publishing the webpage
    • Participated in the July OSCON Superstream event on behalf of the PSF
    • Put together and published July PSF newsletter.
    • Attended staff meeting about improving membership experiences
    • Hosted two on-boardings with new directors
    • Attended a meeting with a current PSF contractor to discuss ways the PSF can improve community expectations with our accounting team
    • Attending weekly FOSS meetings
    • Recorded a talk for PyCon Japan’s virtual conference
    • Recorded a lightning talk for PyOhio and will be attending
    • Monthly meeting with new and exiting board Chairperson and organized the process for new rotating board times
    • Attended two Code of Conduct Work Group meetings to assist with recent batch of reports
    • Working with finance controller on a budget for the rest of 2020.
    • Monthly personal goal review
    • Continue to attend weekly Steering Council meetings and help take notes. Continue to move GitHub migration plan forward by working with the contractor on finalizing their contract with the PSF. I continue to review necessary Discourse discussions.
    • Continue to moderate several mailing lists
    • Continue to help review contracts, documents and other drafts written by staff
    • Continue to log the fellow member nominations, run quarterly votes, update Fellows page on pydotorg, update CiviCRM with new Fellow members, notify new members, write blogs for new members
    • Continue to answer general PSF email
    • Continue to participate in board discussions
    • Continue to review time sheets
    • Continue to meet with Event Coordinator, Event Manager, Finance Controller, and IT Director regularly on calls and regular communication via Slack.

3.2   Jackie Augustine

PyCon

  • Attended multiple webinars on planning hybrid and virtual events
  • Continued discussions with designer for PyCon logo
  • Draft blog post with details of the steps to producing PyCon 2020
  • 2021 Budget work and prepared probable 50% F&B reduction pricing
  • Call with DLCC and Levy regarding number reductions and timeframe
  • Call with AV regarding hybrid and virtual options
  • Continued work on outline for planning of PyCon 2021
  • Continued research on virtual component options for PyCon
  • Continued work on timeline to coordinate CFPs and FinAid deadlines
  • Continued work on sponsor prospectus and discussion points individual calls
  • Begin work on increasing social media presence
  • Plan and schedule PyCon US Committee meeting
  • Weekly individual team calls

3.3   Betsy Waliszewski

PyCon

  • Continued to work on the sponsor prospectus for 2021.
  • Continue to research digital activation ideas for sponsorships.
  • Setting up meetings with Town Hall participants to follow up on action items.
  • Attended weekly meeting for meeting planners.
  • Watched webinars and did research on event and sponsorship best practices.
  • Sent sponsor email with survey for 2020 online and 2021 planning.
  • Worked on plan to recruit new members for the Sponsor Work Group.

PSF

  • Began work on updating the prospectus for 2021-22.
  • Attended staff meeting about membership improvements
  • Worked on new plans for improving interactivity on social media.
  • Launched new Matching Gifts sponsorship web page with 3 participating sponsors.
  • Created and implemented a new direct response email fundraising campaign.
  • Continued to help manage the Jobs, Marketing, and Sponsor working groups.
  • Logged in contributor agreements. * Continue to respond to general PSF email.
  • Weekly 1:1 with Executive Director.
  • Continued routine tasks of keeping records up-to-date.
  • Managed community mailing list subscriptions.
  • Continued taking notes at board meetings, posting minutes and approved resolutions, as well as recording self-certifications.
  • Managed new sponsor applications with the sponsor work group.
  • Continued to manage social media presence through Sprout Social.
  • Helped out with job board submissions.
  • Participating in a 1:1 with new board chairperson.
  • Worked on improving our in-kind sponsorship documentation.
  • Gathered content for sponsor section of the newsletter.

3.4   Ernest W. Durbin III

  • Election reform research and blog post drafting
  • Research and on-boarding for new CiviCRM hosting for psfmember.org * Including updates and migration plans
  • PyCon planning and discussion with Jackie * Assessing new needs given remote components * Coordinating for design implementation * Planning for Django contractor role to support us.pycon.org and python.org work
  • Infrastructure * Assessment of current in-kind sponsorships * Application for new programs to replace sponsorships where appropriate * Contacting existing in-kind sponsors for check ins
  • PyPI * General support, review, and management * On-boarding new maintainer for internal mirror

3.5   Phyllis Dobbs

  • Budgeting & Financial Statements
    • Work with accounting team to prepare June PSF and fiscal sponsoree financial statement package.
    • Begin work on 2020 budget with Ewa, Laura, and Joe.
  • Payroll & Human Resources
    • Continue implementing/transitioning payroll system.
    • Complete health/dental insurance renewal paperwork
  • Accounting Systems & Documentation
    • Continue work with accounting team on A/P system implementation.
  • Banking & Credit Cards
    • Shift cash balance minimums by account to maximize interest income and move operations to PNC.
  • PyCon 2021
    • Work with accounting team to update financial aid documents/improvement requests/priorities.
  • Finance Committee
    • Work with Treasurer and Staff Accountant to set up quarterly Finance Committee meetings for the next year.

3.6   Joe Carey

  • Donations
    • Replaced legacy acknowledgement system
      • Retired psfb.org running Python 2.5 and email parsing data collection with a flat text file for the database
      • Implemented modern Python processes accessing the PayPal API directly and backed by a SQL database
    • Worked on creating a clean donor table to facilitate linking the donations database to CiviCRM and QuickBooks

    • Moderated psf-donations mailing list

    • Maintained acknowledgement system

    • Produced bespoke donation reports to support fundraising campaigns

  • Memberships
    • Attended staff meeting about improving membership experiences
  • Sponsorships
    • Created, sent, and updated sponsorship invoices as needed
    • Attended staff meeting about in-kind gifts
  • Financial Reporting
    • Applied donation and sponsorship payments in QBO
    • Reconciled donation records between QuickBooks and Donations Database
    • Reconciled PayPal account
    • Recorded PSF sponsorship revenue in accordance with GAAP
    • Reconciled Deferred Revenue accounts
    • Review AR Aging and update bad debt reserve
    • Reviewed the June financial statements
  • Accounting Systems
    • Supported onboarding AP processor
  • PyCon
    • Assisted in planning for PyCon 2021 Financial Aid
  • Other
    • Held periodic 1:1's with Controller
    • Responded to various emails on psf-donations and accounting

3.7   Laura Graves

  • Ongoing accounts payable responsibilities
  • Finished paperwork to implement new AP processor
  • Held first onboarding call for new AP processor and did troubleshooting with accounting team
  • Finished chart of account numbering
  • Created quarterly financials for all fiscal sponsorees
  • Restarted meetup grant invites by creating a worksheet to collect information and contacting the individual groups who had expressed interest in joining
  • Started updates to SAM profile

3.8   Lorena Mesa

  • PSF: Met with Conduct Workgroup at our fortnightly meetings to handle community reports and other Code of Conduct business
  • PSF: Recruiting more members for Conduct Workgroup
  • PSF: Scheduling and started 1:1s with PSF Board & Staff
  • PSF: Met with Naomi & Ewa to prepare July board meeting
  • PSF: Started election reform discussion on discuss.python.org
  • PSF: Outreach with PSF community members Katia Lira & Debora Acevedo in Spanish and Portuguese regarding PSF Election reform
  • PSF: Held several 1:1s with community members regarding PSF Election reforms
  • PSF: Contributed to PSF Grants reopening plan
  • PyLadies: Ran monthly interim PyLadies Global meeting
  • PyLadies: Recruit more members for PyLadies Global workgroup
  • PyLadies: Building PyLadies elections website including coordinating localization efforts (elections.pyladies.com)
  • PyLadies: General PyLadies admin work including tech work on website, PyLadies kit, moderating PyLadies Slack, recruiting more volunteers for PyLadies projects (e.g. Communications)
  • Python Web Conf / Community: Keynote Python Web Conf
  • Python Tea / Outreach: Participate in Nina's series specifically to discuss PSF election reform

3.9   Kushal Das

No report submitted.

3.10   Jannis Leidel

  • PSF: Monthly BOD meeting
  • PSF: Participated in email, Slack, and chat discussions.
  • PSF: Elected as Communications Co-Chair, no further action due to lack of cycles
  • PSF: Scheduled 1:1 with incoming PSF Chair, cancelled again due to lack of cycles
  • PSF: Became voting member of finance committee
  • PSF: Reviewed the June financial statements
  • Mozilla: Weekly meeting with GSoC student for porting Firefox build system to Python 3
  • Jazzband: Regular maintenance and communication as Jazzband roadie
  • Jazzband: Explored ways to finance OSS contributions for Jazzband projects via OpenCollective and GitHub sponsors

3.11   Katie McLaughlin

  • PSF: Communications Co-Chair - elected, onboarded, reviewed 1 x PSF blog article
  • PSF: 1:1 with incoming PSF Chair
  • PyConline AU: Sponsor Liaison - ongoing work and fundraising
  • PyConline AU: Program Assistant - coordinating reviews and session session
  • PyConline AU: Speaker Mentoring - feedback and assistance for multiple enquiries
  • PyConline AU: Shadow Director - assisting in general back of house duties
  • DjangoCon AU: Co-Organiser - onboarding, ongoing work

3.12   Marlene Mhangami

  • PSF: Represented the PSF at the Hidden Genius Global Tech Slam
  • PSF: Helped onboard new communications co-chairs and updated documentation
  • PSF: Monthly BOD meeting and advisory discussions.
  • PSF: Participated in email, Slack, and chat discussions.
  • PyCon Africa: Continued to chair the conference which will take place from the 4th-8th August.

3.13   Dustin Ingram

  • PSF: Finished onboarding
  • PSF: Reviewed PSF Strategic Plan (2019)
  • PSF: Finance Committee - joined
  • PSF: Finance Committee - reviewed finance committee policy
  • PSF: Finance Committee - reviewed June financial statements
  • PSF: Fundraising Committee - joined
  • PSF: Fundraising Committee - reviewed PSF Board Guide to Fundraising
  • PSF: Election Reform - initial proposal, research, setting goals
  • PSF: Election Reform - summarized https://discuss.python.org/t/psf-board-election-reform/4527/ for the board
  • PSF: 1:1 w/ BOD chair
  • PSF: 1:1 w/ Maria Fernanda Petri Betto about Fundraising, Education, Certification
  • Project Funding WG: Reviewed CPython proposal for upcoming CZI grant application
  • Packaging WG: Became chair of this WG
  • PyPA: PEP 609 (https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0609/) was accepted
  • PyPA: Moving all projects to the PSF CoC: https://github.com/pypa/.github/pull/1
  • PyPA: Worked with Director of Infrastructure to apply for Google Cloud Open Source Credits
  • PyPA: Continued maintenance and maintainership of projects including PyPI
  • Outreach: Attended EuroPython 2020 online

3.14   Jeff Triplett

  • PSF - Monthly BOD meeting and advisory discussions.
  • PSF - Conduct WG - Emergency Meeting.
  • PSF - Met with Phyllis to discuss the Treasurer role and setting up Finance WG meetings.
  • PSF - Participated in email, Slack, and chat discussions.
  • PSF - PSF Conduct WG duties (bi-weekly virtual meetings) and discussions.
  • DEFNA - BOD meeting.
  • DSF CoC WG - participated in email discussions.
  • Outreach - Co-hosted monthly Python organizers hangout.
  • Outreach - Helped a few community members find job leads.

3.15   Anna Ossowska

  • PSF: Participated in grants program relaunch discussions
  • PSF: Reviewed the June financial statements
  • PSF: Reviewed Recap of PyCon Online blog post

3.16   Thomas Wouters

  • PSF - Onboarding and first BOD meeting
  • PSF - Participated in PSF Fellow WG discussions and voting
  • PSF - Joined PyCon US Committee and the Executive Committee.
  • Steering Council - Participated in weekly SC meetings and PEP review.
  • PSF/SC - Per Conduct WG recommendation, recused myself from deliberations regarding Conduct WG recommendations around the PEP 8 discussion on python-ideas/python-dev.

3.17   Christopher Neugebauer

  • PSF: Contributed to board mailing list discussions
  • PSF: Re-joined PyCon US Committee
  • PyCon AU/PyConline AU: Joined steering committee's code of conduct enforcement oversight group, and worked to resolve an incident report
  • PyConline AU: Participated in program review

3.18   Nina Zakharenko

  • PSF: PSF onboarding and follow up reading
  • PSF: Interviewed Lorena Mesa on PSF Election Reform and other topics
  • Pycon US: Joined PyCon US Committee
  • PyCascades 2021: continuing work as co-chair, researching streaming options and best practices, brainstorming new Chair roles
  • Participating in EuroPython Remote as an attendee, taking notes on remote conference best practices

4   Work Group Reports

4.1   Sponsors

  • Continuing to review new sponsorship applications.
  • Approved 2 new sponsors at the iron level.

4.2   Marketing

Nothing new to report at this time.

4.3   Jobs

Nothing new to report at this time.

4.4   Trademarks

Nothing new to report at this time.

4.5   Fellows

  • The Fellow WG worked on approving new members for Q2 2020.
  • The WG is also in the process of adding a new WG member to help with outreach, local knowledge, and the work load.

4.6   Packaging

  • New Chair vote in progress, likely approved by meeting: Dustin Ingram with Nicole Harris as co-chair.

4.7   Infrastructure

  • In-Kind donation and credit review.
  • Applications in to new credit programs for major in-kind donations. Moving away from sponsorship agreements.

4.8   Scientific Python

Nothing new to report at this time.

4.9   Funding Work Group

  • One of the WG members has been working on the CZI grant application (for a developer-in-residence role https://github.com/python/steering-council/issues/26) and has had one meeting with the PSF Board Liaison to continue the process.
  • A discussion has been started with the Steering Council for input on the application, which is due August 4, 2020

5   Votes Approved by Email

None at this time.

6   Votes Approved by Working Groups

6.1   Sponsors

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation Sponsor Working Group approve the sponsor application from ScoutAPM at the Iron Level.

Approved July 15, 2020, 6-0-0

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation Sponsor Working Group approve the sponsor application from STX Next at the Iron Level.

Approved July 14, 2020, 6-0-1

6.2   Grants

The group discussed a revision to consider funding only virtual events and sprints through the end of 2020. A webpage was created with free resources for the community: https://www.python.org/psf/grants/free-resources/.

6.3   Scientific Python

Nothing to report at this time.

9   Discussions

  • Board Election Reformation
    • Immediate action items: the board will be launching a DI&B workgroup, an email thread will be started to discuss term limits and company limits.
    • Long term plan: membership data discovery and once data is collected better target membership registration, improving membership opportunities and flexibility
  • Strategic Planning Goals
    • The board and ED identified the PSF's strategic goals through the next 12 months
    • Diversifying revenue streams via PyPI possibilities and research whether a Certification Program could be valuable
    • Support sustainability of core development
    • Finalize and implement a Community Leadership Council

10   Meeting Adjournment

The meeting was adjourned at 22:00 UTC (GMT/Zulu).