Home> Blog> Interim Board Meeting: Nov 4, 2014

Interim Board Meeting: Nov 4, 2014

Attending

  • Greg Wilson (Software Carpentry Foundation)
  • Neil Chue Hong (Software Sustainability Institute)
  • Kaitlin Thaney (Mozilla Science Lab)
  • Josh Greenberg (Sloan Foundation) - on etherpad
  • Jenny Bryan (UBC)
  • Damien Irving (University of Melbourne)
  • Tracy Teal (Data Carpentry / BEACON)
  • Katy Huff (UC Berkeley)
  • Adam Stone (LBL: Sick, No Voice)

Apologies

  • Carole Goble (U. Manchester)

Actions

  • Board: mext meeting on Tue Nov 18 (same time unless Doodle poll finds a better one).

  • Board: vote on bylaws/funding model at Nov 18 meeting.

  • Board: add all funding/partnership leads to funding directory of board_pvt repository with details of what is being offered by end of business on Friday Nov 7 2014.

  • GW to separate the list of current funding proposals into "immediate action" vs. "those that require confirmation of partnership/revenue model".

  • GW/JB: sort out ownership of funding repository.

Unresolved

  • Board agreed to discuss roles and responsibilities of Board members at next meeting, but nobody was assigned to draft.

  • GW would like to begin talking to several potential partners (list included below), but meeting ended before this could be discussed.

Resolutions

  • Job description for Executive Director approved.
  • See executive-director.md in public board repository.

  • Executive Director position offered to Greg Wilson.
  • Greg provisionally accepts conditional on agreement on SCF by-laws

  • Description of the role and responsibilities of the chair approved.
  • See board-chair.md in public board repository.

  • Board Chair position offered to Neil Chue Hong.
  • Neil accepted on the provision that it is the chair of the interim board.

  • Board to vote by email on final text of mission statement for the Software Carpentry Foundation by Thursday Nov 6.
  • See mission-statement.md in public board repository.

  • The acronym "SCF" will be used for the Software Carpentry Foundation.

  • Guidelines for issue escalation and communication between workshop coordinators, the Executive Director, and the Board of Directors adopted.
  • See issue-escalation.md in public board repository.

  • "Pursuit of Funding" resolution adopted, and all Board members promptly inform the Board of all ongoing fund-raising activities involving Software Carpentry.
  • Note: wording "on an Etherpad" in original text has been replaced by "in the Git repository and by email", since we're moving away from Etherpads (see below).

  • Documents for discussion will be managed through the Git repository rather than through Etherpads, and conversations will be managed through GitHub issues.

Discussion

  • Should Board members sign non-disclosure agreements?
  • No.
  • Instead, sharing of information (i.e. a culture of disclosure). should be enshrined in the description of the role of a Board member.
  • How to balance funding sought by SCF vs funding for SCF through partners?
  • Good faith.

  • Do board members share specifics of what they're offering to do w.r.t. Software Carpentry with potential partners to help with capacity planning etc.?
  • Yes.

  • The Board requested more time to comment on the three-tier model for partnership, and committed to voting at the next meeting on Nov 18.

  • The board requested more time to comment on the revenue sharing model for workshops, and committed to voting at the next meeting on Nov 18.

  • For next meeting:
  • Approval of by-laws.
  • Approval of partnership model.
  • Approval of revenue sharing / management model for workshops
  • including agreement of what to do with future workshop donations
  • Define/vote on roles and responsibilities of board members.

  • For subsequent meeting:
  • Propose operations communication procedure for SCF staff and workshop hosts.
    • Requires linkage to partnership model.