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PSF Meeting Minutes for Feb. 27, 2012

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

February 27, 2012


A regular meeting of the Python Software Foundation ("PSF") Board of Directors was held over Internet Relay Chat beginning at 16:00 UTC, 27 February 2012. Steve Holden presided at the meeting. Pat Campbell prepared the minutes.

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

1   Attendance

The following members of the Board of Directors (8 of ll) were present at the meeting: Steve Holden, Marc-Andre Lemburg, Martin von Löwis, Doug Napoleone [arrived at 12:05], Jesse Noller, Tim Peters, Allison Randall, and Gloria Willadsen. Also in attendance were Kurt Kaiser (Treasurer) and Pat Campbell (Secretary/Administrator).

2   Minutes of Past Meetings

The 16 January 2012 Board meeting minutes were voted on and approved.

RESOLVED, that the minutes at http://mail.python.org/mailman/private /psf-board/2012-January/016184.html be accepted as a true and fair record of the meeting.

Approved, 6-0-1.

3   Votes Taken Between Meetings

There was one (1) vote taken between meetings.

3.1   Storage Space for PyCon Video Archives

The resolution below is scheduled to be amended during the next board meeting which is scheduled for March 19, 2012. The PSF will take full monetary responsibilities for the storage space.

RESOLVED: That the Foundation spend a maximum of $5715.00 in purchasing a long term storage array for the video archives of past python conferences maintained by Carl Karsten. This array is to be jointly owned by the Python Software Foundation and the Django Software Foundation.

Approved via email vote on February 4, 2012, 7-0-0.

4   Treasurer Report

The monthly Treasurer's Report was provided to Board members by K. Kaiser prior to the Board meeting and produced from Quickbooks Online.

Here is an exerpt from the treasurer's report on a few of the activities the treasurer has been focused on:

For the month of January 2012, the treasurer provided a sumation of the financial activities by saying:

Our assets were up by 490K in January, reflecting the payments for PyCon registration and sponsorship. This was matched by a similar increase in liability.

The next couple of months will continue to be very busy financially, but the P&L won't show much change until we recognize the results of PyCon 2012. At that point (triggered by paying the hotel bill) the accrued expense and revenue will move to the P&L and our assets and liabilities will return to normal levels.

He reported on the revenue and expense below:

Revenue:

In the month of January, YTD income was down by 2K.

Donations for the month were $1075.

Expense:

Grants:
Portland Python Meetup.com 72
Outside Services:
Wendroff 1,150

The treasurer goes on to say:

AR is up by 86K due to PyCon 2012 Sponsor and PSF Sponsor invoicing and collection activity.

We opened a Bank of America account. This allows us access to branches and cash across the country. The regional nature of SunTrust has been causing us problems, especially now that PyCon has moved to California and grown substantially.

Our lead accountant at Wendroff moved on (again), so time is being spent bringing the junior person up to speed while they replace the lead. I'm expecting some additional load over the next month or two due to this.

Kurt concluded his report with a list of financial business items he will be focused on, he said:

My focus is on PyCon issues, AR/AP reduction and the Associate Member program.

5   Progress Reports

The following board reports were submitted to the board mailing list one week prior to this month's meeting. Please see a summary of each board report listed below and a possible board discussion at the end of the report(s):

5.1   Communication Status

D. Hellmann, Communication Officer, reported on continued activities from last month. He said:

1. Send announcement email about the blog to various mailing lists (c.l.py, c.l.py.announce, etc.).

No progress.

Doug also reported on the new activities for the month. He reported:

  1. None

He reported the following information on the planned activities for next month:

Nothing specific.

As far as the ongoing projects for the month are concerned, he reported:

  1. Brian Curtin is working on a post about the video equipment purchased by the PSF and how it has been used to record conference talks and other events.
  2. Recruiting other people to help write for the blog.
  3. We have initiated a transition plan so Brian Curtin can take over as Communications Director around the time of the next Board elections after PyCon 2012.

For tabled activities, D. Hellmann said:

  1. PyCon video equipment loan/rental program post

    There was some discussion of offering the PyCon video equipment to PUGs for their meetings, but the mechanism to do it isn't in place, yet.

5.2   Honorary Associate Membership Program

P. Campbell, Honorary Associate Membership (HAM) WebPages Start-up Project, reported on the current issues or blockages the project may be faced with by saying:

"We have been in the technical phase of the Honorary Associate Membership (HAM) Project for some time now. However, we are not too far away from recruiting our first PSF Honorary Associate member.

Many technical hurdles have been jumped in order to setup the HAM program and we are now beginning to see some movement toward getting the HAM website page prepared to be utilized for membership recruitment and subscriptions.

Kurt has been asking for help with the text on the sign-up page and also help with the the actual membership front page."

As far as the continued activities from last month are concerned, she reported:

"Since Kurt Kaiser, our treasurer, has been able to devote more time to the HAM project implementation and setup, we should be able to set the launch date soon. However, he is requesting help toward getting the website content together."

Please see the message from Kurt Kaiser’s February 2012 treasurer’s report regarding the current status of the technical phase of the HAM program implementation and maintenance:

The text on HAM signup pages is preliminary and needs improvement. I'm looking for help here!

Continuing work on a front page with Associate Member sign-up information. Decide how to present the HAM Membership to the world, probably via a python.org link. I'm looking for help here!

Progress was made on limiting the access to the Associate Member signup page to people who have registered on the site. The page was re-branded with a Python PSF logo. The mechanism for signing up Associate members is essentially finished, but the "selling" aspect needs better web content (just text!) before exposing it to the world!

5.3   Marketing Material

M.A.Lemburg, Marketing Material Project Manager, provided a summary of his work. He said:

The project is lead by Marc-André Lemburg who is in contact with the people behind the Plone brochure created by the German Zope User Group (DZUG): Jan Ulrich Hasecke and Armin Stroß-Radschinski.

We started working on the concept a few weeks after World Plone Day in April 2010 and had several meetings and conference calls to take the idea forward.

For more details, please see the brochure support site at:

http://brochure.getpython.info/learn-more

Marc-André also reported on the progress of his project when he said:

We have made good progress in the last few weeks.

The story selection process is mostly finished and we have already worked through most of the original texts to shorten them and make them better fit the format.

Since we won't be having the brochure ready for PyCon US, but still want to benefit from the large number of attendees, we've created a smaller teaser version of the brochure to get attention of potential ad, reference and subscription sponsors.

The teaser will be placed in the PyCon US attendee bags. Additional copies will be available at the registration desk in case you want to take some along to show to companies who might be interested in booking an ad or listing.

Here's the link to the PDF of the teaser:

LINK REDACTED

Please don't pass the PDF around, since we haven't yet finalized the PDF redistribution rights on the content with the story contributors.

Passing around the printed copies is fine, of course :-)

Unfortunately, no one from our team will attend PyCon US, so I hope that you'll all enjoy the conference. If you find people interested in the brochure, please feel free to direct them to the website or via email to brochure at getpython.info.

Meanwhile, we're still getting new success stories - which is good, since we are actively collecting them in our tracker with the aim of putting them online after the first edition has been released and plan on using them for the second edition.

If you know possible sponsors or are interested in sponsoring the brochure yourself, please check the available sponsorship plans we have available:

http://brochure.getpython.info/sponsorship

Here's the media data for the brochure:

http://brochure.getpython.info/mediadata

Esp. the reference entry sponsorships should be interesting for smaller Python companies:

http://brochure.getpython.info/mediadata/reference-entry-guidelines

We will announce the call for sponsors on the usual lists, feeds and our website, once we have the credit card system setup.

M.A Lemberg reported on the current issues the project is faced with. He said:

If you know of interesting projects or companies using Python to great things, please contact us and consider signing up as contact scout to provide on-site help at conferences or other events:

http://brochure.getpython.info/signup/contact-scout-signup

and, if you're interested in the project, please consider signing up to our newsletter:

http://brochure.getpython.info/

Thanks !

As far as the future plans for this project are concerned, he reported:

If the project goes well, we'll follow up with a second edition of the brochure, Python flyers using material extracted from the brochure, translated versions of the brochure and also consider creating marketing material more targeted at specific user groups or application fields.

In the long run, we'd also like to take the idea of producing marketing material beyond printed material and develop booth setups, giveaways, CDs, etc. to support conference organizers and local user groups wishing to promote Python at their events.

5.4   Moving PyPI to Amazon CloudFront

The project leader, M.A. Lemburg, Moving PyPI to Amazon CloudFront, reported on progress for the month:

"The project is currently on hold, since the team members don't have time to put into this."

In terms of having any issues surrounding his project, M. A. Lemburg reported no issues except one: he said, he just does not have enough time to devote to his Moving PyPI to Amazon CloudFront project.

    1. Lemburg also reported on the future plans for this project:

"Check to see whether a trigger based approach to S3 syncing wouldn't be easier to implement right from the start."

5.5   PyCon Chair

J. Noller, PyCon Chair, provided us with information on when and where the next two PyCon US conferences will be held, in addition to the web location of the official PyCon 2012. Please see below:

PyCon 2012: March 7th — 15th, Santa Clara, CA PyCon 2013: March 11th — 21st, Santa Clara, CA Official Site: http://us.pycon.org/2012

He also provided "notes" for this month. He said:

Attendance: 2022 Total attendance right now. (1904 regular; 92 tutorial only; 26 expo only). This is way over our cap, and mainly due to bad estimates on my part and late sponsor registrations.

We have shut down registration.

We have a record making 132 sponsors.

Financial update sent privately to board.

For this month, Jesse reported on "Issues and blockages." He said:

  1. Networking contract unsigned
  2. Power contract unsigned

As far as the continued activities from last month, he reported:

  1. Printed guide nearing completion.
  2. Swag and T-shirts have been ordered.
  3. Startup row winners announced.
  4. Mobile guide moving smoothly.
  5. On Site volunteers are organizing.

Jesse also listed the new activities for the month. Please see below:

  1. Schedule and promote Singpath tournament.
  2. get Disqus system linked into site.

The last two PyCon US items reported on by Jesse were the activities "planned for next month" where he listed one (1) item and included a list of the "current Heads/Staff for PyCon 2012."

[see above]

  1. Hold conference. Keep Sanity.

5.6   Current Heads/Staff for PyCon 2012

Chair: Jesse Noller Co-Chair: Yannick Gingras

Accountant/Sponsors: Van Lindberg Event Coordinator: Ewa Jodlowska/CTE Public Relations Lead: Brian Curtin

Tech Lead: Doug Napoleone Tech Co-Lead: Noah Kantrowtiz

Volunteer Lead: TBD

Program Committee Chair: Jacob Kaplan-Moss Program Committee Co-Chair: Tim Lesher

Tutorials Chair: Stuart Williams Tutorials Co-Chair: TBD

Posters Chair: Vern Ceder Posters Co-Chair: Zac Miller

Financial Aide Chair: Peter Kropf Financial Aide Co-Chair: Gloria W.

However, under "tabled activities," he provided the following:

None

6   Manage Officer/Director Spending

RESOLVED, that the board repeals the previously passed resolution of June 12, 2006 which states "until further notice, the Officers of the Corporation may spend up to USD 500 per expense without prior Board approval, but subject to prompt reporting to the Board, and consistent with the mission statement and requirements of maintaining our status as a 501(c)3 non-profit."

RESOLVED, that until further notice, the Officers of the Corporation may spend up to USD 250 per expense without prior Board approval, but subject to prompt reporting to the Board, and consistent with the mission statement and requirements of maintaining our status as a 501(c)3 non-profit.

RESOLVED, that until further notice, the Directors of the Corporation may spend up to USD 500 per expense without prior Board approval, but subject to prompt reporting to the Board, and consistent with the mission statement and requirements of maintaining our status as a 501(c)3 non-profit.

RESOLVED, that until further notice, the Secretary of the Corporation may spend up to USD 250 per expense without prior Board approval, for expenses needed to undertake its duties as outlined in the bylaws, and up to USD 500 per expense without prior Board approval, but subject to prompt reporting to the Board, and consistent with the mission statement and requirements of maintaining our status as a 501(c)3 non-profit.

Approved, 8-0-0.

7   Administrator's Review

RESOLVED, that the Board recognizes the efforts expended by its Administrator, Pat Campbell, in furthering the development of the organization and the mission of the Foundation.

Approved, 8-0-0.

8   Community Service Award Nomination for 2012-Q1

The board selected two winners for this year's 1st Quarter award which was announced at PyCon US 2012.

RESOLVED, that the 2012-1st Quarter PSF Community Service Award be granted to Carl Trachte and Audrey Roy.

Approved, 8-0-0.

10   Dyn Inc. for DNS Hosting

RESOLVED, that the PSF contracts Dyn Inc. for hosting DNS.

Approved, 7-1-0.

12   Adjournment

  1. Holden adjourned the meeting at 16:48 UTC.