Board meeting, July 11th, 2006
These are the draft minutes for the annual meeting held July 1st and July 11th, 2006 in #spi on irc.spi-inc.org. LOG
Board members present
- John Goerzen (CosmicRay) President
- Benjamin Mako Hill (mako) Vice President
- David Graham (cdlu) Secretary
- Jimmy Kaplowitz (Hydroxide) Treasurer
- Branden Robinson (Overfiend)
- Martin Schulze (Joey)
- Bdale Garbee (bdale)
Board members absent
- Bruce Perens
- Ian Jackson
Registered guests present
- Neil McGovern (Maulkin)
- Michael Schultheiss (schultmc)
- Romain Francoise (ore)
- MJ Ray (slef)
- Joe Brockmeier (jzb)
- Thijs Kinkhorst (kink)
- Christian T. Steigies (cts)
- Joerg Jaspert (Ganneff)
- Moray Allan (moray)
- Luk Claes (luk)
President's Report
Due to the lack of a lack of reports from projects, committees, or the treasurer, the President's Report consists only of the Membership Committee report.
See appendix for the text of this report.
When more information is received, John Goerzen will pass it on to his successor for use in a late Annual Report.
Treasurer's Report
Jimmy Kaplowitz reports: "An update that was current on the Treasurer's report situation as of July 1st is in the agenda. Since then, my computer problems are fixed but I haven't yet gotten to catching up on the Treasurer's reports. Still, what I say in that update about my plans to catch up by the election cycle switchover on July 29 is still true. I apologize for the delays."
See appendix for referred text.
Elections are in progress and Branden Robinson offers to continue as the Deputy Treasurer until his services are no longer needed.
Outstanding minutes
Minutes are presented for approval from March 21st, and June 20th, 2006.
The minutes for March 21st are put to a vote:
| Branden Robinson | Yes |
| David Graham | Yes |
| Bdale Garbee | Yes |
| Jimmy Kaplowitz | Yes |
| John Goerzen | Yes |
| Martin Schulze | Abstain |
| Benj. Mako Hill | Yes |
The minutes for March 21st are approved by a vote of: Yes: 6, No: 0, Abstain: 1
The minutes for June 20th are put to a vote:
| Branden Robinson | Abstain |
| David Graham | Yes |
| Bdale Garbee | Yes |
| Jimmy Kaplowitz | Yes |
| John Goerzen | Yes |
| Martin Schulze | Yes |
| Benj. Mako Hill | Yes |
The minutes for June 20th are approved by a vote of: Yes: 6, No: 0, Abstain: 1
Board election
David Graham reports that more candidates have signed up than the number of seats available for election, so a vote will definitely take place.
Current information is on the vote page
Neil McGovern has written software to tally the votes, but is a candidate and the code needs auditing.
Benjamin Mako Hill volunteers.
Spanish Trademark
This item is again deferred as SPI continues to seek legal advice and is left for the new board to handle following the election.
Tax filing
Tax filing is proceeding slowly.
Website rebuild
Neil McGovern reports that BlackCat Networks has provided SPI a new server that is more powerful and with more RAM. The server transition will take place over the next 1 to 2 weeks and the website is ready to be transferred.
Issues from the floor
The Board thanks the outgoing Board members not seeking reelection for their years of service on the Board and as President and Vice President.
Adjournment
The meeting is adjourned until August 1st, where a special meeting will be held to select the Board's Officers following the announcement of election results on July 29th. The next regular business meeting will be August 15th.
The meeting closed at 19:52 UTC.
APPENDIX A: Current board membership
| Date elected | Name | Role |
|---|---|---|
| [2003-03-11] | John Goerzen | President |
| [2003-03-11] | Benjamin Mako Hill | Vice President |
| [2003-11-29] | David Graham | Secretary |
| [2004-02-20] | Jimmy Kaplowitz | Treasurer |
| [2004-07-29] | Bdale Garbee | |
| [2004-07-29] | Branden Robinson | |
| [2003-11-29] | Ian Jackson | |
| [2003-03-11] | Bruce Perens | |
| [2003-11-29] | Martin "Joey" Schulze |
APPENDIX B: Approved motions
The minutes for March 21st and June 20th, 2006 were approved.
APPENDIX C: President's report
This is the Membership Committee report:
Membership Committee
In May 2005 Graham Wilson, Luk Claes and Michael Schultheiss became the
new Membership Committee. They are all still willing to continue this
for the next year.
2.1.1 Statistics
Here are some statistics from the membership committee:
2005 2006
NC Applicants Pending Email Approval 31 50
NC Members 282 318
Contrib Membership Applications 8 10
Contrib Members 313 335
Application Managers 6 3
3. The Future
As can be seen in the statistics, the NC Applicants Pending Email
Approval is
raising. The reason is that there is no webinterface for removing these
applications, so it might be a good idea to implement this next year :-)
The amount of NC Members and Contrib Members is of course increasing as
normally the rule is: once a member always a member. Most of the open
Contrib
Membership Applications are because of applicants mentioning too few (or no)
information in the online application form. These applicants are pinged and
their application will be processed further in the near future.
Also among the planned improvements for the web interface is support for a
scriptable interface, and a corresponding tool that allows application
managers
to process applicants without requiring them to manipulate them through
the web
interface. This will hopefully make the task of managing applicants easier.
APPENDIX D: Treasurer's update
I'm submitting these updates right before the meeting, but primarily to get them down for the meeting, not necessarily to provide advance notice. Treasurer's report update: In addition to the carpal tunnel I've had, I've also been experiencing hardware problems on the machine with my gpg-encrypted online bank access password as well as my SPI email archive. Needless to say, this has made me unable to properly submit information for the annual report or to do treasurer's reports recently. As I have said before, I still intend to catch up as much as possible on my treasurer's reports in advance of the turnover in Treasurer's duties on the 29th, and if not, I will provide the new Treasurer what assistance necessary to finish them. Outstanding minutes: I gave David a slight correction to the item in the June 20 minutes about Treasurer's reports, to better reflect what I actually said. Debian trademark in Spain: I explained this situation to SPI lawyer Greg Pomerantz in person last Wednesday, and he had been unaware of it previously. He said then that he would take a look at it. I also mentioned that it's been on hold for a while now and that dealing with it quickly would be appreciated. Tax filing/bookkeeping: Greg advised that we probably shouldn't try to register with New York until we have financial information ready for the last several years, because they'll probably want it once we're on their radar. Therefore, I am holding off on registering with NY State. As for actually getting the financial information ready for our 2005 federal filing, I have to defer to Branden on that, since he's the one who's been dealing with Mark's Bookkeeping. I will be filing a request for a second extension on this filing (which shouldn't be too hard), since we're right now in the process of conducting elections and we probably will need until after the changeover to complete the filing.