Board meeting, March 12th, 2018
Board members present
- Martin Michlmayr (tbm) (President)
- Michael Schultheiss (schultmc) (Treasurer)
- Valerie Young (spectranaut) (Secretary)
- Jimmy Kaplowitz (Hydroxide)
- Tim Potter (tpot)
- Martin Zobel-Helas (zobel)
Board members partially present
- Luca Filipozzi (luca) (Vice President)
Board members absent with regrets
- None
Board members absent
- Andrew Tridgell (tridge)
Board advisors present
- None
Registered guests present
- R. Tyler Croy (rtyler)
These are the minutes for the March 12th, 2018 SPI Board Meeting, held at 20:00 UTC in #spi on irc.spi-inc.org. LOG.
President's Report
Martin Michlmayr made a SPI sponsor page to thank SPI's regular, large scale sponsors. Michlmayr additionally thanks the individual donors that support SPI and SPI's associated projects.
Treasurer's report
Michael Schultheiss and Martin Zobel-Helas have continued to work on the outstanding bookkeeping issues that are presently preventing the completion of the 2017 treasurer's reports. Schultheiss believes they will be caught up by the end of March, pending a request for data from the Debian project and a login issue with the Debian PayPal account. Jimmy Kaplowitz will assist with the Debian PayPal login problem by setting up US phone number with G Suite for non-profits.
Schultheiss publicly thanks the Craigslist Foundation for generously supporting the SPI general fund and PostgreSQL project.
Secretary's report
Nothing to report.
Outstanding minutes
Vote on Meeting Minutes for 12th February 2018:
| Jimmy Kaplowitz | Yes |
| Martin Michlmayr | Yes |
| Tim Potter | Yes |
| Michael Schultheiss | Yes |
| Valerie Young | Yes |
| Martin Zobel-Helas | Yes |
Motion passed with a vote of 6 yes, 0 no, 0 abstain, 0 missing.
Items up for discussion
Resolution 2018-03-09.mm.1: R. Tyler Croy as interim director
Martin Michlmayr announces that SPI received two strong candidates for the interim board position. After careful review and discussion by the board, Michlmayr would like to propose R. Tyler Croy as interim director. See resolution in Appendix B.
Vote on Resolution 2018-03-09.mm.1: R. Tyler Croy as interim director
| Martin Michlmayr | Yes |
| Michael Schultheiss | Yes |
| Valerie Young | Yes |
| Jimmy Kaplowitz | Yes |
| Tim Potter | Yes |
| Martin Zobel-Helas | Yes |
Motion passed with a vote of 6 yes, 0 no, 0 abstain, 0 missing.
The SPI board welcomes R. Tyler Croy.
Review of old resolutions
At the face-to-face meeting in October, the board discussed reviewing old resolutions and organizing by categories "defunct", "superseded by later resolution", "active" at a later point in the year.
R. Tyler Croy volunteers to review the resolutions as part of his on-boarding. Martin Michlmayr remarks the superseded resolutions are already marked and appear on the website with a strike through. Valerie Young agrees to send an email to outline the work in the following week.
Responding to new project inquiries
The SPI Board is typically slow to respond to new project inquiries and the response almost always comes from Martin Michlmayr. Valerie Young added this agenda item to encourage the board to respond to new project inquiries. Unless anyone else volunteers, she will respond to the three outstanding project inquiries sent to the SPI board mailing list in the last two months. No one else volunteers.
Michlmayr requests the whole board engage more actively in conversations with new projects going forward.
BitPay
Martin Michlmayr remarks this agenda item was potentially premature and summarizes: the SPI board recently received a request to accept donations of crypto currencies. BitPay is an option but only handles Bitcoin.
The board agrees there is a legal question of whether it would be wise to accept crypto currencies. Luca Filipozzi and Jimmy Kaplowitz believe SPI should not allow large donations in cryptocurrencies and small donations might be more hassle than it's worth. R. Tyler Croy and Tim Potter will research considerations and email the board private list.
Review of Action Items
Jimmy Kaplowitz emailed Mishi a couple of days before the February meeting to follow up on the bylaws but only heard back from her the Friday before the present meeting. Kaplowitz states he will be able to avoid further significant delays on his end, as his life has recently stabilized, and if Mishi continues correspondence the board should have a final draft of the bylaws to approve at the April meeting and submit as an additional voting item in the July elections.
Luca Filipozzi states he will be able to resume SPI activities after a few months period of limited time. His first and foremost goal is to evaluate the upgrade of our infrastructure (he proposes to move to AWS). Secondarily he will look at the ad-hoc committee piece and finally at the pruning of resolutions.
Adjournment
The meeting was adjourned until Monday, April 9th, 2018 at 20:00 UTC in #spi on irc.spi-inc.org.
Appendix A: Current Board Membership
| Last elected | Name | Role |
|---|---|---|
| July 2017 | Martin Michlmayr | President |
| July 2016 | Luca Filipozzi | Vice President |
| July 2015 | Michael Schultheiss | Treasurer |
| July 2016 | Valerie Young | Secretary |
| March 2018 | R. Tyler Croy | Interim Director |
| July 2016 | Jimmy Kaplowitz | |
| July 2017 | Tim Potter | |
| July 2017 | Andrew Tridgell | |
| July 2016 | Martin Zobel-Helas |
Appendix B: Resolution 2018-03-09.mm.1: R. Tyler Croy as interim director
WHEREAS 1. A vacancy on the SPI board of directors exists due to the resignation of Joerg Jaspert. 2. R. Tyler Croy has sufficient time, interest, motivation, and experience to usefully assist SPI over the remainder of the current board term. 3. Tyler is available to attend most or all of the remaining board meetings in the current term; and 4. Tyler has confirmed that he is willing to accept this appointment; THE SPI BOARD RESOLVES THAT 1. R. Tyler Croy is hereby appointed as an interim member of the SPI board of directors, beginning at the conclusion of the March 2018 board meeting and continuing until the conclusion of the July 2018 SPI board elections.