The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2016-08-22
Call Minutes
Location: Phone Conference Room
Session chair: Marina Latini
Keeper of the minutes: Florian Effenberger
In the call: Marina (Board), Thorsten (Board), Kendy (Board), Osvaldo (Board), Simon (Board), Norbert (Deputy), Bjoern (Deputy), Andreas (Deputy), Florian (ED)
Representation: Norbert for Michael, Björn for Eike
Chairwoman of the Board is in the call. One of the Chairman or Deputy is required to be present or represented for having a quorate call.
The Board of Directors at the time of the call consists of 7 seat holders without deputies. In order to be quorate, the call needs to have 1/2 of the Board of Directors members, which gives 4. A total of 7 Board of Directors members or their representatives are attending the call.
The board waives all formal statutory requirements, or requirements in the foundations articles, or other requirements regarding form and invitation, time limits, and for the topics discussed in this meeting.
The call is quorate. From now on, motions can be passed with the agreement of a simple majority of those remaining present. The majority threshold is currently 4.
The meeting commences at 17:09 Berlin time.
Public agenda:
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0. Next board call (Florian)
The next regular board call takes place in one week, Monday August 29, 1700 Berlin time - shall we cancel it, shall it take place?
The call will take place as planned.
1. Info: Meeting in Brno (Florian)
* Date and time: 08:45 on Saturday, September 10
* Location: At the Red Hat offices in Brno (Red Hat Czech s.r.o., Purkynova 99, 612 45 Brno, fifth floor meeting rooms)
* Attendees: BoD + old and new MC + ED
* Agenda
1. Welcome and introduction
2. Formal invitation, representation and quorum
3. Overview of past activities, finances and budget for 2016
4. Planning and strategy for 2017
4.1. Strategy, finances and budget
4.2. Entities and partnerships
4.3. Events (participating and hosting)
5. Community building and focal points
6. Various
2. Discuss: Hangout replacement with Jitsi (Thorsten)
Find minimal consensus on what the board wants and agree on budget.
* Dial-in in various countries is a problem as we just can't seem to get them.
* Dial-out could be an administrative burden
* Jitsi + Freeswitch for connection with talkyoo is possible, but then we have two control panels to maintain during the call
Norbert: phone is fine
Björn: dito, but Hangout is getting more and more unreliable
Thorsten: second that, but we definitely need a telephone bridge -> should we put a price tag to it to see how important it is to the board?
Simon: there's a reasonable amount of board members participating via Hangouts, which seems to be deprecated these days
Björn: wants a better solution than what we have now, highest priority is that it is accessible, and then other features like video
Norbert: we have something that works at no cost, so we should not spend money on this
Thorsten: agree, spending serious money on this is out of scope, 5-10k € as cap
Norbert: I don't mind if people use their computer, doesn't want to, but minds if it comes with a serious price tag
Björn: current situation - talkyoo sort of works, Hangout almost works and might stop working anytime
Florian: dialins/country coverage is quite important
Thorsten: why not have a dialout?
Björn: for some countries dialout might be easier, let's ask participants in ESC and other calls whether they prefer digial/analog connection
Marina and Osvaldo: agrees
AI Thorsten & Simon: how to move this forward - collect details and make a proposal
Kendy: not sure it'd be resources well spent, happy to setup bridge between Hangout and phone, but won't block this
Thorsten: we had problems with ESC recently, running out of slots
Simon: Android apps can help give people voice connection
3. Info: Membership Committee Elections (Florian)
Deadline for applications is August 31, so far two received (Miklos, Charles). 5 needed at least, 5+4 ideal. Please reach out to possible candidates. Formally, the election has to be overseen by the board. Florian happy to run it, but some BoD members to cross-check would be welcome.
* Thorsten happy to help
Public call ends at 17:34 Berlin time.
Marina Latini (Session chair)
Florian Effenberger (Keeper of the minutes)