The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2021-01-30
Meeting Minutes
Location: Jitsi
Session chair: Lothar Becker
Keeper of the minutes: Stephan Ficht
In the meeting:
Board - Lothar Becker, Cor Nouws, Thorsten Behrens, Michael Meeks, Franklin Weng, Emiliano Vavassori, Daniel Rodriguez
Board Deputies - Paolo Vecchi, Nicolas Christener
Membership Committee - Marina Latini, Muhammet Kara
Membership Committee Deputies - Shinji Enoki, Uwe Altmann, Dennis Roczek
Team - Stephan Ficht, Florian Effenberger, Sophie Gautier, Heiko Tietze, Mike Saunders, Guilhem Moulin, Italo Vignoli
Community - Andreas Reinisch
Representation:
(See https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/ subject "Representation statements")
Chairman of the Board is in the meeting. One of the Chairman or Deputy Chairman is required to be present or represented for having a quorate call.
The Board of Directors at 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 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 meeting is quorate and invitation happened in time. 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 11:04 Berlin time.
Public part
1. Welcome, introduction, invitation, representation and quorum (Lothar/Franklin, 5 minutes)
Presentation of the agenda, confirmation of proper invitation, handle representation statements and determine quorum.
* Full board present, incl. chair and deputy
* We are quorate
* Agenda and slides available
* Lothar presents the agenda and timeline
* Lothar asks how Corona situation is affecting everyone
* He wishes we could meet in person
* unclear situation wrt. LibOCon, in-person meeting from all continents unlikely, but maybe a hybrid mode - should know more later this year (Lothar, Thorsten, Florian)
* great tools available now for videoconferencing (Paolo)
2. Update on key goals (Florian, 15 minutes)
An update on the various key goals, where we stand and what the next steps are.
1. Streamline tendering process, sign two tenders and get them delivered (Nicolas, Lothar, Florian)
* explaining using prepared slides (Florian)
+ split work with different people (Nicolas)
+ list of requirement of tenders
+ create table to summarize and weigh
+ rough idea of criteria (Lothar)
+ better way to come to conclusion
+ learned to give more details for the role model
+ share docs in the aftermath (Florian)
2. Hire development mentor, grow pool of code committers (all)
+ shared a few days ago (Florian
+ first interviews and informal contacts
+ explaining slides (Italo)
+ Dashboard: volunteer (best guess) are Assigned + Unknown + (Unknown) (Michael)
+ issue is solved (Italo)
+ good to balance the data with the number of committers by affiliation (Michael)
3. Grow non-coding community (Ilmari, Mike)
+ ongoing thing, explainig slides (Mike)
4. (Virtual) Hackfests where coders and non-coders meet (Mike, Ilmari)
+ in person meeting not possible for pandemic reasons (Florian)
5. Marketing plan, younger contributors, OpenOffice users (Italo, Mike)
+ announcement next wednesday (Italo)
+ press release prepared and going public asap
+ improve website and wording
+ collateral activities
+ will happen after FOSDEM
+ virtual FOSDEM huge drain of time
+ any help needed? (Lothar)
+ getting younger contributors (Mike)
+ 'New Generation' started yesterday
+ big audience reacting
+ have things to offer
+ many more things to do
+ open letter well received
+ people speaking about 'OpenOffice' but meaning indeed LibreOffice
+ doubled download delta Aoo - LO
6. Evaluating tooling, e.g. Discourse for AskBot, incl. tools for participation improvement (Sophie, Ilmari)
7. Campus program for student ambassadors (Italo)
+ everything frozen on universities due to pandemic (Italo)
+ will keep in touch with the people
+ sth in parallel (Marina)
+ university of Perugia, Umbria
8. Business entity (Paolo, Thorsten, Michael)
+ no news (Florian)
3. Overview on downloads, budget and donations (Florian, Mike, Italo, 5 minutes)
Update on our budget, download numbers and the status of donations.
+ how is working CiviCRM? (Thorsten)
+ some actual issues going to be solved asap (Florian)
4. Various, quick questions and answers, closing of the public part, and invitation to next public board meeting (Lothar/Franklin, 5 minutes)
A few minutes for questions and answers. Everyone is invited to continue the discussion in the next public board meeting on February 12.
+ any other questions? (Lothar)
+ GDPR question (Uwe)
+ clarified in the meetings later (Lothar)
+ number of OpenOffice conversions (Dennis)
+ any stats? (Dennis)
+ could start to track (Mike)
Public meeting ends at 11:48 Berlin time.
Agenda items of Private Part
5. Reports from the areas of oversight (all, 15 minutes)
6. Introduction and overview on our budget process and ranking mechanism (Florian, 20 minutes)
7. Strategy and vision for 2021 and beyond (all, 100 minutes)
7.1 Roundtable, where everyone can choose any number of topics (or no topics at all) to share their comments and thoughts about where they want to be at the end of this board's term.
Up to 15 minutes each, but no discussion at this phase.
7.2 Roundtable, where everyone can choose any number of comments from 7.1 to give feedback.
8. Closing round: Feelings, expectations, goals by LibOCon (all, 15 minutes)