Agenda

  • Role of secretary
  • Infrastructure
  • Accountant
  • membership model
  • Advertising
  • DrupalCon Barcelona
  • Supporting Drupal Events
  • Swag
  • Communication

In Attendance

  • Dries Buytaert
  • Angela Byron
  • Dries Knapen
  • Gerhard Killesreiter
  • Zack Rosen
  • Kieran Lal

Absent were Moshe Weitzman and Boris Mann.

Role of Secretary

  • Steven Wittens resigned from the Drupal Association, and his role as secretary legally needs to be filled.
  • Angela Byron volunteered to take over this role.
  • VOTE: Do we agree with Angie taking over Steven's role? (PASSED - 5 yes, 1 abstain)

Infrastructure

  • Patch reviews are needed on various performance patches (notably, David Strauss's database replication patch.)
  • RAM has been delivered and installed in drupal1/2 and drupaldb. drupal3 maybe sometime this week.
  • drupal3 [the one whose power supply died] is being worked on by Eric/Dell.

Accountant

  • DriesK and DriesB have been searching for an accountant for the Drupal Association. Deloitte was contacted and their proposal dismissed by the board last meeting in favour of a cheaper solution.
  • DriesK also found a major Belgian bank that offers virtual prepaid credit cards, which we may be able to use for hardware purchases and the like (meeting next week).
  • VOTE: Postpone decision for another month to wait for offer from new accounting firm? (PASSED 6 yes, 0 no)
  • Postponing the decision could push back on other things that we need counsel on (membership benefits...)
  • However, DriesK and DriesB have an appointment with another accounting firm which specializes in internationally oriented Belgian non-porfits next Monday, and they seem to be exactly what we're looking for.
  • DriesK and DriesB negotiated with Deloitte and got a 30% discount on the original proposal.

Membership Model

  • After the last board meeting, Kieran launched a membership pricing survey for both individual and corporate memberships to find the optimal pricing (which was calculated to be $30 and $100 USD, respectively).
  • VOTE: do we want to build a basic membership directory with 2 categories (indiv. + corp) and list people for 30 USD and 100 USD respectively? (PASSED 4 yes, 2 no)
  • Kieran's proposal as it stands will only offer members at that level a listing in a simple directory. Introducing premium memberships at a later date in a fancier listing is left as an option available to us (and could start as soon as the simple version is up). Kieran also pointed out that there are many new sign-ups to Drupal all the time, and that catering to the most people rather than the few with the most money is a smart move.
  • Concerns were raised that the prices (especially corporate) were too cheap, and that introducing additional, more expensive levels may be disruptive.
  • Calculation was done with Van Westendorp modelling, which optimizes for maximum number of members -- not maximum revenue. This could be seen as an asset, to allow us to reach out to as many people in the community as possible.

Advertising

  • Kieran has created a drupal.org advertising proposal that outlines a 60-day trial for targeted ads on drupal.org: consulting/development companies on the paid-services forum, hosting companies on /hosting, and book publishers on the handbook pages (anon users only).
  • Details still need to be worked out about what technology to use to serve the ads (ad module [needs security review], custom code in a block, etc.) - this discussion will be taken on-list.
  • VOTE: Do we want to accept Kieran's proposal? I.e. install/accept/are open to those kind of ads for the specified trial period? (PASSED 6 yes, 0 no)
  • It was generally felt important to have text-only ads so they would not be obtrusive.
  • Evaluation will be done (analyzing money in vs. time spent managing, positive/negative impact on the community, etc.) at the end of the trial period.

DrupalCon Barcelona

  • Last board meeting, some concerns were raised about meeting budget and communication.

Supporting Drupal Events

  • General discussion about how to support people throwing Drupal events around the globe.

Swag

  • Last board meeting, we decided to allocate money to buy and ship pins for local user groups, etc.
  • Boris says there is a concrete plan, and next step is to get the community involved.
  • Boris also said that some of the pins were shipped to Drupal Camp NYC already.

Communication

  • We agreed to post Board meeting minutes to the association.drupal.org site.