VZW Minutes 2007-08-13

Agenda

New Accountant
Hardware Budget
Financial Budget
Virtual Credit Cards
Webmaster
Membership model
Drupal.org advertising
DrupalCon Barcelona

Board members present

Dries Knapen (presiding)
Angela Byron
Gerhard Killesreiter
Moshe Weitzman

Absent were Dries Buytaert, Boris Mann, Kieran Lal, and Zack Rosen. The Board sends a big "Hello world" to Axl Buytaert. :)

New Accountant

DriesK and DriesB met with another accounting firm which specializes in international Belgian non-profits.
Price is significantly cheaper than Deloitte and Touche, the other accountant firm in the running, who does not specialize in our area.
VOTE: Do we want to accept their offer, and use this firm as our permanent accountant firm? (PASSED: 4 yes, 0 no)

Hardware Budget

Gerhard has asked for a budget of $20,000 USD for hardware-related purchases until the end of 2007. The purpose is to allow fast responses to emergency situations, and not being reliant on Board meetings to roll out new hardware.
VOTE: Do we agree to grant the infrastructure manager permission to spend a maximum of 15000 euro on hardware during the next four months, under the condition that he solicits feedback from the Association for a period of at least five days before purchasing equipment that is not deemed critically urgent? However, purchases under 500 euro are immediately permitted without comment. (PASSED: 4 yes, 0 no)

Changes to Financial Authority

When founding the Drupal Association, complete and independent financial authority was granted to DriesK, DriesB and Steven, for all transactions up to an amount of 1500 euro. For any transaction higher than 1500 euro, a signature of at least two of these Directors was required. This document has to be revised now because Steven left the board.
DriesK and DriesB propose to file it at the court as follows: "DriesB and DriesK have complete and independent financial authority up to an amount of 5000 euro. For transactions higher than 5000 euro, the signature of both Directors is required." Such a larger financial flexibility is needed to allow - amongst others - good use of the virtual credit card system.
VOTE: DriesB and DriesK have complete and independent financial authority up to an amount of 10000 euro. For transactions higher than 10000 euro, the signature of both Directors is required. (PASSED: 4 yes, 0 no)

Virtual Credit Cards

Virtual credit cards would be a good system to allow controlled online payments to be performed by board members.
VOTE: Can the treasurer implement virtual credit cards as a payment systems to allow other Directors to perform online payments? (PASSED: 4 yes, 0 no)

Drupal Association Webmaster

Squidster (Andrew Stevenson) has been proposed as a dedicated webmaster for a.d.o. He showed interest in taking on this job.
Khalid Baheyeldin has been mentioned as a co-webmaster but has not yet been asked officially.
These webmasters would have access to Board- and Association-only data without being an Association Member.
Concerns were raised about whether or not Andrew was still interested in the job (he has not been on IRC in over a week), and about the privacy concerns of said person having access to association/board member-only information, including financial data in CiviCRM.
Dries K offered to draft an NDA/find a sample NDA online to cover legal aspects of bestowing this permission. Discussion turned to allowing the infrastructure manager to control this role, rather than voting on one specific person.
VOTE: Do we agree to authorize the infrastructure manager to select up to a maximum of two association.drupal.org webmasters who will only be given access to the website after agreeing to a non-disclosure agreement? (PASSED 3 yes, 1 no)

Membership model

Item skipped; Kieran was not present.

drupal.org advertising

Kieran provided update on Association mailing list:

Advertising launched. Book ads got us a 2% increase in sales commission. WebFaction budgetted 2K for one month. $200 from PingVision. $250 from BPO, Sales commission from SiteGround and GoDaddy. Haven't fully launched due to tracking of click throughs. We should have this feature updated in AWSTATs this week. Clicks to /hosting have tripled, /paid-services have doubled with links on front page.