Things are moving really quickly here at the DA. From DrupalCon Portland to Governance and back again, we had a ton of content to cover in this month's board meeting. You can view the notes or the board packet as well, but here are some of the bigger bits.

 

We're revamping the Operational Update provided by staff to the board and community to include metrics. Rather than saying that something is on track or not, we want to show it. It has been tough to figure out what those numbers should be. Ideally, we would identify our goals and related metrics during an annual planning process. We didn't have the luxury of that this year with the leadership transition, so we're going to have to keep working to improve this reporting. Right now, we're delivering the the annual goal and the year to date actual. As we refine our work, we will also report against a year to date projection. So ideally, at some point, we could show you metrics like this:

 

Our initial goal for Portland was 3,000 attendees, and all indications are that we're going to have a crowd closer to 3,500 at DrupalCon Portland. We are really excited to see a bump in registration numbers this year and are now in the process of putting the fun finishing touches on the show. If you haven't purchased your ticket yet, the show has a lot to offer, including a Combo Pass that gets you into Symfony Live and Web Visions. We're also planning game nights, a photo scavenger hunt, and of course, the return of Trivia Night! Don't forget to visit the Bookstore while you're at DrupalCon either - we ahve some amazing new Drupal gear you won't want to miss out on.

 

Board Members Donna Benjamin and Pedro Cambra proposed a plan for holding our elections for our community board seats this fall. It's understood that voting was a challenge in our last elections, so Pedro has engaged the DA tech team to put together a process that should make voting easier. Right now, we're on a path to run this process in September, starting with nomniations in the first week, meet the candidates the next week, followed by voting in the third week, and then announcements of the results.

 

Board service is a great way to get engaged with and help drive the direction of the DA. Our board meets monthly, with several in-person deeper dives annually as well. As a member of the board, you get to engage in big-picture issues for the DA, like the strategic direction for DrupalCon, or assessing the value of a proposed new program. The Board is also responsible for the financial and legal health of the organization, so we review financials and risk regularly as well, and it's a great chance to learn more about his area of nonprofit management. If you're interested in serving on the board, or know someone who would make a great board member, you can nomniate yourself or anyone else this September.

 

Not only are we knee-deep in finishing up the D7 upgrade, we're currently addressing an issue that has been raised several times in the past: organization accounts on D.O. In any open source community, we celebrate the individual contributors to the project. It's your effort that builds this remarkable piece of software. However, our friends at the White House have a legal obligation to own projects as the White House. This situation raised the issue that there are many organizations in the Drupal community that have been making commits through a de facto organization account. Technically, this is a violation of the process, but since our terms of service are limited and scattered, we think most organizations are violating this rule by accident, rather than malfeasance. 

 

So we need a solution that allows organizations to display the commits made by their staff, without giving credit to the organization. In essence, we're looking to extend the  agreement made with the White House to all organizations, creating an organization entity with very limited powers. Technically, we're going to do this by creating a separate role with permissions to post projects, case studies and organization nodes ONLY. Organizations will not be able to commit code, for example. This technical work is farily easily acheived and will be tackled this summer, after we complete the D7 upgrade. You can see the details over on D.O.

 

In the interim, board member Danese Cooper will continue to drive this project, working through the messaging, terms of service, and other issues realted to this shift that aren't related to engineering.

 

Many thanks to the many of you who completed our membership survey back in March. Membership is a fantastic way to contribute to the work of the DA, including our Community Cultivation Grants. Over the last year, we did a lot of work to bring you some of the membership changes you wanted to see - more and better communications from the DA, annual auto-renewals, and member discounts. This year, we wanted to know your thoughts on changing our membership structure.

 

You can see Megan's summary of the membership program and recommendations, but the long and short of it is that we're looking to provide a membership structure that accomodates people from around the world, at the level they feel is appropriate, and that recognizes all members in a way that supports our meritocracy. We'll soon start the implementation of this system, so you'll see some of those changes soon. Though, it shouldn't stop you from joining today! :)

 

We're moving on a lot of fronts over here. I'd like to take this moment to thank the DA staff who have been so incredible during all this transition. If you've ever gone through a leadership change at your job, you know that even in the best of circumstances, it's disruptive and sometimes scary. We've got some fine folks on this staff who are working really hard, all toward the same goal - helping you make Drupal awesome. If Megan, Stephanie, Kris, Ruth, Rich, Drumm, Tatiana, Geni or Lizz have made your life better or easier in some way, please drop them a line and tell them so!

 

Flickr Photo: t-dot-s-dot