Agenda

  • Financial Update
  • DrupalCon Boston proceeds/wrap-up
  • 2008 Budget
  • Non-Disclosure Agreement
  • Infrastructure
  • SEO
  • Legal

Board Members in attendance

  • Bert Boerland
  • Dries Buytaert
  • Angela Byron
  • Jeff Eaton
  • Larry Garfield
  • Gerhard Killesreiter
  • Kieran Lal
  • Jacob Redding

Absent (approved): Dries Knapen.

Financial Update

Although Dries Knapen was not able to attend the meeting, he did post a financial update to the mailing list (attached). The summary is that we have $130K USD in the bank, and expect some additional money from Drupalcon Boston.

Bert Boerland pointed out that he had asked Dries K to "bank" the account that was on paypal to a real bank to prevent problems, and he did. So there is not that much more on an account that is less trustworthy.

Larry Garfield asked if we have a sense of what our expected income is/will be, so that we can make sure that our outgoing cashflow is inline. While $130K sounds good "on paper," without knowing how much we can spend per month it makes it difficult to know what's resaonable to budget for things like "camp kits". Added to list of action items for Dries Knapen.

Jacob Redding asked if this figure included proceeds from Drupalcon Boston. No; that's the next item.

Khalid asked if all of that $130K was avaialble for spending, or if a certain portion was reserved for Belgian taxes. Added to list of action items for Dries Knapen.

DrupalCon Boston proceeds/wrap-up

Kieran Lal provided a summary of the current situation. A goal was set to raise $105K for the conference, and $162K was raised. The costs of the social event ($30K+) were removed from the Drupalcon Boston budget, as at the time it wasn't thought that ticket prices would raise enough money. It was expected that we'd end up with 400 attendees, but due to people waiting until the last minute to register, the number was actually closer to 900. The Drupalcon Boston team worked exceptionally hard to control costs and cut every corner in order to keep costs low.

Dries Buytaert then explained that because of this, the Drupalcon Boston team is still working with accountants to close the books. In part, this is due to being blocked by waiting for sponsorship money to come in. And until the books are closed, it's not 100% clear what the proceeds will be.

Kieran gave an estimate of profits at 500 more tickets at $200 ea, 58K more in fundraising, -30K in party costs = about 100K+ after expenses.

2008 Budget

Bert Boerland requested that we approve the budget. He proposed two votes: one about whether we approve the budget, and another about letting board members spend a certain amount of their budget without prior acknowledgement or vote from the Board in order to eliminate some micro-management.

On the mailing list, Angela had brought up that Article 29 of the statutes seems to require an entire General Assembly to approve a budget. Dries B had responded that he believed it was safe for the Board to vote. The intent of the GA is not to dictate how the Board of Directors spends the Drupal Association's money, and that its primary role is to elect the Board and amend the statutes. Talking about the budget proposal on the mailing list provides sufficient transparency to satisfy the statutes.

INFORMAL VOTE Are we comfortable about voting on this (i.e. with my explanation) or do we want to have this checked by a lawyer? (APPROVED 7 yes, 1 no, 1 (GA) abstain).

VOTE 1: do we approve the budgets in the proposal that was attached to the e-mail (subject to verification against statutes, and subject to change based on changes in plan vs actual)? (APPROVED 8 yes, 0 no, 0 abstain)

VOTE 2: members of the Board of Directors can spend 40% of the amount calculated in the attached proposal for an action per month with a maximum of 2000 euros without prior acknowledgement or vote of the board. Agreement of the President, Treasurer and Secretary is always required. (APPROVED 8 yes, 0 no, 0 abstain)

Non-Disclosure Agreement

Bert Boerland requested that we vote on whether to make non-permanent members of the Drupal Association sign an NDA before having access to sensitive data (for example, people helping with debugging CiviCRM).

VOTE 3: Do we want Bert or Crell to work on writing an NDA that we can use to engage with non-Drupal Association members? (NOT ACCEPTED 3 yes, 5 no, 0 abstain)

Jacob brought up that perhaps working on writing an NDA could also lead to a set of guidelines, and suggested another vote about creating some sort of guidelines.

VOTE 4: Do we support that Bert, Crell or someone else spends time working on a _proposal_ for a privacy policy and other guidelines? (APPROVED 8 yes, 0 no, 0 abstain)

As no one volunteered to do this, added to the action items, unassigned to an individual.

Infrastructure

Dries asked for a 2-minute update from Gerhard about infrasutrcture. Gerhard said that we're in good shape, and there are no immediate plans other than perhaps to buy an SSL certificate now that the budget is approved. The floor was then opened for questions.

SEO

Kieran voiced concerns about Drupal.org's search ranking decreasing from PR 9 to PR 8, as this represents a 10-fold decrease in our search relevance, and is also concerned about the lack of traffic increase, which ideally would have doubled since last year, and instead have leveled, while other projects are exploding.

Legal

Larry then asked if we had a preference for where we should be contacted regading license violations, as well as where the announcement post should go. Members proposed both the a.d.o contact form (private) or the infrastructure queue (public).

STRAW POLL keep license matters (a) private or (b) public? (PRIVATE 9 for (a), 0 for (b), 0 abstain)