General Assembly Details

The second General Assembly was held Tuesday, June 17, 2009 at 17:00 CET for a duration of 1 hour. The meeting was held over IRC in #drupal-association on irc.freenode.net. Out of 30 existing permanent members, 21 were in attendance, with 2 members voting by proxy. Quorum requirements were met and all decisions were legal.

This General Assembly was called to approve the Drupal Association's 2009 budget, which was approved by the Board of Directors during the June 10, 2009 board meeting.

Attendance

General Assembly members in attendance:

  • Khalid Baheyeldin
  • Addison Berry
  • Bert Boerland
  • Dries Buytaert
  • Angela Byron
  • Robert Douglass
  • Neil Drumm
  • Jeff Eaton
  • Tiffany Farriss
  • Larry Garfield
  • Cary Gordon
  • Gerhard Killesreiter
  • Kieran Lal
  • Boris Mann
  • Michael Meyer
  • David Norman
  • Steven Peck
  • Jacob Redding
  • Jeff Robbins
  • Kristof Vantomme
  • James Walker

General Assembly members absent, but who submitted vote by proxy:

  • Greg Knaddison
  • Bill Fitzgerald

Absent were:

  • Earl Miles
  • Naryan Newton
  • Nedjo Rogers
  • Zack Rosen
  • Laura Scott
  • David Strauss
  • Moshe Weitzman

Agenda

Dries Buytaert laid out the following agenda items for the General Assembly:

  • Up to 15 minutes: ask questions about the budget to help you decide what to vote.
  • Up to 5 minutes: official voting
  • to 15 minutes: discussion about how we want to share the budget with the rest of the community and the rest of the (non-Drupal) world -- what level of detail to make available?

VOTE: do we, the General Assembly of the Drupal Association, accepted the budget for 2009 as passed by the Board of Directors? (ACCEPTED 22 yes, 1 no, 0 abstain)

Special thanks was given to Jacob for all of his hard work guiding the Drupal Association through its first budget.

Transparency

The floor was opened for the General Assembly to discuss how best to share the budget information with the larger community, as well as the larger world. At the end, a straw poll would be taken to gauge general feelings.

Jacob Redding sent a PDF containing an overall budget summary (attached below), which he wishes to share in its entirety with the larger Drupal community. This is a higher level than the detailed line-items of the budget spreadsheet, which would prevent us from being tied to them, or being subject to micromanagement based on a highly detailed budget.

Dries stated that he is okay with posting it, but wants to ensure that Drupal Association members answer questions from the larger community, and pointed out that we will be accountable.

Kieran Lal opined that we should post with full detail. People in the community need to know what the Drupal Association is working on and where their money is going. Being transparent increases the ability to raise more money. If our funders have a problem with how we are spending their money, we need to address it.

Neil Drumm pointed out that the quality of the document could be better: for example, Druplicon, graphics, 3D graphs, and better typography. This would have the document making a bigger impact.

Dries then called a straw poll to gauge the general feeling of General Assembly members.

STRAW POLL: How should communication about the budget be handled?

- Option A: allow jredding to post all the details he wants, but let jredding decide whether to take out sensitive data. No official hand-holding, just feedback for jredding to consider. Read: allow jredding to do his job as Treasurer.
- Option B: do not allow jredding to post all the details and go work out a policy that needs to be formally approved at a Board Meeting.

Result: A: Let Jacob handle disclosure details (14 A, 1 B)

Larry raised the concern that he didn't believe that the two options were the breakdown he saw, and that those options fully represented the range of opinions expressed. Dries stated that we can work on defining a policy for future use, and if anyone wants to work on such a policy, they can send do so on list. In the mean time, Jacob Redding was given authority to post the details he feels are sufficient.

Files