Board Meeting Minutes: February 4, 2012

ORGANIZATION FOR TRANSFORMATIVE WORKS
BOARD OF DIRECTORS

MINUTES OF THE REGULAR MEETING
February 4, 2012, 15:05 UTC

PRESENT: Francesca Coppa, Julia Beck, Kristen Murphy, Naomi Novik, Nikisha Sanders .

ABSENT: Jenny Scott-Thompson, Ira Gladkova .

DECISIONS TAKEN SINCE THE LAST MEETING

  • Board approves an OTW IRC channel.
  • Comm’s initiative of a blog post introducing the new chairs is discussed and approved.
  • VolCom and AD&T appreciation e-mails are greenlit and sent.
  • Board agrees to add a Basecamp section for OTW Elections matters.
  • Systems presents measures to cut down e-mail spam which Board agrees to finance and implement.
  • Board raises the budget for the forthcoming fan studies reader edited by Karen Hellekson and *Kristina Busse.

OPEN SESSION

  1. Old meeting minutes: Francesca reports on her progress in editing minutes of pre-2010 Board meetings and the considerations that go into making them suitable for publishing.
  2. 3-day-rule: To speed up e-mail turnaround, a 3-day-rule for votes via e-mail is suggested: excluding legal, personnel, and financial matters, if no objection is raised within 3 days, the proposal would count as accepted. There is no conclusive agreement to this; it is suggested to add a relevant tag like „VOTE“ or „FYI“in the email subject line.
  3. EFF remix petition: Present members will spread the OTW’s blog post supporting the petition.
  4. Strategic planning group: megcwalsh has been e-mailing group members.
  5. Grants committee proposal: while the proposal is still being edited, Kate has been contacting potential committee staffers.
  6. Organization-wide meeting: decision relegated to e-mail.
  7. OTW IRC channel: The proposal (greenlit on the mailing list) : the OTW IRC channel would take the form of two chat rooms on freenode with a chat bot and no moderators.
  8. Outreach to other organizations: Board discusses an approach to reaching out to other organizations with compatible missions.
    • Outreach/networking is generally positive and encouraged, however:
      • it helps to have a specific collaboration proposal ready
      • need to determine how a collaboration would benefit each organization; e.g. by complementing each others’ missions
      • no false modesty in promoting ourselves and our accomplishments
      • an example: team up with an IT-education-focused organization by offering a women-friendly live environment to practice newly learned skills

CLOSED SESSION

  1. Board liaisons to committees: Board compares each members’ preferences and discusses the remaining unresolved cases, taking benefits to the committee, workload, chairing duties, and total number or liaised committees into account. Some „shadowing“ arrangements are worked out, i.e., a potential successor would learn the ropes from the present liaison, allowing a switch later in the term. In the absence of members Ira and Jenny the final decision is relegated to e-mail.

The meeting was adjourned at 17:05 UTC.

Minutes approved by the Board on 23rd February 2012.

2012-02-26 admin

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