Board Meeting Minutes: February 11, 2012

ORGANIZATION FOR TRANSFORMATIVE WORKS
BOARD OF DIRECTORS

MINUTES OF THE REGULAR MEETING
February 11, 2012, 15:00 UTC

PRESENT: Francesca Coppa, Naomi Novik, Kristen Murphy, Nikisha Sanders, Ira Gladkova.

ABSENT: Jenny Scott-Thompson, Julia Beck.

DECISIONS TAKEN SINCE THE LAST MEETING

1. Tag Wrangling staff approved.
2. Systems proposal to mitigate spam issues by using commercial solution (Amazon and Google for AO3 and TW.org emails respectively) approved. Cost is up to $100 per month, and will be reviewed in 6 months. Since this will involve significant changes to the ways many committees and staff members currently use e-mail, Systems will coordinate with VolCom to make sure the changes are documented and to get the word out to staff.
3. AD&T staff approved.
4. Extra cost of $900 for particular article in Fan Studies Reader approved. Reader project is going well. Background can be found in board minutes of Oct. 13, 2011.
5. Elections will be added as a separate project on Basecamp to give working space for the proposal, discussions and website overhaul happening this year.

OPEN SESSION

1. We will switch to a rolling agenda instead of copying items each time, as Writeboard stores history of edits anyway.
2. No update yet on strategic plan – expecting a check-in later this weekend.
3. For wiki liaising, Naomi will start to help with infrastructure/tech needs, and Julia will shadow and then liaise later in the year. The forums proposal is already approved by board and will be discussed with users soon.
4. Hubot (chat bot tool) is up and running in Campfire for coders, and we will be adding more scripts gradually.
5. DMCA comments close today, and there will be another update soon.
6. All-org meeting will be discussed next time, when Julia can attend.

CLOSED SESSION

1. Board liaisons to committees were discussed.
2. Communication styles and promptness of response to email was discussed. It was agreed that items emailed between board members could be labelled in the subject with (FYI) for items that don’t need a vote, (Vote) for major decisions, and (3Day) for items that should be objected to within 3 days and otherwise will be assumed to be approved. This is particularly useful for items where the expertise of one or two board members is needed, but the rest of board would basically be saying, “I’ll approve if the experts do.” It’s also always fine to say, “Wait. we need to discuss this at meeting,” if something that was meant to be a quick vote turns out to be more complex or people have concerns.
3. The balance between a strong board and strong committees was mentioned to be discussed at a later meeting.
4. The role of a board liaison was discussed.

The meeting was adjourned at 16:40 UTC.

Minutes approved by the Board on 16th February 2012.