ORGANIZATION FOR TRANSFORMATIVE WORKS
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
MINUTES OF THE REGULAR MEETING
June 23rd, 2012, 14:00 UTC
PRESENT: Nikisha Sanders, Julia Beck, Jenny Scott-Thompson, Kristen Murphy.
GUESTS: Aja, Katherine Darnell, Alison Watson, Crowa.
ABSENT: Ira Gladkova, Naomi Novik, Francesca Coppa.
DECISIONS TAKEN SINCE THE LAST MEETING
- Discussed the 2011 Annual Report and agreed to get input from chairs before publishing it.
- We discussed making more public posts about the work of the board, for transparency.
- Approved 2 new support staffers
- Approved New Relic subscription for AO3 performance and got a non-profit discount on it.
- Agreed to delay org-wide meeting by a week.
- Approved a budget request from Comms for a press release service to increase visibility of the Organization.
- Approved a request to double the memory in 3 of the OTW servers to support AO3
- Approved two new staffers for Comms to help out with graphics on Tumblr
- Approved a new Systems staffer
- Discussed AO3 performance issues. Approved buying a new server and Percona support contract. Also discussed recruitment of technical experts, and ongoing bandwidth costs.
OPEN SESSION
- Survey workgroup is going to be distributing data to committees soon.
- Strategic Planning workgroup requested a secondary Survey Monkey account, at a cost of $72. We agreed to investigate options for a shared account in more detail first.
- Election document retention: We elect an equal cohort, so details of results should not be available to the next year’s elections officer, but what should our document retention policy be? We agreed to check with Legal first, but probably to delete screencaps after the recount deadline has passed.
- Election seats: https://transformativeworks.org/otw-elections-%E2%80%93-what-bylaws-mean-coming-term describes the original issue. We discussed options as follows:
- Option 1: Add 2 more seats, 1 of us steps down or runs for one of them.
- Option 2: Stick with 7 seats, 2 of us step down or run again.
- Option 3: Change the bylaws and don’t have an election this year.
- For the stepping down options, we would have to discuss more nearer the time – there is a reasonable chance that one of us would want a break by then anyway. If not, we would have to decide whether to a) draw straws at random, or b) ask for last year’s elections data and the person who got fewest votes would be deemed to have occupied the short seat.
- Reminder that org-wide is delayed by a week.
CLOSED SESSION
- Discussed the Survey Monkey account and confidentiality options in more detail.
- Discussed a confidential personnel issue.
- Finance will be posting FAQs in July
- Devmem are going to revamp the text of the donation page on the OTW site
- Comms are considering restructuring and making more use of a volunteer pool that is lower committment.
- Discussed the election seats.
The meeting was adjourned at 16:20 UTC.
Minutes approved by the board on 5th July.