ORGANIZATION FOR TRANSFORMATIVE WORKS
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
MINUTES OF THE REGULAR MEETING
29 June 2013, 19:00 UTC
PRESENT: Andrea Horbinski, Eylul Dogruel, Franzeska Dickson, Ira Gladkova, Kristen Murphy, sanders
GUESTS: james_, Lady Oscar, Sam Johnsson
ABSENT: Cat Meier
DECISIONS TAKEN SINCE THE LAST MEETING
1. Several months ago the Board approved travel funding for the Journal chairs to represent the OTW at the Media in Transition conference (see the minutes of 23 February 2013). Their travel expenses came in higher than the initial estimate. We voted to reimburse them for the full amount, which was $814.72 including hotel and airfare.
2. We approved the final text of the Archive of Our Own Diversity Statement, which was prepared by Internationalization & Outreach with input from other OTW staff and volunteers.
OPEN SESSION
1. Update from Communications and Wiki: The event celebrating Fanlore having reached 25,000 articles went over very well. Prizes have been mailed to the three winners of the trivia contest. We received positive feedback regarding the event including requests to do more trivia — even without prizes. Communications’ new liaison to Wiki plans to incorporate this into the plans for the fanlore_news Twitter account and overall social media strategy for Fanlore going forward.
2. Also from Communications: The Comic-Con reporting project is materializing quickly and we’ve been working with Heidi on promoting the meetup event. Legal has put together an agreement related to the content that Heidi will be producing while at Comic-Con that defines ownership and parameters for the OTW’s use of the content.
3. The proposed Archive ToS and FAQ changes related to fannish non-fiction have been published (http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/314) for the required 2-week public comment period.
4. In response to a query from Board, Legal reported that they have communicated with FixtheDMCA.org about our vote to join their coalition and are awaiting next steps from FixtheDMCA’s end.
5. The Archive of Our Own Diversity Statement is now live on the archive and the post about it should be going up on the blogs today.
6. Update from Volunteers & Recruiting:
a) We distributed surveys for chair/lead training and are currently sorting through the feedback that was received and will continue to do so for the next couple of weeks before beginning to outline a plan. The tentative plan will be sent to Board for review before we start developing the actual training program and related resources.
b) We drafted a Volunteer Records & Retention Policy which has been approved by the committee and sent to Legal for review/feedback. We will plan to have an org-wide review period before sending the proposed policy to Board (since it ultimately affects everyone in the organization and their personal information).
c) We’ve started initial conversations about looking at a new program or service to use for hosting volunteer records. We likely won’t pursue this in earnest until after we have a finalized and approved records and retention policy, but it is something that staff are passively researching at this time.
d) We’ve had a bit of a recruiting lull over the past few weeks and are ready and willing to open roles for any other committees that are interested and prepared to do so. If chairs or leads have questions about the process or requirements, please e-mail VolCom and we’d be happy to assist in any way we can.
7. Tag Wrangling is wrestling with the usual “Why isn’t this canonical? Why is this other thing canonical?” questions, and continuing to get new wranglers situated.
8. Finance update (see chart below). The chart shows a giant gain on the bank, and a giant loss on PayPal; that’s because there was a $33K transfer from PayPal to the bank account. We try not to keep more than about $10K in PayPal at a time. The largest expense for the week was the renewal fee for our mailbox, a $653.25 expense we pay once a year. From the beginning of June to now, we’re actually up $1,286.06.
| — | 1-Jun | 8-Jun | 21-Jun | 29-Jun | Change from 21-29 June |
| BoA | 106255.46 | 105420.64 | 104752.83 | 137293.67 | 32540.84 |
| PayPal | 40318.86 | 41351.80 | 43275.16 | 10563.28 | (32711.88) |
| CD | 10096.79 | 10096.79 | 10096.79 | 10100.22 | 3.43 |
| Total | 156671.11 | 156869.23 | 158124.78 | 157957.17 | (167.61) |
9. Discussion of a proposal about the next org-wide meeting.
PROPOSAL: Replace the July org-wide meeting with a Board open house. As many Board members as possible will hang out in the Public Discussion room for three blocks of time. People can drop in and talk to us. Board members will volunteer to hang out in between these three times as much as possible for people who can’t make the meeting times.
DATE & TIME: Saturday July 13th at 19:00 UTC, 5:00 UTC, and 24:00 UTC. (These are our three standard meeting times except that the 24:00 UTC one is moved to the next day.)
The Board voted to approve this proposal and Kristen volunteered to write an announcement.
10. Discussion of how to announce and where to document new Board policies such as the expense reimbursement policy — which wiki categorie(s) should be used, and how should we announce such policies to chairs and staff? We discussed appropriate categorization for the expense reimbursement policy; Andrea will document it and notify chairs/staff about it.
11. Discussion of reforming the Board liaison system. The Board has had conversations on and off for several months about the need to make changes to the Board liaison system. The current system is labor-intensive and doesn’t always work as well as we’d like it to, so we want to examine how it might be changed or replaced with something else. Kristen presented a first draft of a roadmap for how this process might be carried out, and the Board discussed the draft and suggested several additions. Kristen will incorporate these suggestions into an updated draft and present it again at a later date.
12. In response to a mention of Support earlier in the meeting, a staff member clarified: “I did want to clarify one information in the earlier report, where it was noted that Support was responding to the comments on the ToS post. As per discussion with Comms and other committees, it was established that Support only responds to the strictly technical questions, and that Comms of the posting committee would respond to the rest. Since we’d keep poking that relevant committee (and get transmission errors), it was decided this was the more effective solution.”
CLOSED SESSION
1. Board members were reminded to please read and respond to the video project management thread on the mailing list.
2. Discussion of a confidential staff issue.
The meeting was adjourned at 22:05 UTC.
Minutes approved by the Board on 15 September 2013.