Grex Board Meeting, 12/13/09 Board members in attendance: gelinas, tsty, STeve, aruba, unicorn, and denise. Others in attendance: remmers, mary, kentn, mdw, keesan and jim [login id?] 6:23 pm--meeting bought to order by gelinas. Mission/Future -Motion to suspend for 6 months [through 6/2010 then reevaluate] bylaw that states that board members need to be paid members. Aruba moved, Denise seconded, all in favor. -Motion that current board members, paid or not, are eligible to vote this evening. Moved by tsty, seconded by aruba; all in favor. -Motion to allow current and previously paid members to run and to vote through 6/30/2010. Moved by aruba, seconded by tsty; all in favor. Next meeting: I have 2 dates listed: I *think* we decided on Sunday, Feb 7th, 6 pm at Zingerman s [other option Wed., Jan 20th at 7pm; location?] Old business. Staff report: STeve has been working on disk issues, see his report in agora item #4. Needs a new ide disk. Mark moved to spend up to $100 for an ide disk, STeve seconded; all in favor. Will grex continue past 6 months from now? People are still coming to grex for various reasons; tsty has validated approx. 50 people from around the world. There appears to be an active group in agora. Run system over the next 6 months and see what happens and how to improve? Are we at limits fot a [non] open system? Current assets: a small group of fans, money in the bank... Problems: limited tech support, social problems-those that try and run the system down. How do we get more people on staff? Do we need more staff? Need to work on this issue. May need to leave provide.net over the next 2-3 months--possible upcoming layoffs, may be gone by summer. Where can we run our own machinery? Virtual providers? Virtualization within grex--several environments/layers to have to go through? How are we going to fund grex in the future? We currently have approx. $4000; expenses are approx $1800/year. Suggested that we build up grex over the next 6 months before asking for more money. Planning meeting/town meeting; where? In person? Online [in coop]? Tentative staff meeting scheduled for 12/29. Current staff members include Steve, glenda, unicorn, mdw, gelinas, cross, danr, i. Tsty should be added to the reboot list at provide.net. Aruba motioned to adjourn, steve seconded. Meeting adjourned at 8:10 pm.30 responses total.
wow ... 91 minutes resiolved into 12 paragrapsh ... tnx.
Nice job, Denise. You got it. Not sure how, but you got it. ;-)
We do need to confirm which is the correct date for the next meeting. From above:" Next meeting: I have 2 dates listed: I *think* we decided on Sunday, Feb 7th, 6 pm at Zingerman s [other option Wed., Jan 20th at 7pm; location?]" Is the Feb. date the one we decided on?
The notes I have say Feb 7th, 6 p.m. at Zingerman's Next Door. Jan 20th I think was the first proposed date and then it got moved out to Feb.
That's what I think, too; just wanted to varify. Thanks, Kent!
Wow, that Staff list is *way* out of date.
Here's the current staff list from /etc/group:
bhoward,cross,gelinas,glenda,i,steve,unicorn
Also, Walter Cramer (i) has pretty much said he doesn't really want
to be on staff, and only does cfadm stuff. That's fine, I guess.
TS, could you upload the MP3 of the board meeting to Grex and send me
a link to the directory it's in? Feel free to protect it somehow if you
don't feel comfortable sharing it globally (e.g., put it in a directory
that's not world/group readable but is group executable and naming it
something random [like the sha1 of some random string] that is group
readable, for some group we mutually share).
You're welcome, Denise. Great job on the minutes!
IIRC, remmers has volunteered to be back on staff; he should be added back on the list.
I would be on staff, if you're in need of another root.
We don't have many active staff but I'm not sure what the procedure is for adding new staff members [though remmers addition to staff was talked about at the last board meeting]. And it looks like the staff meeting scheduled for late December didn't happen; another one should be scheduled soon, I hope!
I'm not sure what the procedure is, either. I've added remmers, since that was discussed and (I believe) already approved at the staff meeting. Also, with Marcus (mdw) being present at the meeting, does that mean he was wanting to be on staff again?
In the past what's happened is someone would express an interest to be on staff. Staff then discussed this among themselves and then sent a recommendation to the board. The board would then vote to add someone to staff specifying whether it was with or without root privileges. But that's when we, like, had enough staff to hold a discussion. I'd think the staff could email current, involved staff, and ask if they had any objections, then make a decision, in email. As a user, I sure wouldn't want adding a qualified volunteer to have to wait for the next meeting to happen. Not after having just been down for 5 weeks and with the way meetings have been so infrequent. Also, I'd only consider adding people who have expressed an interest in being on staff. Simply having been in attendance at a meeting isn't enough. Email those you're considering and see if they even bother to answer mail. My 2 cents.
Correction - second paragraph should read "I'd think the board could email current, involved staff, and ask if they had any objections..."
I too am willing to help out on staff.
Cool. Thanks, Nathan.
I guess I should mention that my question regarding Marcus was based on more than just the fact that he showed up at the meeting. It also had something to do with something Steve said to me over the phone during the time Grex was down regarding all the talk about shutting Grex down. Steve said it was a "wake-up call" that should prompt us to take action and get more involved, and that he was going to try to get Marcus involved again as well. The fact that Marcus subsequently appeared at the board meeting prompted my question as to whether it meant he was therefore interested in being on staff again. I'm sorry I didn't make all of that clear the first time. I noticed that Steve and Marcus were sitting downstairs talking after the meeting. It may have been unrelated, but if not, maybe Steve can enlighten us on Marcus's intentions (or Marcus himself could do that).
re #12 Where's the step where STeve and marcus do their Roman Forum thumbs up/down?
re 6 ... cross .. i'd be happy to upload the mp3 file ... but there is a quota problem in my filespace. in fact, since it';s a 15 meg filesize .... -anyone- would have a quota problem. umm, how often does /tmp get wiped out? i could put it there and you could put it somewhere more stable. in fact .... ftp> ftp> put GrexBoard-13Dec09.mp3 200 PORT command successful. 150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for 'GrexBoard-13Dec09.mp3'. ##################################################################### 226 Transfer complete. ftp: 16395390 bytes sent in 622.62Seconds 26.33Kbytes/sec. ftp> located in /tmp 32064 -rw-r--r-- 1 tsty wheel 16395390 Jan 7 12:58 GrexBoard-13Dec09.mp3 cherry mishmash!
it;s world accesssible ...
I think that once more staff are added, the validation patch cross put in for newuser should be immediately removed. grex should live or die as an open system. Validation gives staff the ability to determine who gets to be a part of this community and who does not. For many new users, joining grex is a spontaneous thing based on coming here and finding how easy it is (or was) to get a login. I believe that research would probably show that most of these prospective users don't and won't wait for validation. By the time staff validates they are long gone. grex doesn't need to continue as a closed, you can only use the system if staff decrees you worthy, system. It just doesn't work and it flies in the face of what grex is supposed to be all about.
re 18 .. adn 19 .... due to response email, adn a policy inquiry, i hvae chmod that .mp3 back to 600 .... sorry, awaiting further discussion. it's still there though.
who emailed asking that it be depermed and what do they want to hide?
Here is some background on that video/audio. I showed up at the meeting hot to trot with the necessary setup to record and simulcast the meeting. I'd announced I'd be looking to do this, somewhere online, earlier that same day. Before the meeting started I asked how people felt about it, first giving my opinion about facilitating open meetings and such. TS didn't at all like the idea. There was a quick discussion where folks agreed we needed to air the issues and come up with a policy or plan but for this meeting a recording without video would be okay. Someone asked how long it would be available. I said it would come down not long after the meeting. I took it down the next day. I'm going to be entering an item in policy to kinda kick-start a policy on having a live-feed of future open meetings which will include audio, video and live chat capability. The way this could work is someone watching the meeting could write chat and ask questions or make comments that would be forwarded to the assembled group. Because this hadn't been discussed before the last meeting, there was dissent, and I'd agreed to take it down afterward, I was surprised to see TS offering it up for public use. Someone else called him on this is why, I think, he has again de-permitted the file. So instead of focusing on that last meeting (where I was learning to use the technology and there wasn't any fair warning it would be used) I'd kind of like to instead focus on our future meetings. I'm off to enter a new item.
Where's response 20?
I think that any prospective staff members should get vetted by current staff and voted on by the board. This needn't take too long, though.
fwiw ( a lot?) this part of the motd needs updatering? Nominations for the Board of Directors are now open in coop. Because we were late getting started, nominations will remain open until November 23, 2009. We will elect four directors, to serve from 1 Jan 2010 to 31 Dec 2011. -Gelinas. methnkx, yes.
Well, it was posted in the nominations item that nominations and accepting such nominations would go through 1/15. So we should have be able to vote once remmers is able to set it up with whatever he needs to get it running.
and the motd ???
I've updated the motd to reflect the current situation regarding the board election.
You have several choices: