WPLUGBoard/Meeting-20130716
Since some board members were unable to meet in person, this meeting took place over a conference call.
MEETING START
The meeting was called to order at 7:45 p.m. Chair Pat Barron, Vice Chair/Secretary Justin Smith, and Director-at-Large Joe Prostko were in attendance. Treasurer Terry Golightly was absent (unexcused).
The reading of the previous month's minutes was dispensed.
OFFICER REPORTS
Pat's inquiries at Google regarding the proposed WPLUG.org hackathon - providing a facility or having Google employees participate - have gone unanswered. He will once again attempt to elicit a response. Former WPLUG member Mark Dalrymple asked around Google about licensing issues resulting from Pat's proposed use of the Android SDK in a WPLUG development workshop. His contact said that it's the sort of matter that "if nobody asked about it, nobody would know what happened."
Pat touched on the email update he sent to board members regarding August's WPLUG picnic. Last year's pavilion in North Park is unavailable, so Pat selected a different one by lake instead. The price is the same: $30 per day. (Reservations take effect from 8:00 a.m., so WPLUG would technically have it for the entire day.) Because reservations are contentious and must be made in-person with money, all objections should be made in the immediate future.
Pat and Vance are still trying to set up LDAP and possibly OAuth as well. Vance is having philosophical difficulties with LDAP in terms of value for the effort; it's extremely difficult to set up, and all you get, from our perspective, is authentication. They will see if there are any alternatives that make sense.
Pat reports that WPLUG's Coinbase account is set up but not verified. In order to do so, we need to report the value of two small deposits that Coinbase made to WPLUG's bank account. Since the account doesn't support online banking and both of WPLUG's financial officers are too busy to visit a branch, progress has stalled.
WPLUG's bank does support online banking, but access has to be set up in person. Pat is tentatively going to do that this coming Saturday. Until then, WPLUG can accept BTC donations; it just can't withdraw them as USD.
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Vice chair/secretary Justin wants the board to decide when and how WPLUG will process Bitcoin payments. This will be discussed in New Business.
Justin has begun using the WPLUG Twitter account on a more regular basis.
Justin sent thank-you letters to Daniel Mross and Sage Ross, the two speakers for July's GUM, on Monday. The board made various observations about the outcome of the GUM (redacted).
Justin conceded that WPLUG's member features, like Tiny Tiny RSS, have failed to generated interest. In light of that, Justin feels that any future WPLUG member services should provide some sort of advertising for the group so that they can still accomplish a useful end even if they're seldom used. One possible example is an XMPP server such as ejabberd, where usernames would be something like "foo@member.wplug.org." Pat has experience setting up ejabberd, so he could set it up if we decide to use it.
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Director-at-Large Joe hasn't heard from Klaatu regarding working with WPLUG.
NEW BUSINESS
Pat is unable to report WPLUG's bank account balance because his phone can't do multiple things at once.
The board discussed possible plans for Ohio Linux Fest. No official conclusion was reached, but informally, at least a few of us will probably go. Even a small contingent from WPLUG would be a massive improvement in turnout from recent years; when Justin asked whether other groups in the area were planning to attend, Pat noted that when he went before, he was one of only 2 or 3 people from Pittsburgh.
Software Freedom Day (September 21st) is important for free software groups like WPLUG. The board wants to do something for it, but it can't make definitive plans until it decides what to do for Ohio Linux Fest, which is a week earlier.
Justin suggested that it would be difficult to get people to show up for both OLF and SFD. This led to a general discussion of why it's difficult to get people to show up for events. People are busy; there are many groups to choose from; most groups in the area are highly specialized.
Justin agrees that being busy is a contributing factor to WPLUG's declining attendance. He plans to reach out to colleges in the near future to attempt to attract a younger, less preoccupied audience.
The WPLUG bylaws stipulate that people who join must fill out a membership form; they do not specify what medium the form has to be in (paper vs electronic). The board supports creating an online form to go with Stripe and Coinbase payments. Justin suggested LimeSurvey, which was used to design the WPLUG survey earlier in the year. Pat supports a CGI script, which would be much simpler: mark that you want to pay using Coinbase/Stripe, send users there, and return them to a landing page afterward.
Pat will develop a prototype CGI script.
The board agreed to discuss plans for social events over Trello.
MEETING END
Meeting was adjourned at 8:46 p.m.