Minutes of 28/9/2009 Board of Directors Meeting

A regular meeting of the Django Software Foundation ("DSF") Board of Directors was held via teleconference starting on 28/9/2009 at 12:00pm. Jacob Kaplan-Moss led the meeting. Jeremy Dunck prepared the minutes.

1 Attendance

  • Dan Cox
  • Jeremy Dunck
  • Adrian Holovaty
  • Jacob Kaplan-Moss

2 Minutes of past meetings

No prior minutes needing approval.

3 Votes taken between meetings

No votes were taken between meetings.

4 Status of past action items

No past action items.

5 Board discussion

Actions items appear in bold.

The main focus on the board meeting was to get specific calls for action to spread workload and improve progress of the DSF.

5.1 Expanding the makeup of the board

There were general regrets for lack of action from the DSF, mainly related to a lack of direction and oversight by the president. The DSF is looking for the President to provide more consistent marching orders.

Jacob wants to alter the board/officer makeup because as President, Treasurer, and Board Member he personally holds too much power, has too much to do, and isn't doing a good job in any of those roles.

Jacob plans step down from 2 of those 3 positions -- likely President and Treasurer -- pending replacements.

5.4 Expand board meetings

Jacob suggested to have more regular phone meetings, moving to a quarterly schedule. Suggestion of next meeting on December 7. Jeremy will schedule and organize quarterly meetings going forward.

5.5 Membership

Noting Python Software Foundation's concerns on the meaning of membership, the board choose to leave membership defined as is (i.e. committers), while still expanding the search for volunteers to non-members. The board hopes that the mostly academic distinction between DSF members and volunteers won't be an issue.

5.6 IP/Trademark

The one known major IP infringer (name redacted to avoid giving the guilty any more mention) is now offline. Jacob will draft a revision to logo usage guidelines and present it to the board.

5.7 Marketing/publicity

The board discussed the need for more public "action" on djangoproject.com. DjangoDose appears to be doing a lot of this work currently; there was discussion on approaching them to more formally integrate into djangoproject.com. Jacob will approach DjangoDose and see if this falls in line with their plans for the site.

The board discussed improvements to djangoproject.com/community and the general need to help new users get involved in the community and off to community sites (DjangoPeople, DjangoGigs, etc.). The board plans to use the DSF to help these community sites integrate; Jacob will start a mailing list for those who run sites in the Django community or want to help improve djangoproject.com's community page.

5.8 Infrastructure

The board aggress to generally use its clout to help those providing services to the community find hosting. The board will encourage (via the previously-mentioned community mailing list, above) those who need help with hosting to contact the community.

The board agreed that buildbot sucks. Jacob is working to replace it with pony-build. Adrian groans at the name.

Jeremy will email Jacob a list of need infrastructure tasks to do or delegate.

5.9 Sponsorship

The board wants to form a committee to help sponsorship travel to Django-related events, with a preference to committers, GSoC students, etc.

Dan Cox will take lead on setting up sponsorship committee.

5.10 Conferences

The DSF will stay out of promoting any particular conference as official. Anyone that wants to try to put on a conference is welcome to.

5.11 Sprint (and developer event promotion)

The board wants to hold regular sprints. Jacob will look for a sprint coordinator for monthly or bimonthly sprints. The coordinator will maintain a calendar of upcoming sprints, companies willing to host sprints, etc. Since sprints go better w/ a core committer available, try to coordinate with their schedules.

5.12 Education

Discussion of the "Django Education Foundation" and general training/education topics. Jacob recuses himself from any DSF decisions on relationship since training is part of his business.

The board agrees not to touch certification with a ten foot poll. However, some sort of "approval" process for training material/companies was approved by all. The board likes the idea of "approved" training material to help trainers with curriculum, help students evaluate options, and help companies find good training.

The board will start the process of discussing an approval process and curriculum. Though this process should involve educators/trainers, it needs to be led by an impartial individual without a financial incentive. The board will discuss likely candidates between now and the next meeting. Jacob will post a more complete summary of this discussion to the DEF mailing list.

6 Adjournment

Jacob Kaplan-Moss adjourned the meeting at 1:30pm.

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