1 Aug 2018

Minutes of a Joint Meeting of the Board of Directors and Advisory Board of Directors of NumFOCUS. All votes are reported in the form “(Y/N/A)” (in favor-Y‚ opposed-N‚ abstentions-A; e.g. “4-1-2” means “4 in favor, 1 opposed, and 2 abstentions”).

Participating: (Board) Jennifer Klay, Ralf Gommers, Andy Terrel, Didrik Pinte, (Advisory Board) Jason Grout, Matt Greenwood, Stefan Karpinski, Brian Granger, (Staff) Leah Silen

Not Attending: (Board) Lorena Barba

Approval of Minutes from last meeting: -

Items voted on by Email: Approving Xarray’s fiscal sponsorship application. Approved (4/0/0)

Discussion Items

1. Welcome new members

Jason Grout (Bloomberg) and Shahrokh Mortazavi (Microsoft) were welcomed as new Advisory Council members.

2. Selecting new Board members

Blog on new procedure: https://numfocus.org/blog/numfocus-to-hold-2018-elections-for-board-of-directors

Discussion on how to explain the election/selection process and how transparent to be (e.g. do we publish vote totals?). The suggestion to make clear it’s a selection, not an election, and therefore call the vote a “request for input” is made.

3. Evolution of Programs

Andy is joining the NF staff: https://numfocus.org/blog/numfocus-hires-andy-terrel-new-initiatives

4. Current Programs

Events:

• PyData: update given
• Summit:
  • Sustainability Workshop
  • Awards Dinner
  • Project Forum for Critical Users & Core Developers: https://numfocus.org/forum2018

New Fiscally Sponsored Projects:

• JuMP
• Xarray
• Conda-forge (pending)

Corporate Sponsorship:

A new Prospectus is available: https://numfocus.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/NumFOCUS-Corporate-Sponsorship-Brochure.pdf

DISC

Updates to the NumFOCUS Code of Conduct have been recommended.

5. Q2 Financial Report

An overview is presented.

6. Discussions

Jupyter starting committee to look into governance. Need 3-4 people to spend 3-4 hours a week to evaluate governance of Jupyter. Might be applicable to other groups.

Funding / Governance discussion:

• PIs at Universities often have a conflict of interest if accept money from NumFOCUS

• Grants given to university members that isn’t tied to the governance of the project

• Community money much easier to give to entity like NumFOCUS than hiring

• Bryan signals that NF needs to be careful with the independent contractor model. A key criterion for a conflict of interest is whether a person is involved in the two legal entities that exchange money.

Summit: an update of preparation for the Summit is given