30 June 2020
Minutes of a Regular Meeting of the 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”).
June 30, 2020
Participating:
Board Members: Jane Herriman, Lorena Barba, James Powell, Stéfan van der Walt, Katrina Riehl, Sylvain Corlay, Andy Terrel
Executive Director: Leah Silen
Not attending: N/A
Email/Github Voting:
June 2 minutes: Voted needed
Executive Director’s Report:
Both Dask and Xarray received CZI funding in the most recent round.
Leah has been in contact with both the Sloan Foundation and CZI to determine how to better handle/list NF indirect costs on grants containing subcontracts.
Discussion Items:
a. Update on JupyterCon -
See Lorena’s blog - https://blog.jupyter.org/jupytercon-online-more-than-a-conference-4677cf25a915
b. Update NumFOCUS Academy
Different technologies used:
i. Open edX
ii. WordPress for managing content
iii. JupyterHub/MyBinder
c. Voting
i. Jane's Proposal: a default that lets the Executive Director (ED) choose
when the board doesn’t meet quorum for vote
1. Many decisions are not meeting self imposed deadlines
2. Moving the vote to github seems to be a failure point,
versus making voting happening during meetings. Folks are
already inundated with emails and aren’t getting to vote.
3. Seems fiscal sponsorship is the main issue.
a. If the ED is the one bringing projects to the board,
then there isn’t the proper filter if the ED then
makes the choice
i. Perhaps have the President + ED choose?
ii. Multiple directors are not comfortable with fiscal
sponsorship votes not going through our voting
system. It takes lots of expertise and time to go
through the projects to understand the governance.
4. Possible solutions
a. We could use a different structure for the board
meetings to prioritize.
For example, we could start with pending votes in the
board meeting.
c. We can extend our self-imposed deadlines
d. Could appoint a decider for any item that doesn’t have
any negative votes.
e. For now we will make an effort to bring more attention to
e.g. project application deadlines prior to the review period,
so that Board members leave more time for review and can
hopefully meet self-imposed deadlines. We can revisit this
topic if the situation doesn't improve.
d. Update on NF EU
i. Sylvain reviewing final application documents for creating
organization
ii. Reminder of the structure to the group.
1. Split into global, us and europe boards, but starting
application with only european board.
2. Sylvain will be president of european board and
a representative on the global board
3. Other board members include:
a. Nicolas M. Thiery (sage community)
b. Emmanuelle Gouillart, (scikit-image, scikit-learn,
former NF Board Director)
c. Didrik Pinte (scipy community member, former NF Board
Director)
e. Discussions on current affiliated projects
Should we look at current affiliated projects that may not satisfy
the criterias?
i. Seems like a good candidate for a subcommittee
1. Could have non-board members, perhaps to ask project leads
for volunteer?
2. Andy Terrel volunteers to help lead the subcommittee
f. NF Job Board - suggestion from Stefan
i. Place to suggest jobs that are good for open source
ii. Challenges:
1. What makes a job “good for open source”
2. Managing the site
a. Pydata site?
i. Sponsors put jobs up
b. Static sites
i. When do you take the job down?
1. Originally we had lots of old jobs on the NF
Site.
ii. Could just do a simple default expiry dates
c. Emails
i. List people looking for jobs
iii. Can we find a subcommittee
1. Ian Ozsvald experience running JobsList for pydata-londen
2. Would it fall under Director of Development since this is a
sponsorship opportunity?
g. New project upcoming dates:
i. Applications due: July 15
ii. Championing/review writing period: \~July 16 to August 11
iii. Meeting to discuss reviews: August 11
iv. Announcements: August 31