17th June 2025

Meeting Notes for the Monthly Technical Steering Committee meeting 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, 17, 2025

**Attending: **Juan, Arliss, Sophia, Eloisa, Tetsuo **Not Attending: **Sanket, Jacob, Wolf

Agenda

• Juan: Leah mentioned to Sanket and me that we need to decide on a charter. See https://numfocus.github.io/infrastructure/charter.html for an example. However, in our previous meeting, Jacob suggested that we might get along fine without it, and the charter might just make busywork for us. Sanket will take enquire at admin board meeting.
• Juan: Unclear whether this falls in our jurisdiction, but I think it does: proposal to drop Medium and move back to our blog (preferably porting all the medium posts there); Rationale: medium has gotten increasingly obnoxious over the years, and it does not allow us to control how our content is presented, see e.g.: I intend to make an open proposal similar to the Zulip one and discuss it more broadly, so we can vote on it in the coming months.
• Juan: Sponsored projects currently are a net cost for NF, and it's unclear that we can afford to keep adding them. Therefore, I would like to propose that we evaluate the current projects and close applications for new projects until we refine the criteria for adding new projects.

Minutes

• Arliss: purpose of the charter is to communicate to everyone what the committee does, and how decision-making is done. There is a template available: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17sHiDNVmYo_YnFNUY5mgNy6M9RsdxrivB4WLjUgDMaw/edit?pli=1&tab=t.0
• about 700 followers on medium.
• Eloisa: X remains a big platform, we should keep posting there
• Juan: we should post on our own platform and copy to various platforms outside our control
• Eloisa: concerned about reach in non-X platforms.
• Arliss: 4 rounds of FSP applications per year. Arliss gathers applications from typeform. Then goes to TSC (previously board). Affiliated projects selected from recommendations from AP committee, still by board.
  • Notifications for FSPs were done by Leah
  • No mechanism to remove projects
  • Arliss: 2023 precedent for pausing new FSP applications.
• Eloisa: We should set specific dates for revisiting this decision so that projects know what's happening.
• Sophia: new focus on fundraising; many startups use open source so we should get a cut!
• Eloisa: fundraising brainstorming doc
• Arliss: currently there is a specific fundraising team and grant manager who are full time working on fundraising ideas
• Eloisa: fundraising dinner, e.g. have dinner with Guido van Rossum
• Eloisa: how do we start a fundraising brainstorming doc?
• Arliss: this year fundraising is top of everything, currently everyone is fundraising. Mark and MK are leading fundraising.

Action items

• Subscribe Eloisa and Sophia to relevant mailing lists for NF and NF fundraising