Board of Directors Meeting 2019-08-02

The Document Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting 2019-08-02
Call Minutes

Location: Jitsi

Session chair: Marina Latini
Keeper of the minutes: Florian Effenberger

In the call: Franklin (board), Marina (chair), Eike (board), Florian (ED), Björn (deputy chair)
Representation: None

Chairwoman of the Board is in the call. One of the Chairwoman or Deputy Chairman is required to be present or represented for having a quorate call.

The Board of Directors at time of the call consists of 7 seat holders without deputies. In order to be quorate, the call needs to have 1/2 of the Board of Directors members, which gives 4. A total of 4 Board of Directors members are attending the call.

The board waives all formal statutory requirements, or requirements in the foundations articles, or other requirements regarding form and invitation, time limits, and for the topics discussed in this meeting.

The call is quorate and invitation happened in time. From now on, motions can be passed with the agreement of a simple majority of those remaining present. The majority threshold is currently 3.

The meeting commences at 14:05 Berlin time.

Public part:

1. Discuss: safety improvements for events (Marina, 10 minutes)
    for more details see my previous e-mail
    "A lesson learned from openSUSE conf 2019 and an important improvement for TDF"
    Detailed proposal:
    1) the automatic defibrillator is not always a mandatory requirement in a public place or in a conference venue.
       For the TDF events I would suggest to:
       * check with the local organizers what is available
       * add to the website and to the badges some emergency info for the attendees.

    2) missing emergency information.
       I would suggest is to:
       * ask to all the attendees to print and _always_ bring during the conference a piece of paper with the following info:
           (TDF not collecting, but attendees bringing themselves)
       ** TDF to provide template/blank card
       ** Name, Surname
       ** birthdate
       ** an ID card/Passport or at least the document number
       ** the residence address
       ** an emergency contact to call
       ** any relevant medical info that could be useful to the doctors like allergies or particular health conditions relevant in case of emergency.

    3) People with BLS notions list.
       * I would suggest to:
       ** have a list of people (from TDF and the local organizers) with BLS notions
       ** guarantee that at least one person, better two, is always available in the conference venue and if possible in the rooms.
       ** populate this list also with conference attendees with BLS notions
       ** have a first emergency kit will be also a plus to have.
       * Proposal (Franklin): create a sticker to put on the badge, giving visibility to those available for first aid

    4) Organize a BLS course.
       * I would suggest to:
       ** create a list of people interested to take this course (start from employees)
       ** contact the current insurance checking if there are discounts available for this kind of trainings
       ** when/where organize the course?
       *** next in-person all-in meeting?
       *** which language?

* add this as requirement for future CfLs (Florian)
* Do this for BoD and MC too, or leave it mostly to conference organizers? (Björn)
* good opportunity to share one training with many (Marina, Florian)
* Why board or MC? Rather do trainings with all conference organizers ahead of the event. (Björn)

2. Discuss: Dedicated sponsorship program for students (Franklin, 15 minutes)

In LibreOffice Asia Conference this year we noticed that there were very few young Japanese people joining. I exchanged some thoughts with Japanese community members (like Naruhiko Ogasawara, Shinji Enoki, and Takeshi Abe) about having some promotion to universities or high schools and encourage them to contribute and propose talks to LibreOffice Conference. And from the TDF side we can reserved some dedicated budgets for these students to encourage their participation, especially from areas outside Europe (since it's cheaper to travel inside Europe, we can put a bit more ratio to areas like Latin America, Africa and Asia).

In our first idea, the local community needs to promote ODF/LibreOffice and/or hold hackfests in universities and high schools to encourage more young people joining in. And the criteria to get sponsorship can be:

a) must be a student (approve by local community)
b) aged from 16-24 (can be discussed)
c) the proposal to LibreOffice Conference is accepted (so we need to decide the program faster so that they can buy flight tickets, or being handled by TDF)

We can discuss the idea first, and if we agree with it we can then discuss about the amount of the budget to be reserved.

* Do together with MC? (Marina)
* write document together with MC describing the project, get cost estimation/budget plan
* AI: Marina to poke Gabriele

3. Discuss: new Certification Category discussion (Michael, 10 minutes)
postponed - Michael not in the meeting

Public call ends 14:30 Berlin time.

Marina Latini (Session chair)
Florian Effenberger (Keeper of the minutes)