[board] minutes for May 2009 meeting

Wed May 6 01:39:37 UTC 2009

The minutes for today's meeting, which was small but useful, are  
attached. More followup should be coming from both Jan and I on things  
that were discussed.

-chuck
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[11:29] <cjh> Hi folks
[11:31] <selsky> hey
[11:31] <mrubinsk> Good morning all
[11:32] <cjh> Anyone else here? Anyone else expected?
[11:32] <cjh> protagonist: you alive? :)
[11:32] <yunosh> heyas
[11:32] <yunosh> well, beside protagonist the same folks like in #horde-dev here :)
[11:33] <cjh> :P
[11:38] <cjh> Okay
[11:39] <cjh> well, I wanted to talk some about community building, and what we want the board to do/what the board wants to do
[11:39] <cjh> since everyone that's active is a dev, let's talk about what we want the board to be
[11:40] <cjh> Ben K. and I talked about some ways to increase community/board involvement
[11:40] <cjh> I'd personally like the board to be a way to get more direct community involvement
[11:40] <cjh> I don't know if that's the right model, though
[11:40] <cjh> Ben talked about support for casual devs
[11:40] <cjh> A better system for maintaining/submitting documentation would probably be good
[11:41] <cjh> there are some projects that have online interfaces for maintaining/submitting translation
[11:41] <cjh> s
[11:41] <cjh> that might help as well, or maybe we don't need extra help there
[11:41] <cjh> http://drupal.org/contribute and similar pages are potential models
[11:41] <cjh> better news, blogging, updates about what's going on in horde land
[11:42] <cjh> Michael R. does a great job of blogging about the cool things he's working on
[11:42] <cjh> I have a long list of posts that I'm just not publishing, and I think there could be more in general
[11:42] <cjh> and we could feature those posts more prominently than in the accordion on www.horde.org
[11:43] <cjh> here's another resource: http://blog.roshambo.org/archives/Learning-how-to-help-people-contribute-to-the-PHP.net-Project.html
[11:44] <yunosh> still more coming? :)
[11:44] <cjh> two other things, yeah :)
[11:45] <yunosh> ok, i'll wait :)
[11:49] <cjh> sorry, helping someone with a git problem
[11:49] <cjh> okay, the other things were:
[11:50] <cjh> - joining a foundation/consortium of some sort, or getting 501c3 certified (as a non-profit for charitable donations)
[11:51] <cjh> - having a community manager. someone in charge of interfacing with the community, developer and admin, etc. This is something that Ben K. and I thought maybe the board could help with  - either a (likely non-dev) board member could do it, or the board could help find that person at one of the universities or companies involved.
[11:51] <cjh> k, that's what i have
[11:51] <yunosh> that's a bunch :)
[11:51] <cjh> well, yeah
[11:51] <cjh> you were the one who wanted to wait :)
[11:51] <cjh> i'm not expecting to solve all of this today, but...
[11:52] <yunosh> first i was a bit confused what the board would have to do with the community, because that's much broader. but with the last point this makes more sense to me
[11:53] <yunosh> i like the idea of making it easier to contribute documentation
[11:53] <yunosh> i already thought about that in the past too
[11:53] <mrubinsk> all good ideas, and it seems some of them could be dealt with as part of our website redesign as opposed to direct involvement with the board...ah, just like Jan has said :)
[11:54] <yunosh> what i came with was to layout the structure of manuals in a section of the wiki, so people could easily fill in any gaps
[11:54] <yunosh> it would start only with gaps of course
[11:54] <yunosh> regarding easier translation contribution i have two things in mind
[11:55] <yunosh> either the babel-rewrite that someone came up with recently, if ever somethings comes out of it
[11:55] <yunosh> or using launchpad's translation services. i did't take a very close look yet, but registered horde there a while ago
[11:56] <yunosh> the polish translator already got back to me and offered help in setting this up
[11:57] <cjh> cool
[11:57] <yunosh> regarding blogging etc. unfortunately i don't find as much time as i want for blogging. maybe it simply takes longer for me as a non-native speaker
[11:57] <cjh> I'd be happy to go with launchpad if that works for us - fall back to babel if we have to
[11:57] <yunosh> that's one of the reason why i want to try twitter, to see if that helps anything
[11:57] <cjh> makes sense. it takes me as much time as you to blog, at least, so I don't know if it's a language issue :)
[11:58] <yunosh> but that's just about me personally. regading blog/news aggregation
[11:58] <mrubinsk> (thanks for the props on my blog, BTW)
[11:58] <mrubinsk> I do think that we could use more visibility on our collective news in general though
[11:59] <yunosh> i really don't like those project websites that only consist of a wordpress installation. but we should probably move our news aggregation to the main view, and the current static home stuff somewhere in a side column
[11:59] <mrubinsk> though I imagine that can be dealt with on our new website...
[11:59] <mrubinsk> agreed
[11:59] <cjh> I agree on both counts (with Jan)
[11:59] <cjh> I don't like the sites that are just trac, either
[11:59] <cjh> but we could clearly take some improvements from that model also
[11:59] <cjh> speaking of the website
[12:00] <cjh> I'm going ahead with trying out collaborating with our UI designer here (at work) to do a new site design/organization (http://www.jayciruolo.com/ if anyone's curious)
[12:00] <yunosh> cool
[12:00] <cjh> and I'm going to contact a few people about logo work if he's not comfortable with it
[12:00] <cjh> we can decide later if hydra is still the right way to go, but I figure i should try and get this moving somehow
[12:00] <mrubinsk> that sounds great
[12:02] <mrubinsk> the idea regarding a community manager sounds interesting, but I'm not sure I see the overall picture there.  What would the exact role be? Is it to replace certain mailing list, support requests etc...  or am I totally missing the point here?
[12:03] <yunosh> don't forget to ask colin for logos, he's always done a great job in the past and is usually pretty responsive
[12:03] <cjh> No - it would be a person whose role was to make sure that mailing lists, bug tracker, etc. was responsive and community-welcoming
[12:03] <yunosh> yeah, i have the question like michael, i don't get it yet
[12:03] <mrubinsk> kind of like a moderator?
[12:04] <cjh> yunosh: I will; though I might be looking for something a bit more... painterly? than he normally does
[12:04] <cjh> kind of like a moderator
[12:04] <cjh> someone who could do some of the triaging and feedback requests, documentation pointers, in perhaps a less testy way than we're inclined to
[12:04] <cjh> someone who'd hang out on irc, get to know who uses horde, get to know people, faq pointers, maybe maintain the faq for real, etc.
[12:05] <yunosh> cjh: i like his clean work :) but more options wouldn't hurt
[12:05] <mrubinsk> so... patience would be high on the requirements list ;)
[12:05] <cjh> mrubinsk: yes
[12:05] <yunosh> heh
[12:06] <cjh> someone who also could perhaps advocate for the community with a more collected/centralized viewpoint
[12:06] <yunosh> sounds great and would take a lot of burden from us
[12:06] <mrubinsk> agreed
[12:06] <yunosh> but how to/where to find such a person?
[12:06] <cjh> well, yeah. i don't know :)
[12:06] <cjh> but it's entirely possible that there's someone or a few people who'd do it if they thought we would be supportive and welcoming
[12:07] <yunosh> it's worth a try but i'm skeptical
[12:07] ? selsky_ joined the channel.
[12:07] <cjh> heh
[12:07] ? selsky left IRC. (Read error: 104 (Connection reset by peer))
[12:08] <cjh> http://www.chrisbrogan.com/essential-skills-of-a-community-manager/
[12:08] <mrubinsk> In all honesty, someone who would know enough to intelligently answer some IRC questions would almost have to be someone who has a developer's viewpoint into the code
[12:08] <cjh> http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2007/11/25/the-four-tenets-of-the-community-manager/
[12:08] <cjh> mrubinsk: but someone who could say "i'll get back to you" and follow through wouldn't
[12:09] <cjh> and someone who did that would learn over time, and we could build a relationship with them where supporting them is easier than supporting everyone
[12:09] <yunosh> mrubinsk: i'm not sure. i see he's job rather like sieve who can filter out those request that require *not* a developers insight
[12:09] <mrubinsk> ok...think I'm getting it now
[12:10] <mrubinsk> then via horde-dev or email channels, communicate with us for things he can't deal with
[12:11] <yunosh> it doesn't even have to be that complicated. we would still follow all channels i guess, but it helps if had to answer less questions
[12:11] <yunosh> something like eric did pretty well in the past, and still sometimes today
[12:12] <cjh> yeah
[12:12] <mrubinsk> yea, that was my next concern - I think it says a lot about a project when the developers themselves are approachable, so I still think it's important to maintain that presence on IRC
[12:13] <yunosh> sure
[12:13] <cjh> definitely
[12:13] <cjh> and honestly I think with some community management help to triage, we would be *more* approachable and friendly :)
[12:13] <mrubinsk> :)
[12:14] <yunosh> probably :)
[12:19] <cjh> Alright, shall we call it for today then?
[12:19] <cjh> With the conclusions of:
[12:19] <cjh> 1. try to find a community manager or managers and see how it goes
[12:20] <cjh> 2. get moving on that there website
[12:20] <cjh> and plenty more to talk about
[12:20] <mrubinsk> one more question:
[12:21] <mrubinsk> did you have any organization in mind?
[12:21] <cjh> for?
[12:21] <mrubinsk> the foundation/non-profit thing...
[12:21] <mrubinsk> sorrry
[12:21] <cjh> no, I don't have a specific one in mind
[12:22] <mrubinsk> k. just curious
[12:22] <yunosh> i do, if we want to join one. now if i only i could recall it
[12:22] <mrubinsk> heh
[12:23] <yunosh> we talked about that already in the past, and i came up with an organization, that does exactly that
[12:24] <yunosh> offering all that tax deduct stuff for oss projects that can't handle it themselves
[12:24] <mrubinsk> that does sound vaguely familiar
[12:25] <cjh> http://conservancy.softwarefreedom.org/ ?
[12:26] <yunosh> http://conservancy.softwarefreedom.org/
[12:26] <yunosh> ah
[12:27] <yunosh> it has some pretty prominent members since i last looked
[12:28] <cjh> Jan: want to send an email to board@ proposing we join?
[12:28] <cjh> I don't see much downside, if any
[12:29] <yunosh> k
[12:29] <cjh> cool
[12:29] <cjh> Are we adjourned? (it's lunch time here :)
[12:29] <yunosh> from side, yes
[12:29] <yunosh> my
[12:29] <cjh> Alright
[12:30] <mrubinsk> sounds good
[12:30] <cjh> thanks all - small meeting, but good to make some decisions and move forward
[12:30] <cjh> I'll send out the minutes and work on the community manager side when I can
[12:30] <cjh> and I'm already trying to move forward on the website
[12:30] <yunosh> great
[12:30] <mrubinsk> sounds cool
[12:31] <mrubinsk> let me know if there's anything specific that you would like help with :)
[12:31] <yunosh> mrubinsk: btw, you should link from the wiki HowTo page to the more technical blog entries on your site, if you didn't already
[12:32] <mrubinsk> k - I'll look into that :)
[12:32] <mrubinsk> I've tried getting it added to planet php as well, but they never seem to take it :/
[12:33] <yunosh> i'm not sure if it's still much maintained at all, beside that christian put the code on github recently
[12:35] <mrubinsk> ah
[13:16] <cjh> that's different from whether they add new blogs, which they seem to...
[13:16] <cjh> though, maybe not lately
[13:17] <mrubinsk> ah well, maybe they just didn't like me :)
[13:20] <protagonist> I've been reading the backlog, not much to add here
[13:20] <cjh> hey Andrew
[13:20] <cjh> any comments? :)
[13:21] <protagonist> I've been distracted by a lot of other stuff at work, so I'm behind on my Horde work
[13:21] <protagonist> a community manager sounds good to me
[13:21] <protagonist> what is the reason for seeking 501c3 status?