[wplug-plan] Board Minutes

[Evan DiBiase]

Well, I entered the board minutes into the system, and all the data 
seems to be there, but the "Events" section isn't showing up and I'm not 
sure why. I figured I'd just post the minutes here for reference for the 
time being.



WPLUG BOARD MEETING
April 6, 2002

The board discussed the creation of standing committees, who would head 
them, what kind of structure they would have, and a little bit of 
implementation detail. Additionally, the IBM zSeries talk scheduled for 
the May GUM was discussed.


Attendance:

     * Jonathan Billings
     * Rob Dale
     * Evan DiBiase
     * Bobby Lynn Eicher
     * Steve Hancock
     * Beth Lynn
     * James O'Kane
     * David Ostroske
     * Zach Paine
     * Logan Stack
     * David Tessitor


Events:

The meeting started at approximately 2:10 PM.

The following standing commitees and heads were generally agreed upon:

     * Web - Evan DiBiase
     * Computer Show - Steve Hancock
     * GUMs - Zach Paine
     * Install-Fests - Beth Lynn
     * Tutorials - James O'Kane
     * IRC - Jeremy Dinsel
     * Server Administration - Rob Dale
     * Mailing Lists - James O'Kane
     * Special Events - Beth Lynn
     * Public Relations - Zach Paine

Current tasks facing the proposed Web commitee would include updating 
the board voting script to support committees, implementing ticketing, 
and cleaning up web pages that no longer work or are no longer in use.

Jonathan Billings reported on ticketing solutions, mentioning Bugzilla, 
GNATS, and RT. Of the three, he suggested GNATS as the strongest 
contender, with RT a relatively unresearched possibility. Bugzilla was 
not recommended and generally considered to be a bad match for WPLUG's 
incident ticketing needs.

The implementation of such a ticketing system would have committee heads 
running their respective groups, with the abilities to delegate tickets 
to committee members. Also, a "drop box" section was deemed desirable so 
that items not fitting any specific committee could be entered somewhere.

The responsibilities of the GUM committee were generally agreed to be 
crowd control, speaker selection and handling, as well as food 
procurement and distribution.

The Server Administration committee's contact point was generally agreed 
upon to be the already-established [ admin ]@[ wplug ].[ org ] address, 
although this was decided before the ticketing decision and so may need 
to be reconsidered.

An extensive discussion of advertising duties of the Public Relations 
commitee occurred. Methods of announcement were considered, with the 
suggestion that an auto-announce daemon be created made and generally 
accepted. The comp.os.linux.* and *pittsburgh* newsgroups (as 
appropriate), the Tribune-Review, CityPaper, Pittsburgh Pulp, and 
Post-Gazette newspapers, campus radio stations, and general 
flyer-permitting locations around Oakland were deemed to be good 
locations to initially spread the word of WPLUG events.

The zSeries talk was also discussed in this context, with the general 
consensus being that WPLUG should request that perspective attendees 
RSVP informally if at all possibly in order to obtain an approximate 
count. Additionally, there was agreement that the board needs to find 
out if IBM can provide promotional material and/or outreach to clients. 
The question was also raised regarding how many people these efforts 
would attract.

The last Public Relations matter discussed was that of important points 
to stress in all WPLUG public relations communication. The only item 
discussed was that advertisments should mention that seating is free, 
but food is not necessarily so.

The board discussed the desired structure for committees as well, 
generally agreeing that the basic skeletion would consist of a chair, 
members, and a contact point. The contact point was determined to be 
best served by a mailing list address. Non-subscribed addresses sending 
mail to the list would receive a "thank you" message; the message would 
then be forwarded to the committee chair for approval, although the 
Mailing List chair would also have the ability to approve or reject 
email.

Due to these proposed changes and additions to the WPLUG structure, 
voting changes were discussed. It was generally agreed upon that the 
committees should act as advisory bodies only, with the chair of each 
committee submitting a proposal to the board voting system and the board 
having the actual vote on it.

Finally, general business was discussed. Beth Lynn suggested meeting at 
2:00 PM on April 13th to discuss the zSeries talk in more detail. Zach 
suggested holding a board meeting after every GUM. He also suggested 
looking over the bylaws to determine if any revisions were needed.

The meeting ended at approximately 3:30 PM.


Credits:

Kurt Hoffman, who inadvertantly caused Evan DiBiase's computer to kernel 
panic, sending the first version of these minutes to the great RAM 
heaven in the sky.