Interim Board Meeting: Sep 30, 2014

Software Carpentry Foundation Interim Board Meeting: Sep 30, 2014

Attending

• JB: Jenny Bryan (Univ of British Columbia)
• CG: Carole Goble (U. Manchester)
• JG: Josh Greenberg (Sloan Foundation) - nonvoting
• NCH: Neil Chue Hong (Software Sustainability Institute) - chair
• KH: Katy Huff (UC Berkeley)
• DI: Damien Irving (University of Melbourne / Research Platforms)
• AS: Adam Stone (Berkeley Lab)
• KT: Kaitlin Thaney (Mozilla Science Lab)
• TT: Tracy Teal (Michigan State / Data Carpentry)
• GW: Greg Wilson (Software Carpentry)

Actions

• Board: next meeting on Tue Oct 14 (same time)
• CG + KH + GW: prepare clarification of core vs. non-core activities
• GW: prepare strawman "bare bones" budget
• GW: update wording of press release and circulate for final checking
• JB + TT: due diligence on NumFOCUS FSA by Mon Oct 6
• KH: prepare proposal for storing SCF board documents

Resolutions

• Public announcement of SCF: Oct 8
• Legal status for the SCF: with NumFOCUS
• Devote next meeting to "what's core/non-core" and how to handle money

Summary

• Date for next meeting: Tuesday Oct 14 (same time)

• Vote on date: passed

• Wording of press release/community announcement
• CG: put wording about "continue to do what we're doing" at the top as well as at the bottom
• JG: what other orgs should be mentioned: LBL, SSI, …?
• CG: point to list https://software-carpentry.org/scf/supporters.html instead of repeating
• Action: GW to update and circulate to board

• Vote on agreement in principle on wording: passed

• Release date for press release/community announcement:
• GW proposes Oct 8
  • We control what gets said when, rather than letting it leak
  • GW uneasy keeping secrets
  • Easier to talk to people about funding / governance
• TKT proposes Oct 7 or 8 (NSF BIO meeting Oct 7-8 & funding discussions abound)
  • Conversations getting awkward as not able to reveal status of foundation
  • Easier to move forward when talking to NSF, others
• KT proposes Oct 22-24
  • Closer to live instructor training / MozFest
  • Discussions about how we handle funding still needs to be worked through
  • Will get questions when comes out

• Vote on Oct 8 release date: passed

• Legal status for the SCF
• NumFOCUS
  • Andy Terrel and Brian Granger willing to come on call on to answer questions
  • At moment can only do independent contractors but plan to have employees
  • Want to do Europe, would like input on what we want (country by country, whole EU?)
  • Can disburse funds if on research grant with university
  • Monthly reporting as spreadsheet
• A free-standing 501(c)3
• Something else [no other proposals received to date]
• Discussion of handling out-of-US funding streams
  • Deadline for CAG's INFRADEV-3 proposal is January 2015
• Discussion and vote: agreement in principle on NumFOCUS
  • Due diligence: TT and JB by Monday next week (Oct 6)
  • talk with another fiscal sponsor: JG will connect
• Discussion of operations FAQ
• SCF staff may no approach = SCF staff may not approach (simple typo)
• Adding a sentence that <$1k not necessary to get board approval.
• what is "core" vs. "not-core" donation?

• Question on #3: the "directed by SCF" - does that present big management / bandwidth issues for SCF?

• Discussion of strawman SCF budget

• GW to prepare a "barebones" budget, and also a strawman "what it costs to scale" budget for discussion

• Discussion of governance document

• Research Platforms gives > 60 days per year, so they should be on the list of institutions

• Other business
• Where are we going to keep all this documentation?
  • KH to lead off discussion on the email list with a strawman
• Notes
• ELIXIR can't pay Greg directly - has to be routed through an org (hence the pressure to have some entity that can catch the money and pass it on)

• Main topic for next meeting: how to handle money from different sources

• Additional questions
• This may be more for internal process with institutional partners, but handling of workshop requests across distributed network of coordinators is still something to sort. (Happy to take offline, but know admin@email vs something @mozilla has been a discussion item for a few months)
• proposal: everyone coordinating workshops is in a weekly meeting to update one another on leads and progress
• additional proposal: separate request emails as well as a core one at SCF that gets doled out as needed.
• It would be helpful to be clear how we would contribute to the core operations and contribute to our local organisations.
• For groups providing in-kind support, is it worth creating an MoU (building off Carole's comment)

• JG: SCF stewards public goods, org members provide services and scale

• Random thoughts
• it would be convenient to get a MoU with SCF and ELIXIR in the next two months to secure SC position in the ELIXIR INFRADEV3 proposal…
• sub-group to put together proposal on core vs. non-core: GW, KH, CG

• put together bare-bones budget and how much is required to scale