[Board] notes from the business dev portion of the board meeting

[Jo Walsh]

dear all, 

I took a lot of notes at the Board meeting a couple of weeks back,
most of which are duplicated in others' notes and heads i expect.
I have a couple of pages' worth taken during the discussion started by
Paul's document outlining the different paths to self-sufficiency the
Foundation might take over the next couple of years, i wanted to share
a transcription of them, included here.

[[
* Paul's manifesto
* "the world will tell us what it wants us to do by deciding how much
  money to give us"
  - so what can we sell?
  - what do we *do*? (that has redistributable value)
* "we try to give assurances around openess of process"
(collective resources, individual motivation, peer review.
consensus "qualitative" judgement, level of abstraction "assurance"
* The IP is clean, lights on etc - a lot of specific discusasion of
  what is happening to and for projects. 
  But it all sounds like overhead - 
  developer time investment in promotional value
* "Instant engagement with an established community"
* focal point / contact point 
* "It's a legitimacy thing"
* Local conference energy
  "All these capacity-building programs running on 6-month trial
  licenses"
* "A lot more development from a lot fewer developers by following an
  open source model"
* "Fusion" technologies 

"Every vendor sells legitimacy, this is why one can sell into
government."
"How do we turn trust into money."
Parallels with the testbed development process.
To what extent consortium organisation overlaps with foundation remit
Minimalist | ... | Maximalist visions
"How do we want to win? There's lots of ways to win."
Benefit overhead countered by incubation load.
"Selling your search results... it's just putting them at the top"
Placement in the SPD, "we commit" / "we are committed"
- PSC participants. supporters
- Big benefit for consultant practitioners
- Connect to reports from PSCs, quarterly or half-yearly, given
  template
Admin overhead, sliding scale, pricing like IAS[sic?] - actually not
worth spending money to make it, at low cost.

Scholarship / sponsorship for services.
"for profit" / existence of war chest 
system | effort | amount of space open 
What kind of logistical / practical support for local conferences?
om budget limited, better to DIY than presence at others' events?
Possibility of financial support on a sliding scale relative to
profitmaking orientation of conference...
Possibility of routing this through the PSCs if they want, as well as
"scholarship" idea which looks a bit like the SoC.

[time passes]

"All these things take people."
"But money can be turned into people!"
]]

cheers,


jo
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