[Board] Welcome to the new Board members

[Jeff McKenna]

Hello everyone!

An excited welcome to the 5 new Board members: Anita, Helena, Jody, 
Sanghee, and Venka (welcome back to Venka, as a founding Board member!). 
  All of you are listed now on the "Foundation Officers and Board of 
Directors" page[1].

Here are some points:

- all of you have been added to a private email alias, that the Board 
members can use to speak of any issues that cannot be discussed 
publicly: board-priv at osgeo.org  We try to always use this public Board 
mailing list, but some issues must remain private sometimes.  Please 
feel free to use it.  I will send a message shortly to test that you 
receive it.

- a good page to bookmark is the main wiki page for the Board, that 
lists the next meeting time etc.[2]

- this brings us to the next meeting.  Does anyone have a problem with 
the date of 15 October, for the first meeting, held on IRC in the #osgeo 
channel? (please contact me directly if you need help connecting to IRC)

- that brings us to the task of picking a meeting time slot.  This could 
be tricky as we are very spread out now (this is a great problem 
though!).  Sanghee you will notice on the Board wiki[2] that you are 
listed in the UK timezone ha, or should we list you in the Korean one? 
Here is a chart of all of the possible time options for that day the 
15th [3]  You can see that actually the best option might be at 14:00 
UTC, but that is a late 11:00pm in Osaka for Venka and an early 7:00am 
in the Victoria area for Jody.  Can someone see a better option from 
that chart (easy on the red and yellow)? If yes please speak up.

- there is already an agenda building for that first meeting[4].  Note 
that since this is a new Board, the first item on the agenda will be for 
the OSGeo Board to name a president for 2015/2016 (each year the board 
must name the president for the upcoming year).  I will of course stand 
for this again, excitingly, and I am very happy to continue in that role 
for 2015/2016; actually that would work well with my term on the board, 
which ends (or is up for renewal) in September of 2016.  Because of 
this, this first meeting will not be chaired by me (this is from 
feedback I've received from board members in the past), and that we'll 
name that meeting chair at the beginning of that meeting, by naming the 
oldest person in the that meeting as the meeting chair (if I have this 
rule wrong, please speak up).  But that is the initial plan.

- the hot issue on the burner is really for the Board to agree on a 
liability agreement with the FOSS4G-Bonn committee, and I'll be 
following up on this shortly here (we already have a document draft, but 
some details need to be clarified).  We really have no choice but to 
move fast on that as the Bonn team is in full preparations now.

- before that first meeting, you might check the Board voting 
procedure[5], which is the usual "+1" "+0" "-1" that you are likely 
already used to, but it is good to review the exact rules.  Also, after 
an IRC meeting, we will then vote by email on the mailing list on each 
motion.  Sometimes, for time-sensitive issues, we may also not wait for 
the next meeting to make a motion (and any Board member can make a motion).

- I've also added an agenda item to pick 2 days for a Board face-to-face 
meeting soon.  (do you have an agenda item to discuss?  please add it to 
the meeting page)

This is a long message I apologize.  I encourage lots of talk, if you 
have questions let us/me know.  And we have lots of experienced former 
Board members on this mailing list as well, so everyone can help you get 
comfortable.

And thank you for your time and passion, the whole OSGeo community 
appreciates it.  Talk soon,


[1] http://www.osgeo.org/content/foundation/board_and_officers.html
[2] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Board_of_Directors
[3] 
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meetingtime.html?iso=20151015&p1=43&p2=49&p3=1234&p4=286&p5=157&p6=671&p7=207&p8=1091&p9=259
[4] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Board_Meeting_2015-10-15
[5] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Board_Voting_Procedure


-jeff


-- 
Jeff McKenna
President, OSGeo
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Jeff_McKenna