[SAC] 1st Meeting in a long time - May 2016

[Sandro Santilli]

On Thu, May 12, 2016 at 10:35:27PM -0700, Alex Mandel wrote:

> In anticipation of the upcoming meeting, I see 2 major topics.
> 
> 1. Handling the wiki Spam
> 2. Creating a system for soliciting and approving paid work on systems.

As Jody stated during the board meeting... "the house is on fire",
waiting another week doesn't really help.

> For #2 I would appreciate if people can brainstorm, and write down
> options before the meeting. Just make a spot on the agenda page a put
> down what you think is a viable method.

I started a draft here:
https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/SAC:May2016#Funding_sysadmin_work
But I'm not sure the wiki is good for discussion

> For instance should we be looking for an Emergency response retainer
> (suggested by Jeff M. in the past), or rather to have things like
> implementation of new features.
> What should be the cap on amounts for these contracts?
> How do we solicit bids?
> If a SAC member submits, do we just have all other members vote?
> How much of the total SAC budget should be for these kinds of contracts
> vs other uses?

I think it is key to have a responsible figure to coordinate general
maintainance: document services, hardware and procedures;
organize volunteers; promptly respond to tickets and emergencies;
reasearch on improving the infrastructure.

This is not something that can be done only on emergencies, IMHO.

A contract for an amount of hours would give us the possibility to
see how it works out. We could make it limited in time, like 130 hours
to be spent in max 3 months (would allow for 10 hours per week).

The current SAC budget for 2016 could hardly buy those many hours
though, so if we want to go that route we'll probably need to ask for
more, or reduce the effort:
https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Board_of_Directors#Operational_Budget_for_2016

It will help to have a view on the past expenses.
Some commettees did publish their data in the past, but I could not
find any SAC-specific page among these ones:
https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Category:Budget
https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Category:Finance


--strk;