I wanted to give a report on our board meeting earlier this month. This
is not in place of the meeting minutes, which will be published when
they're ready and approved. But the discussion here was very helpful to
the meeting, and I'd like to share some of what we worked on, and
mention outcomes where there are any.
I'll start with policy business. We approved two updates to our official
policies. One is the revised privacy policy which has been discussed
here a few times previously. The other is an update to the gift policy,
which was no longer reflecting our organizational structure and needed
some more specific guidance. The updated policy is not a substantive
change in our philosophy, it simply clarifies some points. For example,
the foundation intends to convert gifts of securities into cash upon
receipt, rather than having them sit for long periods and be subject to
market fluctuations (in the past, we've both gained and lost money in
such circumstances, so it's pretty much a wash). Oh, and in case you
were wondering, the policy documents that we won't normally offer naming
opportunities. Well, we can name servers, but for some reason donors
haven't shown too much interest in that. Patti has put the new versions
of these policies up on the foundation website.
Stu updated us on the status of the audit, which is progressing
reasonably well, certainly more quickly than last year. The audited
financial statements should be ready for us to approve no later than the
next board meeting in November (on IRC).
Speaking of next board meetings, we also set the board's calendar for
the coming year. That should make it easier to plan our schedules and
make sure all trustees can attend (this was the first time we've had
everyone together since I joined the board). It may also be of interest
to people who are thinking of being candidates, either in next June's
elections or for the chapter-selected seats. In addition to the IRC
meeting November 3 this year, in 2009 we've set aside January 9-11 in
San Francisco, April 3-5 (location to be determined, possibly in
conjunction with a chapters meeting), August 27 in Buenos Aires (as
usual, a short meeting prior to Wikimania), and October 23-25 in San
Francisco again. More IRC meetings may be scheduled as necessary, but
those don't involve travel and are easier to plan.
Jan-Bart gave a presentation on open standards, which led into the
broader topic (including file formats) that I introduced earlier.
Jan-Bart feels that considering our commitment to these ideals - freely
licensed content, free software, web standards - our projects are not
doing nearly as much as they could on open standards in education. It's
an important aspect of our mission, the standards often exist already
and are in use in the educational community, and our impact in that
world would grow significantly by working towards them.
For the broader discussion, first of all, thanks to everyone who gave
their input here, it was tremendously valuable. As indicated earlier, we
didn't have this conversation to make an immediate decision at the
meeting. The board does want to maintain our commitment, as reflected in
both the foundation and the community, to free and open access to
knowledge. Along those lines, the earlier draft of a file format policy
will be revisited, and we may consider passing a revised version.
However, it's also not clear that this would be a good idea. One issue
would be if it inadvertently prohibits positive approaches in the
future, such as the uses for Flash that Brion mentioned. (At least,
nobody seemed to have a problem with those, please correct me if that's
not the case.) So I wonder if it might not be wiser to avoid attempting
something at the board level that requires us to pin down definitions
for file formats, platforms, and so on in ways that may have unintended
consequences. Further feedback and discussion is welcome.
Along with standards and file formats, the issues we spent the most time
on were the advisory board and chapters. As this message is already
rather long, I'll be more brief about those. We've realized that
advisory board members were originally appointed for one-year terms, so
most of them have been serving longer than anticipated. We discussed the
skills and qualities we want the advisory board to help with, and will
be inviting some of the existing group to continue on, while also adding
new appointments from time to time. Jan-Bart is working on a proposal
for handling this, so we can have less of an ad hoc approach. Finally,
I'll just save the chapter business for a separate email in the next day
or so.
--Michael Snow
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is not in place of the meeting minutes, which will be published when
they're ready and approved. But the discussion here was very helpful to
the meeting, and I'd like to share some of what we worked on, and
mention outcomes where there are any.
I'll start with policy business. We approved two updates to our official
policies. One is the revised privacy policy which has been discussed
here a few times previously. The other is an update to the gift policy,
which was no longer reflecting our organizational structure and needed
some more specific guidance. The updated policy is not a substantive
change in our philosophy, it simply clarifies some points. For example,
the foundation intends to convert gifts of securities into cash upon
receipt, rather than having them sit for long periods and be subject to
market fluctuations (in the past, we've both gained and lost money in
such circumstances, so it's pretty much a wash). Oh, and in case you
were wondering, the policy documents that we won't normally offer naming
opportunities. Well, we can name servers, but for some reason donors
haven't shown too much interest in that. Patti has put the new versions
of these policies up on the foundation website.
Stu updated us on the status of the audit, which is progressing
reasonably well, certainly more quickly than last year. The audited
financial statements should be ready for us to approve no later than the
next board meeting in November (on IRC).
Speaking of next board meetings, we also set the board's calendar for
the coming year. That should make it easier to plan our schedules and
make sure all trustees can attend (this was the first time we've had
everyone together since I joined the board). It may also be of interest
to people who are thinking of being candidates, either in next June's
elections or for the chapter-selected seats. In addition to the IRC
meeting November 3 this year, in 2009 we've set aside January 9-11 in
San Francisco, April 3-5 (location to be determined, possibly in
conjunction with a chapters meeting), August 27 in Buenos Aires (as
usual, a short meeting prior to Wikimania), and October 23-25 in San
Francisco again. More IRC meetings may be scheduled as necessary, but
those don't involve travel and are easier to plan.
Jan-Bart gave a presentation on open standards, which led into the
broader topic (including file formats) that I introduced earlier.
Jan-Bart feels that considering our commitment to these ideals - freely
licensed content, free software, web standards - our projects are not
doing nearly as much as they could on open standards in education. It's
an important aspect of our mission, the standards often exist already
and are in use in the educational community, and our impact in that
world would grow significantly by working towards them.
For the broader discussion, first of all, thanks to everyone who gave
their input here, it was tremendously valuable. As indicated earlier, we
didn't have this conversation to make an immediate decision at the
meeting. The board does want to maintain our commitment, as reflected in
both the foundation and the community, to free and open access to
knowledge. Along those lines, the earlier draft of a file format policy
will be revisited, and we may consider passing a revised version.
However, it's also not clear that this would be a good idea. One issue
would be if it inadvertently prohibits positive approaches in the
future, such as the uses for Flash that Brion mentioned. (At least,
nobody seemed to have a problem with those, please correct me if that's
not the case.) So I wonder if it might not be wiser to avoid attempting
something at the board level that requires us to pin down definitions
for file formats, platforms, and so on in ways that may have unintended
consequences. Further feedback and discussion is welcome.
Along with standards and file formats, the issues we spent the most time
on were the advisory board and chapters. As this message is already
rather long, I'll be more brief about those. We've realized that
advisory board members were originally appointed for one-year terms, so
most of them have been serving longer than anticipated. We discussed the
skills and qualities we want the advisory board to help with, and will
be inviting some of the existing group to continue on, while also adding
new appointments from time to time. Jan-Bart is working on a proposal
for handling this, so we can have less of an ad hoc approach. Finally,
I'll just save the chapter business for a separate email in the next day
or so.
--Michael Snow
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l