February Conference Call 2/11/05

Present: Reuben, Rich, Amanda and John:
Absent: Steve, Arif

Report from Web sub comittee:

Amanda wants to do a survey on the site. She wants to capture info that might later be part of a more comprehensive document. Amanda will write up some logic about why its needed: She wants to get best practices from people. She'll post to the list to make sure people know that there is a survey in progress.
Rich likes the idea as well, and feels like it would feed into or work with Reg. Amanda agrees this is a nice tie in to our funding request for reg.
Reuben says survey's could provide the basis for a further discussion maybe. Amanda will compile.
Amanda, one of the things that we covered was the prospect of volunteers and set up a committee that would take up ownership on the website. Perhaps that could be turned over to a person and group that could work on it. Amanda would coordinate.
Rich says its best to try to form a volunteer committee so that they won't feel isolated. Volunteering is also a social phenomenon. This is a general comment about how to handle volunteers. This is also a way to recruit leadership in the future.
Amanda says we should compile a list of volunteer type activities.
Rich says we could create a "cafe kit". The software that you download. A description of how to set up your own cafe. A volunteer committee could help drive this. Amanda says that Steve would need to head this up.
Amanda asked Rich to contact Steve with his ideas for the cafe.
Rich suggested we have an online "fix the website" party to focus attention on getting issues worked out. This idea didn't seem to have traction at the moment.

Reuben asked if any of us come up with things on the site that need to be changed or fixed should we drop Amanda a note? Amanda says we should fix it ourselves and let the SC know.

Rich saw some modules for list of orgs to be entered and Rich would give it to Amanda to examine for possible inclusion on the site.

John how about a email list or forum spot for web volunteers interested in helping out. Amanda says that this might be a good start for using the forum. [She will work at getting this started when she has time.????]<--- can't remember if this was actually said.

Fund-raising sc

Rich would like us to revise our strategic plan and post it. Would it be possible to identify a roadmaps for future work. By defining objectives for projects, how large they will be etc. Any fund-raising efforts will be more successful and convincing to funders with this information in hand.

The current SC strategic plan will soon predate all the members of the SC

Reuben the last time we talked about this we got some ideas from the community on the wiki. We could stick with the idea that we came up with i.e. the source book. To direct our work in the coming months.

Rich said we need to evolve some goals about where we want to be over the next 36 months.
The source book is a project idea not a general strategic vision.It would be useful to ask ourselves "if we had money where would we put those resources?" Projects like:
Make NOSI the resource for the FREE/NPO world,
volunteer match etc.
Can we think of this in terms of milestone for NOSI?

The type of metrics we should think about using as milestones are:

X Number of cafes per year
web traffic
publications
number of npo's that have [transistioned to open source? ]<--not sure here

Once these have been figured out we could move forward with projects.

Rich: We should work on writing out what are shared understanding of what NOSI is and what NOSI does this could form the basis for a future face to face meeting.

Reuben appreciates the worth of an extensive planning process, it is probably hard to do such a thing given our current commitments etc, it may dissipate our energies.
Amanda would like to return to this issue in several months
John this might be good to return to when we have added new steering committee members
Rich, I am really taking about doing a survey of what we think we are up to. Rich would survey the SC and by next month we hoped to have a shared consensus document, it can serve as a road map for the future. Folks say this is a fine.

misc

Reuben announces: I will be stepping down from the SC at the end of March. Main reason is that he has been on the SC since the group started, and that is a long time. Its important for Organizations to get new blood. Also increasingly this seems to be a group of pratictioners who work at or with at NPO's. Reuben says he is not one of those. One of the reasons NOSI is able to have an implicit understanding of where we are going is because we are all a part of the same sort of the work. Reuben wants to get more technical practitioners on board. Reuben is not leaving because he isn't interested. He would like to be a committed volunteer of the sort we have been outlining during this meeting.

Based on Reubens announcement John will collect the names of the people put forward in December and mail them to the SC. If we have consensus on some names, John will contact them to see if they are interested in being a part of the SC. If we don't have strong feeling about anyone, John will begin contacting people from the December list as part of a process of getting a feeling for the interest level of folks to be substantially involved in NOSI's work. This will not be a direct invitation to the SC. John will bring that info back to the SC if necessary.

Reuben will talk to John about getting NOSI documents in Reuben's keeping moved over to SC members.

John asked Rich for copies of the primer

Amanda asked that we keep a NOSI seminar at Penguin Days and the like re: best practices/how to's for FLOSS community members volunteering with NPO's on the back burner for later discussion.

SC Minutes for January 2005:

1/7/05
11:00 AM EST
Present: Reuben, Rich, Amanda, Steve, John
Absent:Arif

Agenda:
1.Assign a note taker: (john)

2.possible new board members:

Amanda asked Rich if he still intended to step off the SC as per his announcement in the spring/summer 2004. Rich said he still intended to step down in the future. Reuben added that he is also looking to step down in the future.
John liked what he heard about Mark Bucciarelli
from hubcap consulting as a possible SC member.
Rich has spoken with Michelle Feldman (from NYC, documents PHPAdmin), Tom Panzarella (fund for city of ny and dotorganics)
Other names: Anders Schneiderman of the SEIU
(Service Employees Intl Union). And John Lorance. Rich suggested a mozilla foundation person or a FSF person.
Rich wants to have John call potentials with a sort of general list of things we need help on to gauge interest and commitment. What the list of questions would be hasn't been talked about. Reuben suggests getting some activities together that volunteers could help out on, would allow potential board members to make themselves apparent through the quality of their volunteer commitment.

3. Help with Spring NTC
Steve will be presenting at the Spring NTC. He needs to line up some speakers. He asked for some help locating people. He also asked Amanda if her co-workers “script” re: integrating OS into NPO's was available. Amanda said probably so. Amanda said that could be shared and possibly linked from the NOSI website. She will check into this.
4. Penguin Day

John talked with Katrin Verclas, she is hoping Steve will rep NOSI in Chicago, and that Amanda will rep in NYC.
Katrin has offered to fly/get John to SF for Penguin Day in February..
Katrin asked what NOSI wants to accomplish with these appearances? Katrin thinks we might use it as a way to define our needs and recruit volunteers from the OS community to help accomplish them.
:
Reuben: we can use these events to do focus grouping. Ex: What do people need from a NOSI as a community building entity? It was useful at the last penguin day, hearing from people what they need and what we should be working on. It would be helpful in directing us.(ex: it helped us draft our proposal to IBM) The community asset map was a good project, although it isn't clear exactly what became of it.
Amanda: We could have NOSI's name on some of the information for the Penguin Day events. In return we can serve as a conduit to get the word about the days out, help Aspiration to recruit locals who may be on our list, get it on the website etc.
Rich: we could be co-sponsor co-convening. Amanda: if we are going to co sponsor we have to be able to come to Aspiration with something specific.
Rich: Perhaps we could do a follow up to the community asset map. An “Action Map” whose goal would be volunteer recruitment effort.

5) update from John

John has worked about 10 hours a week to NOSI because of other work commitments.
An official NOSI phone number has been set up which is 12025585489
John have been working on a list of upcoming events in 2005. This should be available for collaborative editing on the NOSI site soon. Once I have the kinks worked out I will let people know and invite them to add to it. If we can get people to commit to going, we can enable the calender module and post it as “official” Nosi appearances. Criteria for volunteers doing an event as a NOSI rep should be a report and ideally a picture from the event so that we get some community building pr out of our sending primers etc.
John: would like to have information from our previous success stories and then I would like to check in with them for follow up and possible some feature stories with pics. Amanda will send along the db of agencies that registered on the website for John to do follow up on. Rich (or Reuben) thinks we can get pictures from some of the agencies that we featured in the TCO study.
John would like other SC members to respond to emails.

6. other business
Q: has anyone done any work on the on line donation front? A: Amanda attempted to contact our fiscal sponsor via email, with no response. Reuben will make a call and see if we can get them to help us set up a network for good account. Rich has offered the help of the OC to setup a sub account under their auspices if our agent can't help us.
Q:Whats the status of the NOSI request to IBM. A: This has stalled for the moment, but Rich is going to hand this off to John and has in fact contacted Reg Foster to let him know that this is the case.

The web subcommittee is going to schedule a conference call for a Friday before the next months SC call to talk about look, functionality and how volunteers can help out. John will help set this up.
The Cafe could use volunteer help. Steve will put out a call on the list to start grooming volunteers for this work.

Rich announced that the Grassroots Use of Technology
Conference is ccming up in Boston with dates to be announced on list in the near future.

Amanda asked people to use the Nosi-steering list. John and Rich thought that it had some privacy issues re: fund raising and the like that should be thought about. Amanda withdrew the request for the time being.

Rich suggested that when sending emails to other SC members we append [NOSI] so that clients can properly handle the mail.

Minutes from SC conference call: 12.3.04

Present: Amanda, Arif, John, and Reuben

Absent: Rich and Steve

I.General:
Amanda has pointed info at nosi.net to john's email also given him john AT nosi DOT net

II.Private party donations and fund-raising:

Arif suggests we need to make personal donations and individual a priority and set a goal as part of the campaign. Board members may be important in helping to get these individual donations.

Arif also suggests we set up a Network for Good or PAYPAL account on the website. Amanda will look into this.

Reuben talks a little about our fiscal agent:

The Community Foundation for the National Capital Region

http://www.cfncr.org/index.cfm

Kenny Emson is the CFO/VP.
Vice President & Chief Financial Officer
kemson@cfncr.org(202) 955-5890

CFNCR provides NOSI with a quarterly statement of funds in and out.
Structurally sort of an odd fit. Since they have a local focus.
good deal on fiscal sponsorship only a 2% cut.
(During the formation of NOSI the SC also looked into the Tides Foundation and one in new england possibly the Third Sector of New England http://www.tsne.org/
Emson said its fine taking small donations. When a donation gets to a certain level, they have to send out a letter for taking the donation.

III.501 (c)3

Reuben said they have gone around the block re:501 c3. It hasn't seemed to justify the effort and recurring paperwork that people put themselves in for.

Arif says it can be a legitimacy thing, but not always. If we are confident in having staff time paperwork/filing etc, then it wouldn't hurt, but it may not help tremendously.

Reuben IBM doesn't care about 501c3 but more about our capacity to get things done. Our bona-fides were provided by Tech rocks, Jaime, Organizers Collaborative.

IV. Thinking about adding new SC members:

Arif suggests someone from Civic Space http://www.civicspacelabs.org/ . They seem to have good connections.

Arif or Reuben: Our greatest need is for a WORKING steering committee. We should be up front with people in that respect. We might set some hours that are expected.

We should define some some tasks that need to be done.

Arif: We should be reusing the information we produce 2 or three times, to maximize its worth. For ex: a quarterly news letter on list could also be an article on the website. Amanda will think about some ideas about website content.

V.Relationships with other orgs

John: Has a phone call scheduled with Richard Koman rkoman@techsoup.org of Tech soup.

Rebeun says that Compumentor has been interested in talking to us about running the open source forum in the past. However it merely seemed to add work to NOSI without major benefits.

Arif: We shouldn't commit any resources without coming back to the steering committee for consultation.

VI.Website:
Amanda: Is going to take the site live.
NOSI members should take a look at the site and correct any outdated material. Some NOSI members have already been assigned to particular sections (see November minutes)

VII.Next steps
SC members should come up with a list of tasks, skills, relationships or qualities which will help guide our search for new SC members in the short and long term. For example it is probably more important to have hard workers and team players than millionaires on the SC at this point.
SC members SHOULD communicate by email in the next several weeksto put forward some qualities and eventually some names. Hopefully we can make some decisions in the next month or so.

Next regular SC meeting is 1/7/05 at 11:00 AM EST

Website
* We should reach out to a volunteer to do the design elements
* There are some theme repositories; we should pick a theme, load it and go.
* We'll go ahead with the drupal site but with some color.

Assign Ownership of Sections to Steering Committee Members
* Manage Cafe volunteers with Event Management and Contacts
(did that PHP app get moved over?)
* Sign up app should be moved.
* Database should get moved -- Amanda will move it
* Volunteer Sign Up
* this is a bigger question; we need to use the volunteers who sign up
* For now it should forward to the steering committee list.
* Should the wiki move or should the wiki content be more integrated with the site
* FAQ section
* Example Database
* How could it be promoted or made worthwhile? It was Jamie's pet, but what were its purposes & goals, what do we need it for. Beyond giving people a sense that groups are using open source software, what was it for.
* Evolution from the primer to the source book -- this is an option that is out there --> how do we help people make informed decisions about what to use.
* We should take it off line until it can be reworked. How do you get to using it?
Dividing content areas among steering committee members.
* Front Page (John -- he may need to ask Amanda for Help)
* enabling events tracking & news items on the front page
* About NOSI
governance (Amanda)
steering committee (Amanda)
get involved (John or Rich)
discussion lists (Rich)
help with this site
financial support pieces (Reuben)

* Current Projects (Amanda will change to Projects)
Open Source Primer --> Reuben
CAFE --> Steve
Directory of Users --> Off
TCO --> off
Future Projects -> Arif will move from Wiki into Drupal

New Steering Committee Members
* Current steering committee is six,
What do we need on the steering committee.
Suggestions/ Brainstorm: more non-profit /grassroots organizing; John is connected to a nonprofit with 30 employees; Katrin -- brings a sense of vision and thinks about fundraising; someone who thinks about fundraising and is good at it; people who can be potentially involved in the development of NOSI, setting agendas for meetings, providing drive; people who are prepared to put in time and are dedicated; open source projects -- representatives of projects or users; more of the same -- folks working directly in helping non-profits adopt open source so that as NOSI is creating resources the steering committee is made up of people who are going to use those resources; geographical diversity; people who want to use NOSI as a shared resource for their own work;

What is our cap for steering committee size?

If we are planning to transition to a 501c3 we need a funder or a person of wealth or a person with connections to people of wealth who can open doors to people or foundations: (this may be 6 months down the road) Who do we know who we can recruit in 18 months.

Names that came up: Katrin, Greg Heller, David Guilhulfe, Mark Osten(?), Rob Stuart, Marc Surman,

Call time preference: 11 am (which is 8 am for John) from now on.

Agenda for the next call:
Which SC criteria are right?
Who fits that criteria
What is John's job description

Steering Committee
10/8/2004

I: Next SC Chair
John will start a six month term in December through June 2005
Steve will do November: setting up the conference call, circulating an agenda, moderating the call

II: John's Proposal to NOSI
John is interested in working to:
* bring NOSI into people's minds as a resource they should look to
* align NOSI for justice-y free software movements and be a nexus for some of that work
(the rest is outlined in his proposal)

Basically, John is willing to put in 20 hours a week until we raise money to support him. This may change with time, but his goal is to raise enough money by June 2005 to come on full time.

His forseeable plan is: to try to work connections, build alliances, reinvigorate the discussion list and website, and be more of a nexus for appropriate organizations. Things to contemplate and build from: what would institutional membership mean? What would organizations do as part of NOSI, freegeek, Debian NP

DECISION: His title will be coordinator.

Rich noted that we have a financial sponsor and pursuing our own 501c3 doesn't really make sense just yet.

Much of John's emphasis has been on social justice and open source, in talking about his vision for NOSI. Nonprofit is much broader than just social justice; the vision of NOSI that John is promoting has to be consistent with the long term planning and mission of NOSI, and not limited to working on social justice.

Will there be any deliverables from John's work? Or a workplan? John's priority will be engaging people and building constituency. We need a constituency to represent, and the funding will be the step after building up constituency, in John's view.

Can we get funding for general operating expenses? from individuals? foundations? Funding tends to be easier to get for project expenses.

DECISION: We have the funds to support $80/month in office expenses for John through June, he will come to the Steering Committee if he needs approval for travel funds for specific conferences or anything above and beyond that monthly operating expense. [note: we didn't talk about what happens to the $80/month if John finds that he cannot dedicate as much time as he thought to the coordinator position]

We should announce the position, we have a coordinator for NOSI who is pro-bono, this is what he is going to do. ... John will write up a work plan/job description, but won't be starting for about 30 days. Then he will start on the announcement and on writing up the job description/workplan.

Much of this conversation returned several times over to the fact that we are due for a strategic plan, generally. Arif pointed out that it might make sense to try to budget a face-to-face strategic planning meeting for a 3-5 year plan.

III Primers

Rich said Red Sun had several boxes but "he couldn't really tell us any more than that." He said he would have to check in with his contact there and get back to us.

IV: Budget

We have ~$4800 in the bank, but we owe Steve ~$600 for new cafe equipment and owe the printer some money. Once those expense are paid out we'll have roughly $4000 in the bank.

V: Website & List Moderators
The rough website is at http://www.nosi.net/drupalish -- send me a note when you've made an account and I will give you admin privileges.

List moderators:
NOSI Announce - Arif
NOSI Discuss - Amanda
NOSI Desktop - Rich
NOSI Steering - Arif

VI: New Steering Committee Members
What is the process for replacing NOSI SC members -- Michelle left and John will eventually step down (though not for six months or so)

We'll put some time into talking about what we need from the Steering Committee and from a new member, so that we can make an intelligent list of potential candidates.

Current names that are floating around include: Anders Schneiderman stepped off the SC about a year ago but may be interested in coming back on
Katrin Verclas, who may reconsider her decision to decline

VII: IBM, Reg was busy with the conventions, but should be available to him. Rich is following up. The project under consideration is the Sourcebook, which will be a followup to the primer.

NEXT CALL
Agenda Items for the November Call
* New Steering Committee Members (this will take some time)
* Check in re. announcing the Pro-bono Coordinator position and John's job description.