[OpenStack Foundation] Fwd: Re: [Foundation Board] propose 2015 board meeting dates
Hi Foundation list members, Back in November last year on the secret board of directors mailing list, this discussion was had about where to hold the July face to face board meeting instead of just going back to OSCON for a fifth year. I suggested Bengaluru (aka Bangalore) for a few what I thought to be fairly compelling reasons listed below. After precisely ZERO alternatives were offered on the list or anywhere at all, a secret ballot of the board was held in January and the alternatives of OSCON and Austin Texas appeared from nowhere against Bengaluru. Austin won. Putting my personal disappointment with the rejection of what I, and others, thought a great idea, the method of how the decision came to be made has me deeply concerned at what the board has become. Our complete failure to adopt crucial transparency committee directives like ceasing to use the secret board mailing list, and now holding secret ballots with no community consultation, not even board discussion, and not even being able to declare decisions openly as grown ups, all just smells a bit off. I just hope this is a momentary lapse of reason, but I suspect not. I also started to wonder about the leadership of the community that a decision like this shows. None. What possible strategic advantage does holding a board meeting in Austin have that holding it with hundreds if not thousands of excited Stackers in India has? It's has none, it's a plainly selfish decision by a group of people that felt it was better to take a maximum 3 hour plane flight to somewhere where they would probably still drink bottled water anyway. It's a lazy choice and if a board member made it because they're too busy to travel further, then get off the board because this board needs to travel more not less. Against this laziness, it really ok for the (4 I think) non US resident board members to take minimum 10 to 20 hour plane treks for every single meeting to date? It also got me thinking about the international diversity of the board, or the lack of. The make up of our board does not come remotely close to reflecting the foundation membership. If it did we surely have a lot more persons from Asia in seats. Alongside some of the outrageously non inclusive components of our bylaws ($60Kpa paid to be affiliated with a company for example), this lack of diversity has to be fixed so our organisation is properly inclusive from the board up. Yes I said "board up", not "board down", because at this point in time I feel like the board is at the bottom of the organisation. So yes it's hard to completely put my personal disappointment aside about this decision. It was hard to speak with the Indian event organisers who I kept forwarding the board emails to because they couldn't see the list "discussion", and nothing indicated an alternative strategy was emerging. What to do? Ensure this never happens again. Get rid of the secret mailing list, no more secret ballots, own up to and be public with our decisions as members of this board. Perhaps lets even run the process for selecting the July board meeting venue again, out in the open as it damn well should have been done to begin with. CheersTristan Tristan @ Aptira from mobile. Direct/mobile: +61 400 399 211 ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "Monty Taylor" <mordred@inaugust.com> Date: Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 6:35 AM -0800 Subject: Re: [Foundation Board] propose 2015 board meeting dates To: <foundation-board@lists.openstack.org> +1000 I think this is an excellent idea. As Tristan says, there are places that are unlikely to get a summit, but which are very important to our community, and getting 24 people there rather than 5000 is a great way to do that. On 11/26/2014 07:43 AM, Tristan Goode wrote:
I support an East Coast meeting and agree the first meeting should be booked urgently anywhere, but absolutely, let's pick a different event than OSCON because the Summit is in Vancouver. Here's my suggestion....
There's a great opportunity to hold the meeting to coincide with the OpenStack India Day in Bengaluru (India's Silicon Valley). India is home to a huge OpenStack community that is a massive part of what OpenStack is and it's a community we have not and are not serving. India has the third largest Foundation membership count after the USA and China.
We can basically acknowledge that a summit is unlikely to be held in India due to the extreme logistical and infrastructure demands. The Board's presence at a well promoted and well organised OpenStack India Day will serve to provide some real compensation for this. The organisers of the OpenStack India Day were slating it for March, but were so overwhelmed by the prospect of the increased attendance due to the presences of the Board members they were willing to throw away their plans to hold it in July instead. It is not an understatement to say that the presence of the Board would dramatically increase the expected capacity, taking it from a few hundred attendees to a number in the thousands. It was also planned for some OpenStack staff to attend this event already.
Due to Indian culture and values (a good reason alone to attend!) the presence of the project leadership has an enormous ability to deliver impact that will drive our mission forth. India has an awesome culture of respect. Whether you like it or not we as Board directors are looked up to and admired there in a way that is uniquely Indian.
I realise it's a very long way for many of you, but I've not yet attended a BoD meeting that was less than a 10.5 hour flight away, so I think you'll be ok. And don't worry it's entirely possible for even those with the weakest bellies to avoid food and water problems.
So I'd really like us to dramatically increase our inclusion footprint with one fairly simple act. We've been to the East (Hong Kong) and Europe (Paris), and we are back in the East again in Tokyo.
I'm sure most of your organisations have a presence in India, and some with possibly large teams working on OpenStack. A recent informal poll of Indian meetup attendees for their national size indicated there is possibly as many as 10,000 people working in India right now on OpenStack and related projects! For those of you running 24/7 OpenStack ops in the Americas or Europe, India is very likely where your team is covering your night time. Let's embrace this time zone and these people we rely on.
Please consider this request seriously - you have the ability to make great impact with little more than a longer plane flight than you might be used to.
Cheers Tristan
-----Original Message----- From: Alan Clark [mailto:aclark@suse.com] Sent: Thursday, 20 November 2014 9:10 AM To: Tim Bell; foundation-board@lists.openstack.org Subject: Re: [Foundation Board] propose 2015 board meeting dates
Alan,
Thanks for the proposal .... it really helps to pin down the locations for the F2F soonish if we can.
We won't know the individual member election results till January. However, how about an F2F on the US east coast ?
Doing a transatlantic flight for a board meeting is a lot of time/cost so co-locating with OSCON (or another event) is good. Pinning down the slot (i.e. the day before, during or the day after) is also needed to get the flights organised early. Portland flights in the summer were not cheap so early scheduling would be appreciated.
I like the idea of a non west coast and wondered if we should pick a different event than OSCON simply because the Summit is in Vancouver (west coast). Portland and Vancouver are geo close. Is there an event where many Directors attend?
For the summits, can we assume the Sunday before the board meeting and a high-five on the Thursday ?
I still like the idea of a 'high-five' on the Thursday and feel we should include it. But will note that we did not reach quorum last time even with dial-in.
Tim
-----Original Message----- From: Alan Clark [mailto:aclark@suse.com] Sent: 19 November 2014 19:35 To: foundation-board@lists.openstack.org Subject: Re: [Foundation Board] propose 2015 board meeting dates
Directors,
Before the end of year hits us I'd like to discuss and solidify the board meeting dates for 2015. We have several Directors who need to get the next couple meeting dates locked in soon.
To get the discussion rolling, I'll propose the following dates for
meeting:
January 29, Conference Call March 19, F2F Location TBD April 9, Conference Call May 17, F2F Vancouver Summit (also a joint board/tc meeting) July, F2F Location TBD (Should we hold this at OSCON?) October 25, F2F Tokyo Summit (also a joint board/tc meeting) December 3, Conference Call
Your thoughts on meeting dates, locations, format?.
AlanClark
_______________________________________________ Foundation-board mailing list Foundation-board@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foundation-board
_______________________________________________ Foundation-board mailing list Foundation-board@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foundation-board
_______________________________________________ Foundation-board mailing list Foundation-board@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foundation-board
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Tristan, We went back and forth on this topic on Twitter today and I felt it worthwhile to follow up in more detail. While I agree that Bangalore would have been a great venue and many folks on the board would have had a wonderful experience, it appears that the majority of the other 23 members didn't feel that experience outweighed the cost in time and monetary value it would take to achieve that. Unlike most corporate boards, the foundation does not pay travel expenses for its board members, which is something each member is aware of upon their petition for election. With that in mind, a majority decision here feels appropriate. Having international exposure to the OpenStack foundation is important to the long term viability of of this project, the reality is that the board meetings themselves do not expose much value to the overall community. Coming from a community member and board observer who has witnessed almost every board meeting since Paris and plans to continue to do so through 2015, I can say that these meetings are predominantly procedural; mostly nuts and bolts. From what I've witnessed, the board meetings are void of debate. That doesn't make them irrelevant, but it does make me question your assertion that the Indian OpenStack Community would experience great benefit from having them on home soil. Further, each board meeting is available for real time interaction digitally. Location ultimately doesn't matter for those whom truly have the desire to interact with the board. I would turn your question back on its head and ask what strategic advantage does having the board meeting in India have over Austin? *Here are my suggestions for the foundation:* 1. Treat the selection of venues in the same way you would treat any other board vote. Do it in the open and record the results. 2. Leave the board composition as it is. International companies can apply to be gold members and run in the Gold member election, or individual international members can run for the general election. I see nothing wrong with the affiliation bylaws relating to compensation and affiliation <https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Governance/Foundation/Bylaws#ARTICLE_IV._BOARD_OF_DIRECTORS> . 3. Continue to think about ways the board can foster international participation. The alternating summits has worked out well, and we're looking forward to Toyko, and the following summit after that. - Jesse Jesse Proudman Founder and CTO Blue Box Group, Inc. w. blueboxcloud.com <http://www.blueboxcloud.com> c. 206-778-8777 On Sun, Feb 22, 2015 at 12:01 PM, Tristan Goode <tristan@aptira.com> wrote:
Hi Foundation list members,
Back in November last year on the secret board of directors mailing list, this discussion was had about where to hold the July face to face board meeting instead of just going back to OSCON for a fifth year. I suggested Bengaluru (aka Bangalore) for a few what I thought to be fairly compelling reasons listed below.
After precisely ZERO alternatives were offered on the list or anywhere at all, a secret ballot of the board was held in January and the alternatives of OSCON and Austin Texas appeared from nowhere against Bengaluru. Austin won.
Putting my personal disappointment with the rejection of what I, and others, thought a great idea, the method of how the decision came to be made has me deeply concerned at what the board has become. Our complete failure to adopt crucial transparency committee directives like ceasing to use the secret board mailing list, and now holding secret ballots with no community consultation, not even board discussion, and not even being able to declare decisions openly as grown ups, all just smells a bit off. I just hope this is a momentary lapse of reason, but I suspect not.
I also started to wonder about the leadership of the community that a decision like this shows. None. What possible strategic advantage does holding a board meeting in Austin have that holding it with hundreds if not thousands of excited Stackers in India has? It's has none, it's a plainly selfish decision by a group of people that felt it was better to take a maximum 3 hour plane flight to somewhere where they would probably still drink bottled water anyway. It's a lazy choice and if a board member made it because they're too busy to travel further, then get off the board because this board needs to travel more not less. Against this laziness, it really ok for the (4 I think) non US resident board members to take minimum 10 to 20 hour plane treks for every single meeting to date?
It also got me thinking about the international diversity of the board, or the lack of. The make up of our board does not come remotely close to reflecting the foundation membership. If it did we surely have a lot more persons from Asia in seats. Alongside some of the outrageously non inclusive components of our bylaws ($60Kpa paid to be affiliated with a company for example), this lack of diversity has to be fixed so our organisation is properly inclusive from the board up. Yes I said "board up", not "board down", because at this point in time I feel like the board is at the bottom of the organisation.
So yes it's hard to completely put my personal disappointment aside about this decision. It was hard to speak with the Indian event organisers who I kept forwarding the board emails to because they couldn't see the list "discussion", and nothing indicated an alternative strategy was emerging.
What to do? Ensure this never happens again. Get rid of the secret mailing list, no more secret ballots, own up to and be public with our decisions as members of this board.
Perhaps lets even run the process for selecting the July board meeting venue again, out in the open as it damn well should have been done to begin with.
Cheers Tristan
Tristan @ Aptira from mobile. Direct/mobile: +61 400 399 211 <+61%20400%20399%20211>
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "Monty Taylor" <mordred@inaugust.com> Date: Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 6:35 AM -0800 Subject: Re: [Foundation Board] propose 2015 board meeting dates To: <foundation-board@lists.openstack.org>
+1000
I think this is an excellent idea. As Tristan says, there are places that are unlikely to get a summit, but which are very important to our community, and getting 24 people there rather than 5000 is a great way to do that.
On 11/26/2014 07:43 AM, Tristan Goode wrote:
I support an East Coast meeting and agree the first meeting should be booked urgently anywhere, but absolutely, let's pick a different event than OSCON because the Summit is in Vancouver. Here's my suggestion....
There's a great opportunity to hold the meeting to coincide with the OpenStack India Day in Bengaluru (India's Silicon Valley). India is home to a huge OpenStack community that is a massive part of what OpenStack is and it's a community we have not and are not serving. India has the third largest Foundation membership count after the USA and China.
We can basically acknowledge that a summit is unlikely to be held in India due to the extreme logistical and infrastructure demands. The Board's presence at a well promoted and well organised OpenStack India Day will serve to provide some real compensation for this. The organisers of the OpenStack India Day were slating it for March, but were so overwhelmed by the prospect of the increased attendance due to the presences of the Board members they were willing to throw away their plans to hold it in July instead. It is not an understatement to say that the presence of the Board would dramatically increase the expected capacity, taking it from a few hundred attendees to a number in the thousands. It was also planned for some OpenStack staff to attend this event already.
Due to Indian culture and values (a good reason alone to attend!) the presence of the project leadership has an enormous ability to deliver impact that will drive our mission forth. India has an awesome culture of respect. Whether you like it or not we as Board directors are looked up to and admired there in a way that is uniquely Indian.
I realise it's a very long way for many of you, but I've not yet attended a BoD meeting that was less than a 10.5 hour flight away, so I think you'll be ok. And don't worry it's entirely possible for even those with the weakest bellies to avoid food and water problems.
So I'd really like us to dramatically increase our inclusion footprint with one fairly simple act. We've been to the East (Hong Kong) and Europe (Paris), and we are back in the East again in Tokyo.
I'm sure most of your organisations have a presence in India, and some with possibly large teams working on OpenStack. A recent informal poll of Indian meetup attendees for their national size indicated there is possibly as many as 10,000 people working in India right now on OpenStack and related projects! For those of you running 24/7 OpenStack ops in the Americas or Europe, India is very likely where your team is covering your night time. Let's embrace this time zone and these people we rely on.
Please consider this request seriously - you have the ability to make great impact with little more than a longer plane flight than you might be used to.
Cheers Tristan
-----Original Message----- From: Alan Clark [mailto:aclark@suse.com] Sent: Thursday, 20 November 2014 9:10 AM To: Tim Bell; foundation-board@lists.openstack.org Subject: Re: [Foundation Board] propose 2015 board meeting dates
Alan,
Thanks for the proposal .... it really helps to pin down the locations for the F2F soonish if we can.
We won't know the individual member election results till January. However, how about an F2F on the US east coast ?
Doing a transatlantic flight for a board meeting is a lot of time/cost so co-locating with OSCON (or another event) is good. Pinning down the slot (i.e. the day before, during or the day after) is also needed to get the flights organised early. Portland flights in the summer were not cheap so early scheduling would be appreciated.
I like the idea of a non west coast and wondered if we should pick a different event than OSCON simply because the Summit is in Vancouver (west coast). Portland and Vancouver are geo close. Is there an event where many Directors attend?
For the summits, can we assume the Sunday before the board meeting and a high-five on the Thursday ?
I still like the idea of a 'high-five' on the Thursday and feel we should include it. But will note that we did not reach quorum last time even with dial-in.
Tim
-----Original Message----- From: Alan Clark [mailto:aclark@suse.com] Sent: 19 November 2014 19:35 To: foundation-board@lists.openstack.org Subject: Re: [Foundation Board] propose 2015 board meeting dates
Directors,
Before the end of year hits us I'd like to discuss and solidify the board meeting dates for 2015. We have several Directors who need to get the next couple meeting dates locked in soon.
To get the discussion rolling, I'll propose the following dates for
meeting:
January 29, Conference Call March 19, F2F Location TBD April 9, Conference Call May 17, F2F Vancouver Summit (also a joint board/tc meeting) July, F2F Location TBD (Should we hold this at OSCON?) October 25, F2F Tokyo Summit (also a joint board/tc meeting) December 3, Conference Call
Your thoughts on meeting dates, locations, format?.
AlanClark
_______________________________________________ Foundation-board mailing list Foundation-board@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foundation-board
_______________________________________________ Foundation-board mailing list Foundation-board@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foundation-board
_______________________________________________ Foundation-board mailing list Foundation-board@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foundation-board
_______________________________________________ Foundation-board mailing listFoundation-board@lists.openstack.orghttp://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foundation-board
_______________________________________________ Foundation mailing list Foundation@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foundation
Hi Jesse, On 02/23/2015 12:09 AM, Jesse Proudman wrote:
While I agree that Bangalore would have been a great venue and many folks on the board would have had a wonderful experience, it appears that the majority of the other 23 members didn't feel that experience outweighed the cost in time and monetary value it would take to achieve that.
<snip>
Further, each board meeting is available for real time interaction digitally. Location ultimately doesn't matter for those whom truly have the desire to interact with the board.
Is there any reason that this discussion couldn't have happened on foundation-list, before the board decision? There doesn't seem to be anything unreasonable here - I am sure that an open debate with members, followed by a decision by the board members, would be accepted by the membership. In other organizations I have been involved in, we have had issues like this arise. For example, in the GNOME Foundation, cities bid to host our annual conference. Bids are sent to the public foundation list, and are debated in public - arguments about the relative benefits of the bids, cost of travel, accommodation and living expenses in the host cities are raised, and even potentially visa issues. After the debate, the board makes a decision, which is announced to the bidders and the community. This general pattern of public proposal and debate, followed by a private executive decision which takes that debate into consideration, has proven effective at building consensus and maintaining a level of participation of the membership in the workings of the foundation. Regards, Dave. -- Dave Neary - NFV/SDN Community Strategy Open Source and Standards, Red Hat - http://community.redhat.com Ph: +1-978-399-2182 / Cell: +1-978-799-3338
On Mon, Feb 23, 2015 at 2:58 PM, Dave Neary <dneary@redhat.com> wrote:
This general pattern of public proposal and debate, followed by a private executive decision which takes that debate into consideration, has proven effective at building consensus and maintaining a level of participation of the membership in the workings of the foundation.
I absolutely agree that public discussion and public recording of board decisions is important. The intent of my email was to comment on Tristan's concerns in the aggregate. Jesse Proudman Founder and CTO Blue Box Group, Inc. w. blueboxcloud.com <http://www.blueboxcloud.com/> c. 206-778-8777
On Feb 23, 2015 4:16 PM, "Jesse Proudman" <jproudman@blueboxcloud.com> wrote:
On Mon, Feb 23, 2015 at 2:58 PM, Dave Neary <dneary@redhat.com> wrote:
This general pattern of public proposal and debate, followed by a private executive decision which takes that debate into consideration, has proven effective at building consensus and maintaining a level of participation of the membership in the workings of the foundation.
I absolutely agree that public discussion and public recording of board
decisions is important. The intent of my email was to comment on Tristan's concerns in the aggregate.
It has been clear to me that since the OpenStack board started having private, non recorded, non accessible meetings along with private voting, that the OpenStack board is going in a direction that does not benefit the community. Comments about travel costs for the board shows a very shallow view of what running an open source community entails. OpenStack is a _very_ well funded organization and most of the board members come from corporations that pay significantly for their spot. The cost of travel for the corporate delegates is minor compared to the other expenses. The people who run for the board know what the job entails. I believe that every one of them ran for their role to do good in the community. If a board member is unable or unwilling to support the common good, why are they are on the board at all? Transparency in a organization that uses open in the name is IMHO obligatory.
As one of the new transparancy committee members, it is one of my responsibilities to report on the board transparency. The transparancy policy as adopted by the board and posted here http://www.openstack.org/legal/transparency-policy/ generally states that information not falling under the heading confidential information, will be made public through the foundation mailing list. This is not explicit however. The selection of the board meeting locations does not seem to be confidential. I am open to discussing how it could be considered so. In the spirit of being a community that works together in the open, I would like to see the future discussions around selecting board meeting locations be made in the open like most everything else we do. I think an agreement to do this on the ML would be enough to move forward and past this specific issue. If this is a problem that cannot be solved here and needs formal resolution, I would recommend that the process to file a complaint with Jonathan outlined in section 5 of the transparency policy be followed. On Monday, February 23, 2015, Steve Noble <snoble@sonn.com> wrote:
On Feb 23, 2015 4:16 PM, "Jesse Proudman" <jproudman@blueboxcloud.com <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','jproudman@blueboxcloud.com');>> wrote:
On Mon, Feb 23, 2015 at 2:58 PM, Dave Neary <dneary@redhat.com
<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','dneary@redhat.com');>> wrote:
This general pattern of public proposal and debate, followed by a private executive decision which takes that debate into consideration, has proven effective at building consensus and maintaining a level of participation of the membership in the workings of the foundation.
I absolutely agree that public discussion and public recording of board decisions is important. The intent of my email was to comment on Tristan's concerns in the aggregate.
It has been clear to me that since the OpenStack board started having private, non recorded, non accessible meetings along with private voting, that the OpenStack board is going in a direction that does not benefit the community.
Comments about travel costs for the board shows a very shallow view of what running an open source community entails. OpenStack is a _very_ well funded organization and most of the board members come from corporations that pay significantly for their spot. The cost of travel for the corporate delegates is minor compared to the other expenses.
The people who run for the board know what the job entails. I believe that every one of them ran for their role to do good in the community. If a board member is unable or unwilling to support the common good, why are they are on the board at all?
Transparency in a organization that uses open in the name is IMHO obligatory.
-- ~sean
It is my belief that the openstack board and organization as a whole should be as open and transparent as possible yet the document you reference is compromised by the following statement in section 2: "(a) Board meetings (except executive sessions) are open to the public" And the follow on information in section 3: "Notwithstanding a general policy favoring disclosure and transparency, certainsensitive information must remain confidential. “Confidential Information” means (a) information disclosed during the executive session of Board meetings including, without limitation, personnel matters, discussions around Gold Member applications and information collected, prepared or discussed relating to or in anticipation of litigation" First, the opening statement about "a general policy favoring disclosure and transparency" is useless and self serving. Second, The discussion of gold member status has zero reason to be confidential in an "Open" organization, it only serves to obscure and confuse the community. If a member of the board has something to say as a representative of the board and more specifically a representative of their parent organization, it can be said publicly. Third, Litigation is another subject that can be more openly discussed with compromising the outcome of the litigation. If you want a good reference look at the California state University board meetings. https://www.calstate.edu/bot/agendas/mar12/Whole.pdf. Continuing on: "(b) financial information (excluding financial information included in the annual summary provided by the Chairman of the Board) (c) disciplinary actions taken against Platinum Members, Gold Members or Individual Members " Why? A community focused organization should be transparent and at a minimum be more transparent than government organizations. The Bagley-Keene Open Meeting Act, http://oag.ca.gov/open-meetings, (which does not apply to openstack) requires more openness than the openstack board transparency statement. To sum up my statements: The openstack board should have pride in their position of running such a large organization. Any limitations of disclosure that are not backed by law (such as personal privacy), should be removed. On Feb 23, 2015 6:01 PM, "sean roberts" <seanroberts66@gmail.com> wrote:
As one of the new transparancy committee members, it is one of my responsibilities to report on the board transparency.
The transparancy policy as adopted by the board and posted here http://www.openstack.org/legal/transparency-policy/ generally states that information not falling under the heading confidential information, will be made public through the foundation mailing list. This is not explicit however. The selection of the board meeting locations does not seem to be confidential. I am open to discussing how it could be considered so.
In the spirit of being a community that works together in the open, I would like to see the future discussions around selecting board meeting locations be made in the open like most everything else we do. I think an agreement to do this on the ML would be enough to move forward and past this specific issue.
If this is a problem that cannot be solved here and needs formal resolution, I would recommend that the process to file a complaint with Jonathan outlined in section 5 of the transparency policy be followed.
On Monday, February 23, 2015, Steve Noble <snoble@sonn.com> wrote:
On Feb 23, 2015 4:16 PM, "Jesse Proudman" <jproudman@blueboxcloud.com> wrote:
On Mon, Feb 23, 2015 at 2:58 PM, Dave Neary <dneary@redhat.com> wrote:
This general pattern of public proposal and debate, followed by a private executive decision which takes that debate into consideration, has proven effective at building consensus and maintaining a level of participation of the membership in the workings of the foundation.
I absolutely agree that public discussion and public recording of board
decisions is important. The intent of my email was to comment on Tristan's concerns in the aggregate.
It has been clear to me that since the OpenStack board started having private, non recorded, non accessible meetings along with private voting, that the OpenStack board is going in a direction that does not benefit the community.
Comments about travel costs for the board shows a very shallow view of what running an open source community entails. OpenStack is a _very_ well funded organization and most of the board members come from corporations that pay significantly for their spot. The cost of travel for the corporate delegates is minor compared to the other expenses.
The people who run for the board know what the job entails. I believe that every one of them ran for their role to do good in the community. If a board member is unable or unwilling to support the common good, why are they are on the board at all?
Transparency in a organization that uses open in the name is IMHO obligatory.
-- ~sean
Thanks for getting onto this Sean. It's a shame that the July meeting of the board did not get to the report of the then transparency committee because badly needed actions might have started sooner and this situation might have been altogether avoided. I've posted this report below for everyone's reference, it's pretty scathing and I hope we can come back from this. https://docs.google.com/a/aptira.com/file/d/0B_TaAmPCg4-wWVlqcElKeFQtT2s/edi... In the meantime, I agree that the choosing of a location for a board meeting does not seem to be confidential, therefore I hope to see that future discussions around selecting board meeting locations be made in the open. I also feel that given the discussions and process around selecting the July board meeting appear to breach the transparency policy, then that probably should be the subject of a complaint to the ombudsman. The desired outcome should be that an open discussion be undertaken and an open decision be reached that supersedes any previous decision. Cheers Tristan On 24 Feb 2015, at 1:01 pm, sean roberts <seanroberts66@gmail.com> wrote: As one of the new transparancy committee members, it is one of my responsibilities to report on the board transparency. The transparancy policy as adopted by the board and posted here http://www.openstack.org/legal/transparency-policy/ generally states that information not falling under the heading confidential information, will be made public through the foundation mailing list. This is not explicit however. The selection of the board meeting locations does not seem to be confidential. I am open to discussing how it could be considered so. In the spirit of being a community that works together in the open, I would like to see the future discussions around selecting board meeting locations be made in the open like most everything else we do. I think an agreement to do this on the ML would be enough to move forward and past this specific issue. If this is a problem that cannot be solved here and needs formal resolution, I would recommend that the process to file a complaint with Jonathan outlined in section 5 of the transparency policy be followed.
On Monday, February 23, 2015, Steve Noble <snoble@sonn.com> wrote:
On Feb 23, 2015 4:16 PM, "Jesse Proudman" <jproudman@blueboxcloud.com> wrote:
On Mon, Feb 23, 2015 at 2:58 PM, Dave Neary <dneary@redhat.com> wrote:
This general pattern of public proposal and debate, followed by a private executive decision which takes that debate into consideration, has proven effective at building consensus and maintaining a level of participation of the membership in the workings of the foundation.
I absolutely agree that public discussion and public recording of board decisions is important. The intent of my email was to comment on Tristan's concerns in the aggregate.
It has been clear to me that since the OpenStack board started having private, non recorded, non accessible meetings along with private voting, that the OpenStack board is going in a direction that does not benefit the community.
Comments about travel costs for the board shows a very shallow view of what running an open source community entails. OpenStack is a _very_ well funded organization and most of the board members come from corporations that pay significantly for their spot. The cost of travel for the corporate delegates is minor compared to the other expenses.
The people who run for the board know what the job entails. I believe that every one of them ran for their role to do good in the community. If a board member is unable or unwilling to support the common good, why are they are on the board at all?
Transparency in a organization that uses open in the name is IMHO obligatory.
-- ~sean
One factual correction: The Foundation's Bylaws <https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Governance/Foundation/Bylaws> do actually have a provision to have the Foundation cover travel expenses for one of the in-person board meetings ( specific bylaw copy and pasted below). 4.18 *Compensation of Directors*. Directors shall not be entitled to compensation or reimbursement of expenses, except that on the request of an Individual Director, the Executive Director may advance the reasonable travel expenses associated with in-person attendance for at least one regular quarterly Board of Directors meeting each calendar year, including airfare, lodging, and meals. No such payment shall preclude any director from serving the Foundation in any other capacity and receiving compensation for such service except as limited by the Code of Conduct. Jesse Proudman Founder and CTO Blue Box Group, Inc. w. blueboxcloud.com <http://www.blueboxcloud.com/> c. 206-778-8777 On Sun, Feb 22, 2015 at 9:09 PM, Jesse Proudman <jproudman@bluebox.net> wrote:
Tristan,
We went back and forth on this topic on Twitter today and I felt it worthwhile to follow up in more detail.
While I agree that Bangalore would have been a great venue and many folks on the board would have had a wonderful experience, it appears that the majority of the other 23 members didn't feel that experience outweighed the cost in time and monetary value it would take to achieve that. Unlike most corporate boards, the foundation does not pay travel expenses for its board members, which is something each member is aware of upon their petition for election. With that in mind, a majority decision here feels appropriate.
Having international exposure to the OpenStack foundation is important to the long term viability of of this project, the reality is that the board meetings themselves do not expose much value to the overall community. Coming from a community member and board observer who has witnessed almost every board meeting since Paris and plans to continue to do so through 2015, I can say that these meetings are predominantly procedural; mostly nuts and bolts. From what I've witnessed, the board meetings are void of debate. That doesn't make them irrelevant, but it does make me question your assertion that the Indian OpenStack Community would experience great benefit from having them on home soil.
Further, each board meeting is available for real time interaction digitally. Location ultimately doesn't matter for those whom truly have the desire to interact with the board.
I would turn your question back on its head and ask what strategic advantage does having the board meeting in India have over Austin?
*Here are my suggestions for the foundation:*
1. Treat the selection of venues in the same way you would treat any other board vote. Do it in the open and record the results.
2. Leave the board composition as it is. International companies can apply to be gold members and run in the Gold member election, or individual international members can run for the general election. I see nothing wrong with the affiliation bylaws relating to compensation and affiliation <https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Governance/Foundation/Bylaws#ARTICLE_IV._BOARD_OF_DIRECTORS> .
3. Continue to think about ways the board can foster international participation. The alternating summits has worked out well, and we're looking forward to Toyko, and the following summit after that.
- Jesse
Jesse Proudman Founder and CTO Blue Box Group, Inc. w. blueboxcloud.com <http://www.blueboxcloud.com> c. 206-778-8777
On Sun, Feb 22, 2015 at 12:01 PM, Tristan Goode <tristan@aptira.com> wrote:
Hi Foundation list members,
Back in November last year on the secret board of directors mailing list, this discussion was had about where to hold the July face to face board meeting instead of just going back to OSCON for a fifth year. I suggested Bengaluru (aka Bangalore) for a few what I thought to be fairly compelling reasons listed below.
After precisely ZERO alternatives were offered on the list or anywhere at all, a secret ballot of the board was held in January and the alternatives of OSCON and Austin Texas appeared from nowhere against Bengaluru. Austin won.
Putting my personal disappointment with the rejection of what I, and others, thought a great idea, the method of how the decision came to be made has me deeply concerned at what the board has become. Our complete failure to adopt crucial transparency committee directives like ceasing to use the secret board mailing list, and now holding secret ballots with no community consultation, not even board discussion, and not even being able to declare decisions openly as grown ups, all just smells a bit off. I just hope this is a momentary lapse of reason, but I suspect not.
I also started to wonder about the leadership of the community that a decision like this shows. None. What possible strategic advantage does holding a board meeting in Austin have that holding it with hundreds if not thousands of excited Stackers in India has? It's has none, it's a plainly selfish decision by a group of people that felt it was better to take a maximum 3 hour plane flight to somewhere where they would probably still drink bottled water anyway. It's a lazy choice and if a board member made it because they're too busy to travel further, then get off the board because this board needs to travel more not less. Against this laziness, it really ok for the (4 I think) non US resident board members to take minimum 10 to 20 hour plane treks for every single meeting to date?
It also got me thinking about the international diversity of the board, or the lack of. The make up of our board does not come remotely close to reflecting the foundation membership. If it did we surely have a lot more persons from Asia in seats. Alongside some of the outrageously non inclusive components of our bylaws ($60Kpa paid to be affiliated with a company for example), this lack of diversity has to be fixed so our organisation is properly inclusive from the board up. Yes I said "board up", not "board down", because at this point in time I feel like the board is at the bottom of the organisation.
So yes it's hard to completely put my personal disappointment aside about this decision. It was hard to speak with the Indian event organisers who I kept forwarding the board emails to because they couldn't see the list "discussion", and nothing indicated an alternative strategy was emerging.
What to do? Ensure this never happens again. Get rid of the secret mailing list, no more secret ballots, own up to and be public with our decisions as members of this board.
Perhaps lets even run the process for selecting the July board meeting venue again, out in the open as it damn well should have been done to begin with.
Cheers Tristan
Tristan @ Aptira from mobile. Direct/mobile: +61 400 399 211 <+61%20400%20399%20211>
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "Monty Taylor" <mordred@inaugust.com> Date: Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 6:35 AM -0800 Subject: Re: [Foundation Board] propose 2015 board meeting dates To: <foundation-board@lists.openstack.org>
+1000
I think this is an excellent idea. As Tristan says, there are places that are unlikely to get a summit, but which are very important to our community, and getting 24 people there rather than 5000 is a great way to do that.
On 11/26/2014 07:43 AM, Tristan Goode wrote:
I support an East Coast meeting and agree the first meeting should be booked urgently anywhere, but absolutely, let's pick a different event than OSCON because the Summit is in Vancouver. Here's my suggestion....
There's a great opportunity to hold the meeting to coincide with the OpenStack India Day in Bengaluru (India's Silicon Valley). India is home to a huge OpenStack community that is a massive part of what OpenStack is and it's a community we have not and are not serving. India has the third largest Foundation membership count after the USA and China.
We can basically acknowledge that a summit is unlikely to be held in India due to the extreme logistical and infrastructure demands. The Board's presence at a well promoted and well organised OpenStack India Day will serve to provide some real compensation for this. The organisers of the OpenStack India Day were slating it for March, but were so overwhelmed by the prospect of the increased attendance due to the presences of the Board members they were willing to throw away their plans to hold it in July instead. It is not an understatement to say that the presence of the Board would dramatically increase the expected capacity, taking it from a few hundred attendees to a number in the thousands. It was also planned for some OpenStack staff to attend this event already.
Due to Indian culture and values (a good reason alone to attend!) the presence of the project leadership has an enormous ability to deliver impact that will drive our mission forth. India has an awesome culture of respect. Whether you like it or not we as Board directors are looked up to and admired there in a way that is uniquely Indian.
I realise it's a very long way for many of you, but I've not yet attended a BoD meeting that was less than a 10.5 hour flight away, so I think you'll be ok. And don't worry it's entirely possible for even those with the weakest bellies to avoid food and water problems.
So I'd really like us to dramatically increase our inclusion footprint with one fairly simple act. We've been to the East (Hong Kong) and Europe (Paris), and we are back in the East again in Tokyo.
I'm sure most of your organisations have a presence in India, and some with possibly large teams working on OpenStack. A recent informal poll of Indian meetup attendees for their national size indicated there is possibly as many as 10,000 people working in India right now on OpenStack and related projects! For those of you running 24/7 OpenStack ops in the Americas or Europe, India is very likely where your team is covering your night time. Let's embrace this time zone and these people we rely on.
Please consider this request seriously - you have the ability to make great impact with little more than a longer plane flight than you might be used to.
Cheers Tristan
-----Original Message----- From: Alan Clark [mailto:aclark@suse.com] Sent: Thursday, 20 November 2014 9:10 AM To: Tim Bell; foundation-board@lists.openstack.org Subject: Re: [Foundation Board] propose 2015 board meeting dates
> Alan,
Thanks for the proposal .... it really helps to pin down the locations for the F2F soonish if we can.
We won't know the individual member election results till January. However, how about an F2F on the US east coast ?
Doing a transatlantic flight for a board meeting is a lot of time/cost so co-locating with OSCON (or another event) is good. Pinning down the slot (i.e. the day before, during or the day after) is also needed to get the flights organised early. Portland flights in the summer were not cheap so early scheduling would be appreciated.
I like the idea of a non west coast and wondered if we should pick a different event than OSCON simply because the Summit is in Vancouver (west coast). Portland and Vancouver are geo close. Is there an event where many Directors attend?
For the summits, can we assume the Sunday before the board meeting and a high-five on the Thursday ?
I still like the idea of a 'high-five' on the Thursday and feel we should include it. But will note that we did not reach quorum last time even with dial-in.
Tim
-----Original Message----- From: Alan Clark [mailto:aclark@suse.com] Sent: 19 November 2014 19:35 To: foundation-board@lists.openstack.org Subject: Re: [Foundation Board] propose 2015 board meeting dates
Directors,
Before the end of year hits us I'd like to discuss and solidify the board meeting dates for 2015. We have several Directors who need to get the next couple meeting dates locked in soon.
To get the discussion rolling, I'll propose the following dates for
meeting:
January 29, Conference Call March 19, F2F Location TBD April 9, Conference Call May 17, F2F Vancouver Summit (also a joint board/tc meeting) July, F2F Location TBD (Should we hold this at OSCON?) October 25, F2F Tokyo Summit (also a joint board/tc meeting) December 3, Conference Call
Your thoughts on meeting dates, locations, format?.
AlanClark
_______________________________________________ Foundation-board mailing list Foundation-board@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foundation-board
_______________________________________________ Foundation-board mailing list Foundation-board@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foundation-board
_______________________________________________ Foundation-board mailing list Foundation-board@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foundation-board
_______________________________________________ Foundation-board mailing listFoundation-board@lists.openstack.orghttp://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foundation-board
_______________________________________________ Foundation mailing list Foundation@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foundation
Hi Jesse, I agree that the board meetings are dull to watch. However, the point of a board visit is not having a bunch of foreigners say "aye" in a developing country. I'm pretty sure the British Navy did enough of that already. Synchronising the meeting with the event allows the community to engage with the board in person. Here's the value prop: `The Board walking the floor of the OpenStack India Day talking to people.` The mere presence of the top echelon of the community that these people have chosen to join sends a message that the Foundation, the board and the OpenStack community is willing to buck the trend and reach out to those who are cutting a lot of the code and running a lot of the platforms. Sure, the board doesn't pay travel costs for corporate board members, but hey, we can afford to send people around the world every now and then. The board SHOULD be paying all the travel and accommodation costs for individual members to attend board meetings(or perhaps those that aren't affiliated with a sponsor) because there's nothing less democratic excluding poor people from participating in government. Currently the board only pays for one such trip during the year. Regards, Kavit *Kavit Munshi* *Aptira - Asia Pacific’s leading provider of OpenStack* Direct/mobile: +91 971 292 9850 General enquiries: +61 2 8030 2333 Australia toll free: 1800 APTIRA Website aptira.com Twitter @aptira <https://twitter.com/aptira> On 24 February 2015 at 08:32, Jesse Proudman <jproudman@blueboxcloud.com> wrote:
One factual correction: The Foundation's Bylaws <https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Governance/Foundation/Bylaws> do actually have a provision to have the Foundation cover travel expenses for one of the in-person board meetings ( specific bylaw copy and pasted below).
4.18 *Compensation of Directors*. Directors shall not be entitled to compensation or reimbursement of expenses, except that on the request of an Individual Director, the Executive Director may advance the reasonable travel expenses associated with in-person attendance for at least one regular quarterly Board of Directors meeting each calendar year, including airfare, lodging, and meals. No such payment shall preclude any director from serving the Foundation in any other capacity and receiving compensation for such service except as limited by the Code of Conduct.
Jesse Proudman Founder and CTO Blue Box Group, Inc. w. blueboxcloud.com <http://www.blueboxcloud.com/> c. 206-778-8777
On Sun, Feb 22, 2015 at 9:09 PM, Jesse Proudman <jproudman@bluebox.net> wrote:
Tristan,
We went back and forth on this topic on Twitter today and I felt it worthwhile to follow up in more detail.
While I agree that Bangalore would have been a great venue and many folks on the board would have had a wonderful experience, it appears that the majority of the other 23 members didn't feel that experience outweighed the cost in time and monetary value it would take to achieve that. Unlike most corporate boards, the foundation does not pay travel expenses for its board members, which is something each member is aware of upon their petition for election. With that in mind, a majority decision here feels appropriate.
Having international exposure to the OpenStack foundation is important to the long term viability of of this project, the reality is that the board meetings themselves do not expose much value to the overall community. Coming from a community member and board observer who has witnessed almost every board meeting since Paris and plans to continue to do so through 2015, I can say that these meetings are predominantly procedural; mostly nuts and bolts. From what I've witnessed, the board meetings are void of debate. That doesn't make them irrelevant, but it does make me question your assertion that the Indian OpenStack Community would experience great benefit from having them on home soil.
Further, each board meeting is available for real time interaction digitally. Location ultimately doesn't matter for those whom truly have the desire to interact with the board.
I would turn your question back on its head and ask what strategic advantage does having the board meeting in India have over Austin?
*Here are my suggestions for the foundation:*
1. Treat the selection of venues in the same way you would treat any other board vote. Do it in the open and record the results.
2. Leave the board composition as it is. International companies can apply to be gold members and run in the Gold member election, or individual international members can run for the general election. I see nothing wrong with the affiliation bylaws relating to compensation and affiliation <https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Governance/Foundation/Bylaws#ARTICLE_IV._BOARD_OF_DIRECTORS> .
3. Continue to think about ways the board can foster international participation. The alternating summits has worked out well, and we're looking forward to Toyko, and the following summit after that.
- Jesse
Jesse Proudman Founder and CTO Blue Box Group, Inc. w. blueboxcloud.com <http://www.blueboxcloud.com> c. 206-778-8777
On Sun, Feb 22, 2015 at 12:01 PM, Tristan Goode <tristan@aptira.com> wrote:
Hi Foundation list members,
Back in November last year on the secret board of directors mailing list, this discussion was had about where to hold the July face to face board meeting instead of just going back to OSCON for a fifth year. I suggested Bengaluru (aka Bangalore) for a few what I thought to be fairly compelling reasons listed below.
After precisely ZERO alternatives were offered on the list or anywhere at all, a secret ballot of the board was held in January and the alternatives of OSCON and Austin Texas appeared from nowhere against Bengaluru. Austin won.
Putting my personal disappointment with the rejection of what I, and others, thought a great idea, the method of how the decision came to be made has me deeply concerned at what the board has become. Our complete failure to adopt crucial transparency committee directives like ceasing to use the secret board mailing list, and now holding secret ballots with no community consultation, not even board discussion, and not even being able to declare decisions openly as grown ups, all just smells a bit off. I just hope this is a momentary lapse of reason, but I suspect not.
I also started to wonder about the leadership of the community that a decision like this shows. None. What possible strategic advantage does holding a board meeting in Austin have that holding it with hundreds if not thousands of excited Stackers in India has? It's has none, it's a plainly selfish decision by a group of people that felt it was better to take a maximum 3 hour plane flight to somewhere where they would probably still drink bottled water anyway. It's a lazy choice and if a board member made it because they're too busy to travel further, then get off the board because this board needs to travel more not less. Against this laziness, it really ok for the (4 I think) non US resident board members to take minimum 10 to 20 hour plane treks for every single meeting to date?
It also got me thinking about the international diversity of the board, or the lack of. The make up of our board does not come remotely close to reflecting the foundation membership. If it did we surely have a lot more persons from Asia in seats. Alongside some of the outrageously non inclusive components of our bylaws ($60Kpa paid to be affiliated with a company for example), this lack of diversity has to be fixed so our organisation is properly inclusive from the board up. Yes I said "board up", not "board down", because at this point in time I feel like the board is at the bottom of the organisation.
So yes it's hard to completely put my personal disappointment aside about this decision. It was hard to speak with the Indian event organisers who I kept forwarding the board emails to because they couldn't see the list "discussion", and nothing indicated an alternative strategy was emerging.
What to do? Ensure this never happens again. Get rid of the secret mailing list, no more secret ballots, own up to and be public with our decisions as members of this board.
Perhaps lets even run the process for selecting the July board meeting venue again, out in the open as it damn well should have been done to begin with.
Cheers Tristan
Tristan @ Aptira from mobile. Direct/mobile: +61 400 399 211 <+61%20400%20399%20211>
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "Monty Taylor" <mordred@inaugust.com> Date: Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 6:35 AM -0800 Subject: Re: [Foundation Board] propose 2015 board meeting dates To: <foundation-board@lists.openstack.org>
+1000
I think this is an excellent idea. As Tristan says, there are places that are unlikely to get a summit, but which are very important to our community, and getting 24 people there rather than 5000 is a great way to do that.
On 11/26/2014 07:43 AM, Tristan Goode wrote:
I support an East Coast meeting and agree the first meeting should be booked urgently anywhere, but absolutely, let's pick a different event than OSCON because the Summit is in Vancouver. Here's my suggestion....
There's a great opportunity to hold the meeting to coincide with the OpenStack India Day in Bengaluru (India's Silicon Valley). India is home to a huge OpenStack community that is a massive part of what OpenStack is and it's a community we have not and are not serving. India has the third largest Foundation membership count after the USA and China.
We can basically acknowledge that a summit is unlikely to be held in India due to the extreme logistical and infrastructure demands. The Board's presence at a well promoted and well organised OpenStack India Day will serve to provide some real compensation for this. The organisers of the OpenStack India Day were slating it for March, but were so overwhelmed by the prospect of the increased attendance due to the presences of the Board members they were willing to throw away their plans to hold it in July instead. It is not an understatement to say that the presence of the Board would dramatically increase the expected capacity, taking it from a few hundred attendees to a number in the thousands. It was also planned for some OpenStack staff to attend this event already.
Due to Indian culture and values (a good reason alone to attend!) the presence of the project leadership has an enormous ability to deliver impact that will drive our mission forth. India has an awesome culture of respect. Whether you like it or not we as Board directors are looked up to and admired there in a way that is uniquely Indian.
I realise it's a very long way for many of you, but I've not yet attended a BoD meeting that was less than a 10.5 hour flight away, so I think you'll be ok. And don't worry it's entirely possible for even those with the weakest bellies to avoid food and water problems.
So I'd really like us to dramatically increase our inclusion footprint with one fairly simple act. We've been to the East (Hong Kong) and Europe (Paris), and we are back in the East again in Tokyo.
I'm sure most of your organisations have a presence in India, and some with possibly large teams working on OpenStack. A recent informal poll of Indian meetup attendees for their national size indicated there is possibly as many as 10,000 people working in India right now on OpenStack and related projects! For those of you running 24/7 OpenStack ops in the Americas or Europe, India is very likely where your team is covering your night time. Let's embrace this time zone and these people we rely on.
Please consider this request seriously - you have the ability to make great impact with little more than a longer plane flight than you might be used to.
Cheers Tristan
-----Original Message----- From: Alan Clark [mailto:aclark@suse.com] Sent: Thursday, 20 November 2014 9:10 AM To: Tim Bell; foundation-board@lists.openstack.org Subject: Re: [Foundation Board] propose 2015 board meeting dates
>> Alan,
Thanks for the proposal .... it really helps to pin down the locations for the F2F soonish if we can.
We won't know the individual member election results till January. However, how about an F2F on the US east coast ?
Doing a transatlantic flight for a board meeting is a lot of time/cost so co-locating with OSCON (or another event) is good. Pinning down the slot (i.e. the day before, during or the day after) is also needed to get the flights organised early. Portland flights in the summer were not cheap so early scheduling would be appreciated.
I like the idea of a non west coast and wondered if we should pick a different event than OSCON simply because the Summit is in Vancouver (west coast). Portland and Vancouver are geo close. Is there an event where many Directors attend?
For the summits, can we assume the Sunday before the board meeting and a high-five on the Thursday ?
I still like the idea of a 'high-five' on the Thursday and feel we should include it. But will note that we did not reach quorum last time even with dial-in.
Tim
> -----Original Message----- > From: Alan Clark [mailto:aclark@suse.com] > Sent: 19 November 2014 19:35 > To: foundation-board@lists.openstack.org > Subject: Re: [Foundation Board] propose 2015 board meeting dates > > Directors, > > Before the end of year hits us I'd like to discuss and solidify the > board meeting > dates for 2015. We have several Directors who need to get the next > couple meeting dates locked in soon. > > To get the discussion rolling, I'll propose the following dates for
meeting:
> January 29, Conference Call > March 19, F2F Location TBD > April 9, Conference Call > May 17, F2F Vancouver Summit (also a joint board/tc meeting) July, > F2F Location TBD (Should we hold this at OSCON?) October 25, F2F > Tokyo Summit (also a joint board/tc meeting) December 3, Conference > Call > > Your thoughts on meeting dates, locations, format?. > > AlanClark > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Foundation-board mailing list > Foundation-board@lists.openstack.org > http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foundation-board
_______________________________________________ Foundation-board mailing list Foundation-board@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foundation-board
_______________________________________________ Foundation-board mailing list Foundation-board@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foundation-board
_______________________________________________ Foundation-board mailing listFoundation-board@lists.openstack.orghttp://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foundation-board
_______________________________________________ Foundation mailing list Foundation@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foundation
_______________________________________________ Foundation mailing list Foundation@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foundation
Hi Jesse, I agree that the board meetings are dull to watch. However, the point of a board visit is not having a bunch of foreigners say "aye" in a developing country. I'm pretty sure the British Navy did enough of that already. Synchronising the meeting with the event allows the community to engage with the board in person. Here's the value prop: `The Board walking the floor of the OpenStack India Day talking to people.` The mere presence of the top echelon of the community that these people have chosen to join sends a message that the Foundation, the board and the OpenStack community is willing to buck the trend and reach out to those who are cutting a lot of the code and running a lot of the platforms. Sure, the board doesn't pay travel costs for corporate board members, but hey, we can afford to send people around the world every now and then. The board SHOULD be paying all the travel and accommodation costs for individual members to attend board meetings(or perhaps those that aren't affiliated with a sponsor) because there's nothing less democratic excluding poor people from participating in government. Currently the board only pays for one such trip during the year. Regards, Kavit *Kavit Munshi* *Aptira - Asia Pacific’s leading provider of OpenStack* Direct/mobile: +91 971 292 9850 General enquiries: +61 2 8030 2333 Australia toll free: 1800 APTIRA Website aptira.com Twitter @aptira <https://twitter.com/aptira> On 24 February 2015 at 08:32, Jesse Proudman <jproudman@blueboxcloud.com> wrote:
One factual correction: The Foundation's Bylaws <https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Governance/Foundation/Bylaws> do actually have a provision to have the Foundation cover travel expenses for one of the in-person board meetings ( specific bylaw copy and pasted below).
4.18 *Compensation of Directors*. Directors shall not be entitled to compensation or reimbursement of expenses, except that on the request of an Individual Director, the Executive Director may advance the reasonable travel expenses associated with in-person attendance for at least one regular quarterly Board of Directors meeting each calendar year, including airfare, lodging, and meals. No such payment shall preclude any director from serving the Foundation in any other capacity and receiving compensation for such service except as limited by the Code of Conduct.
Jesse Proudman Founder and CTO Blue Box Group, Inc. w. blueboxcloud.com <http://www.blueboxcloud.com/> c. 206-778-8777
On Sun, Feb 22, 2015 at 9:09 PM, Jesse Proudman <jproudman@bluebox.net> wrote:
Tristan,
We went back and forth on this topic on Twitter today and I felt it worthwhile to follow up in more detail.
While I agree that Bangalore would have been a great venue and many folks on the board would have had a wonderful experience, it appears that the majority of the other 23 members didn't feel that experience outweighed the cost in time and monetary value it would take to achieve that. Unlike most corporate boards, the foundation does not pay travel expenses for its board members, which is something each member is aware of upon their petition for election. With that in mind, a majority decision here feels appropriate.
Having international exposure to the OpenStack foundation is important to the long term viability of of this project, the reality is that the board meetings themselves do not expose much value to the overall community. Coming from a community member and board observer who has witnessed almost every board meeting since Paris and plans to continue to do so through 2015, I can say that these meetings are predominantly procedural; mostly nuts and bolts. From what I've witnessed, the board meetings are void of debate. That doesn't make them irrelevant, but it does make me question your assertion that the Indian OpenStack Community would experience great benefit from having them on home soil.
Further, each board meeting is available for real time interaction digitally. Location ultimately doesn't matter for those whom truly have the desire to interact with the board.
I would turn your question back on its head and ask what strategic advantage does having the board meeting in India have over Austin?
*Here are my suggestions for the foundation:*
1. Treat the selection of venues in the same way you would treat any other board vote. Do it in the open and record the results.
2. Leave the board composition as it is. International companies can apply to be gold members and run in the Gold member election, or individual international members can run for the general election. I see nothing wrong with the affiliation bylaws relating to compensation and affiliation <https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Governance/Foundation/Bylaws#ARTICLE_IV._BOARD_OF_DIRECTORS> .
3. Continue to think about ways the board can foster international participation. The alternating summits has worked out well, and we're looking forward to Toyko, and the following summit after that.
- Jesse
Jesse Proudman Founder and CTO Blue Box Group, Inc. w. blueboxcloud.com <http://www.blueboxcloud.com> c. 206-778-8777
On Sun, Feb 22, 2015 at 12:01 PM, Tristan Goode <tristan@aptira.com> wrote:
Hi Foundation list members,
Back in November last year on the secret board of directors mailing list, this discussion was had about where to hold the July face to face board meeting instead of just going back to OSCON for a fifth year. I suggested Bengaluru (aka Bangalore) for a few what I thought to be fairly compelling reasons listed below.
After precisely ZERO alternatives were offered on the list or anywhere at all, a secret ballot of the board was held in January and the alternatives of OSCON and Austin Texas appeared from nowhere against Bengaluru. Austin won.
Putting my personal disappointment with the rejection of what I, and others, thought a great idea, the method of how the decision came to be made has me deeply concerned at what the board has become. Our complete failure to adopt crucial transparency committee directives like ceasing to use the secret board mailing list, and now holding secret ballots with no community consultation, not even board discussion, and not even being able to declare decisions openly as grown ups, all just smells a bit off. I just hope this is a momentary lapse of reason, but I suspect not.
I also started to wonder about the leadership of the community that a decision like this shows. None. What possible strategic advantage does holding a board meeting in Austin have that holding it with hundreds if not thousands of excited Stackers in India has? It's has none, it's a plainly selfish decision by a group of people that felt it was better to take a maximum 3 hour plane flight to somewhere where they would probably still drink bottled water anyway. It's a lazy choice and if a board member made it because they're too busy to travel further, then get off the board because this board needs to travel more not less. Against this laziness, it really ok for the (4 I think) non US resident board members to take minimum 10 to 20 hour plane treks for every single meeting to date?
It also got me thinking about the international diversity of the board, or the lack of. The make up of our board does not come remotely close to reflecting the foundation membership. If it did we surely have a lot more persons from Asia in seats. Alongside some of the outrageously non inclusive components of our bylaws ($60Kpa paid to be affiliated with a company for example), this lack of diversity has to be fixed so our organisation is properly inclusive from the board up. Yes I said "board up", not "board down", because at this point in time I feel like the board is at the bottom of the organisation.
So yes it's hard to completely put my personal disappointment aside about this decision. It was hard to speak with the Indian event organisers who I kept forwarding the board emails to because they couldn't see the list "discussion", and nothing indicated an alternative strategy was emerging.
What to do? Ensure this never happens again. Get rid of the secret mailing list, no more secret ballots, own up to and be public with our decisions as members of this board.
Perhaps lets even run the process for selecting the July board meeting venue again, out in the open as it damn well should have been done to begin with.
Cheers Tristan
Tristan @ Aptira from mobile. Direct/mobile: +61 400 399 211 <+61%20400%20399%20211>
I would need a legal opinion on this but my understanding of the bylaws (Foundation's Bylaws<https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Governance/Foundation/Bylaws>) text (on the request of an Individual Director, the Executive Director may advance the reasonable travel expenses associated with in-person attendance for at least one regular quarterly Board of Directors meeting each calendar year, including airfare, lodging, and meals) is that expenses for more than one meeting could be requested and approved by the executive director. I think we should publicise this more as people should not feel that the costs of travel to the board meetings are a reason to not stand as an individual representative of the community on the board. The face to face board meetings have been extremely productive in my opinion and I would wish to continue to attend them in person, as in New York and the future as budgets and other commitments allow. Tim From: Kavit Munshi [mailto:kavit@aptira.com] Sent: 24 February 2015 20:22 To: Jesse Proudman Cc: foundation@lists.openstack.org Subject: Re: [OpenStack Foundation] Fwd: Re: [Foundation Board] propose 2015 board meeting dates Hi Jesse, I agree that the board meetings are dull to watch. However, the point of a board visit is not having a bunch of foreigners say "aye" in a developing country. I'm pretty sure the British Navy did enough of that already. Synchronising the meeting with the event allows the community to engage with the board in person. Here's the value prop: `The Board walking the floor of the OpenStack India Day talking to people.` The mere presence of the top echelon of the community that these people have chosen to join sends a message that the Foundation, the board and the OpenStack community is willing to buck the trend and reach out to those who are cutting a lot of the code and running a lot of the platforms. Sure, the board doesn't pay travel costs for corporate board members, but hey, we can afford to send people around the world every now and then. The board SHOULD be paying all the travel and accommodation costs for individual members to attend board meetings(or perhaps those that aren't affiliated with a sponsor) because there's nothing less democratic excluding poor people from participating in government. Currently the board only pays for one such trip during the year. Regards, Kavit Kavit Munshi Aptira - Asia Pacific’s leading provider of OpenStack Direct/mobile: +91 971 292 9850 General enquiries: +61 2 8030 2333 Australia toll free: 1800 APTIRA Website aptira.com<https://aptira.com/> Twitter @aptira<https://twitter.com/aptira> On 24 February 2015 at 08:32, Jesse Proudman <jproudman@blueboxcloud.com<mailto:jproudman@blueboxcloud.com>> wrote: One factual correction: The Foundation's Bylaws<https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Governance/Foundation/Bylaws> do actually have a provision to have the Foundation cover travel expenses for one of the in-person board meetings ( specific bylaw copy and pasted below). 4.18 Compensation of Directors. Directors shall not be entitled to compensation or reimbursement of expenses, except that on the request of an Individual Director, the Executive Director may advance the reasonable travel expenses associated with in-person attendance for at least one regular quarterly Board of Directors meeting each calendar year, including airfare, lodging, and meals. No such payment shall preclude any director from serving the Foundation in any other capacity and receiving compensation for such service except as limited by the Code of Conduct. Jesse Proudman Founder and CTO Blue Box Group, Inc. w. blueboxcloud.com<http://www.blueboxcloud.com/> c. 206-778-8777 On Sun, Feb 22, 2015 at 9:09 PM, Jesse Proudman <jproudman@bluebox.net<mailto:jproudman@bluebox.net>> wrote: Tristan, We went back and forth on this topic on Twitter today and I felt it worthwhile to follow up in more detail. While I agree that Bangalore would have been a great venue and many folks on the board would have had a wonderful experience, it appears that the majority of the other 23 members didn't feel that experience outweighed the cost in time and monetary value it would take to achieve that. Unlike most corporate boards, the foundation does not pay travel expenses for its board members, which is something each member is aware of upon their petition for election. With that in mind, a majority decision here feels appropriate. Having international exposure to the OpenStack foundation is important to the long term viability of of this project, the reality is that the board meetings themselves do not expose much value to the overall community. Coming from a community member and board observer who has witnessed almost every board meeting since Paris and plans to continue to do so through 2015, I can say that these meetings are predominantly procedural; mostly nuts and bolts. From what I've witnessed, the board meetings are void of debate. That doesn't make them irrelevant, but it does make me question your assertion that the Indian OpenStack Community would experience great benefit from having them on home soil. Further, each board meeting is available for real time interaction digitally. Location ultimately doesn't matter for those whom truly have the desire to interact with the board. I would turn your question back on its head and ask what strategic advantage does having the board meeting in India have over Austin? Here are my suggestions for the foundation: 1. Treat the selection of venues in the same way you would treat any other board vote. Do it in the open and record the results. 2. Leave the board composition as it is. International companies can apply to be gold members and run in the Gold member election, or individual international members can run for the general election. I see nothing wrong with the affiliation bylaws relating to compensation and affiliation<https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Governance/Foundation/Bylaws#ARTICLE_IV._BOARD_OF_DIRECTORS>. 3. Continue to think about ways the board can foster international participation. The alternating summits has worked out well, and we're looking forward to Toyko, and the following summit after that. - Jesse Jesse Proudman Founder and CTO Blue Box Group, Inc. w. blueboxcloud.com<http://www.blueboxcloud.com> c. 206-778-8777<tel:206-778-8777> On Sun, Feb 22, 2015 at 12:01 PM, Tristan Goode <tristan@aptira.com<mailto:tristan@aptira.com>> wrote: Hi Foundation list members, Back in November last year on the secret board of directors mailing list, this discussion was had about where to hold the July face to face board meeting instead of just going back to OSCON for a fifth year. I suggested Bengaluru (aka Bangalore) for a few what I thought to be fairly compelling reasons listed below. After precisely ZERO alternatives were offered on the list or anywhere at all, a secret ballot of the board was held in January and the alternatives of OSCON and Austin Texas appeared from nowhere against Bengaluru. Austin won. Putting my personal disappointment with the rejection of what I, and others, thought a great idea, the method of how the decision came to be made has me deeply concerned at what the board has become. Our complete failure to adopt crucial transparency committee directives like ceasing to use the secret board mailing list, and now holding secret ballots with no community consultation, not even board discussion, and not even being able to declare decisions openly as grown ups, all just smells a bit off. I just hope this is a momentary lapse of reason, but I suspect not. I also started to wonder about the leadership of the community that a decision like this shows. None. What possible strategic advantage does holding a board meeting in Austin have that holding it with hundreds if not thousands of excited Stackers in India has? It's has none, it's a plainly selfish decision by a group of people that felt it was better to take a maximum 3 hour plane flight to somewhere where they would probably still drink bottled water anyway. It's a lazy choice and if a board member made it because they're too busy to travel further, then get off the board because this board needs to travel more not less. Against this laziness, it really ok for the (4 I think) non US resident board members to take minimum 10 to 20 hour plane treks for every single meeting to date? It also got me thinking about the international diversity of the board, or the lack of. The make up of our board does not come remotely close to reflecting the foundation membership. If it did we surely have a lot more persons from Asia in seats. Alongside some of the outrageously non inclusive components of our bylaws ($60Kpa paid to be affiliated with a company for example), this lack of diversity has to be fixed so our organisation is properly inclusive from the board up. Yes I said "board up", not "board down", because at this point in time I feel like the board is at the bottom of the organisation. So yes it's hard to completely put my personal disappointment aside about this decision. It was hard to speak with the Indian event organisers who I kept forwarding the board emails to because they couldn't see the list "discussion", and nothing indicated an alternative strategy was emerging. What to do? Ensure this never happens again. Get rid of the secret mailing list, no more secret ballots, own up to and be public with our decisions as members of this board. Perhaps lets even run the process for selecting the July board meeting venue again, out in the open as it damn well should have been done to begin with. Cheers Tristan Tristan @ Aptira from mobile. Direct/mobile: +61 400 399 211<tel:+61%20400%20399%20211>
Hi Jesse, On Sun, 2015-02-22 at 21:09 -0800, Jesse Proudman wrote:
Having international exposure to the OpenStack foundation is important to the long term viability of of this project, the reality is that the board meetings themselves do not expose much value to the overall community.
Yes. Simply having a board meeting in a particular geography is IMO not going to have any real impact on increasing geographical diversity in the project and Foundation. If a board meeting could coincide with a large local event, that could be more effective. And similarly, simply having directors (and project leaders) routinely attend (and present at) local meetups in geographies that are not well represented would have a greater impact. I think that's happening to a degree already, but perhaps we could figure out some more deliberate and coordinated way to make this happen. On transparency and openness, as always I'm hugely in favor of improving this. I don't think this decision needed to be made privately. However, turning a relatively mundane decision into an unnecessarily heated and charged debate does little to encourage people to be more open. Mark.
Hi Mark, Inline:
On Feb 24, 2015, at 9:04 AM, Mark McLoughlin <markmc@redhat.com> wrote:
On transparency and openness, as always I'm hugely in favor of improving this. I don't think this decision needed to be made privately. However, turning a relatively mundane decision into an unnecessarily heated and charged debate does little to encourage people to be more open.
Hopefully you can see the issue with your “molehill into a mountain” statement. Since we (the general community) have limited insight into what is happening in the private board discussions, we can only work with what we have. When a mundane issue like this is discussed and decided privately, it shows that there is an issue with openness and transparency. As you are a member of the board, it is concerning that you believe bringing up a transparency issue (no matter how small) will create a situation where you and others will be less open and hence continue to drive transparency and openness in the wrong direction.
On Feb 24, 2015, at 11:33 AM, Steven Noble <snoble@sonn.com> wrote:
On Feb 24, 2015, at 9:04 AM, Mark McLoughlin <markmc@redhat.com> wrote:
On transparency and openness, as always I'm hugely in favor of improving this. I don't think this decision needed to be made privately. However, turning a relatively mundane decision into an unnecessarily heated and charged debate does little to encourage people to be more open.
Hopefully you can see the issue with your “molehill into a mountain” statement. Since we (the general community) have limited insight into what is happening in the private board discussions, we can only work with what we have. When a mundane issue like this is discussed and decided privately, it shows that there is an issue with openness and transparency.
As you are a member of the board, it is concerning that you believe bringing up a transparency issue (no matter how small) will create a situation where you and others will be less open and hence continue to drive transparency and openness in the wrong direction.
If you’ve worked with markmc for any amount of time, you know that he’s been a huge advocate pushing for transparency and openness for years. Not to put words in his mouth, but I’m pretty sure his statement has nothing to do with bringing up a transparency issue of any kind and more to do with the tone and approach we use in the discussion. There are definitely effective and ineffective tactics for bringing people into a discussion or constructive debate, and I believe he is encouraging us to have that kind of constructive discussion. Jonathan
On Feb 24, 2015, at 12:04 PM, Mark McLoughlin <markmc@redhat.com> wrote:
Hi Jesse,
On Sun, 2015-02-22 at 21:09 -0800, Jesse Proudman wrote:
Having international exposure to the OpenStack foundation is important to the long term viability of of this project, the reality is that the board meetings themselves do not expose much value to the overall community.
Yes. Simply having a board meeting in a particular geography is IMO not going to have any real impact on increasing geographical diversity in the project and Foundation.
If a board meeting could coincide with a large local event, that could be more effective. And similarly, simply having directors (and project leaders) routinely attend (and present at) local meetups in geographies that are not well represented would have a greater impact. I think that's happening to a degree already, but perhaps we could figure out some more deliberate and coordinated way to make this happen.
Having the board meetings coincide with some other public event also makes it more likely that foundation members who are not on the board would be able to attend, because they can coordinate the trip with the conference or other event to justify the budget expense. As with OSCON, those events don’t need to be limited just to OpenStack-specific conferences, so there should be plenty of flexibility in the schedule. Doug
On transparency and openness, as always I'm hugely in favor of improving this. I don't think this decision needed to be made privately. However, turning a relatively mundane decision into an unnecessarily heated and charged debate does little to encourage people to be more open.
Mark.
_______________________________________________ Foundation mailing list Foundation@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foundation
First, I think it's worth repeating the many ways in which the Board has acted in an open manner, to provide some context. All of the Board meetings are public and open with dial in numbers posted to public mailing lists in advance, and I think there are several committees such as DefCore that have set an excellent example for how the Board can collaborate openly with the community through public meetings, updates, and mailing lists. There are certainly areas for improvement, but I think the accusations of systemic secrecy and private maneovering give a false impression. However, in retrospect, I do think it would have been better to conduct the poll (and associated discussion) in public to help provide visibility into the decision. I don't think there were any shady dealings or bad intent behind the scenes, rather Alan and Lew wanted to realistically determine whether the Board would be able to reach quorum in India or if there were viable alternative locations for the 24 Board members to meet. To put things in perspective, we should consider that Board meetings have not historically been organized to create a marketing opportunity around the meeting's location. We have co-located with the Summit or industry events to increase our chances of getting the most board and community members possible in one room, but it has largely been a practical logistics decision. Regardless, let's take this opportunity to bring transparency top of mind and execute some significant, yet fairly easy and quick to implement changes to prove it to the community. Aggregating some of the constructive recommendations on this thread as well as my own thoughts, I would propose the following path forward: We should take quick action to create an open Board mailing list and operate it just like the TC and User Committee lists. This was a recommendation early on by the transparency committee that stalled because we were waiting for an OpenStack-based document store that could be used for the few confidential pieces of information that needed to be exchanged. In the interim, Board members were encouraged to use the public foundation list, but I don't think that's practical for every discussion and makes it too easy to keep things on the private list. Again, we've learned a lesson here with the anonymous doodle to schedule the meeting, and we should make a point to have any future polls and discussions along those lines public on a new, open Board mailing list. To showcase the board commitment, it would make sense to get the list set up quickly and re-run the mid-year board meeting scheduling poll and discussion publicly. The original pitch to co-locate the Board meeting with OpenStack Day India was to make a strong show of support for the growing community; however, I agree with others that there are effective ways to do this whether or not the meeting is co-located. I know several of the Foundation staff have been discussing mid-year travel schedules and would like to attend, and I definitely think we should make a strong effort to recruit Board and TC and other community members to attend the event. I'm happy to see Sean pick up the torch with the transparency committee. I was on the committee in 2013 and helped draft the transparency policy, but the committee waned and did not take much if any action in 2014. It would be great for Sean to get some time on the March 3 board meeting to discuss it. Finally, I agree with MarkMc that the entire community must contribute to an open and respectful culture that encourages transparency. I don’t think board members accusing fellow board members of racism and laziness and using curse words in public forums sets a good example for our community, and is more likely to backfire. People will hesitate to engage openly if they are scared of being burned at the stake. On that note, our community code of conduct is always worth reviewing as we engage in these important discussions: http://www.openstack.org/legal/community-code-of-conduct/ especially this excerpt on respect: "The OpenStack community and its members treat one another with respect. Everyone can make a valuable contribution to OpenStack. We may not always agree, but disagreement is no excuse for poor behavior and poor manners. We might all experience some frustration now and then, but we cannot allow that frustration to turn into a personal attack. It's important to remember that a community where people feel uncomfortable or threatened is not a productive one. We expect members of the OpenStack community to be respectful when dealing with other contributors as well as with people outside the OpenStack project and with users of OpenStack.” Looking forward to your feedback, Thanks, Lauren
On Feb 24, 2015, at 11:48 AM, Doug Hellmann <doug@doughellmann.com> wrote:
On Feb 24, 2015, at 12:04 PM, Mark McLoughlin <markmc@redhat.com> wrote:
Hi Jesse,
On Sun, 2015-02-22 at 21:09 -0800, Jesse Proudman wrote:
Having international exposure to the OpenStack foundation is important to the long term viability of of this project, the reality is that the board meetings themselves do not expose much value to the overall community.
Yes. Simply having a board meeting in a particular geography is IMO not going to have any real impact on increasing geographical diversity in the project and Foundation.
If a board meeting could coincide with a large local event, that could be more effective. And similarly, simply having directors (and project leaders) routinely attend (and present at) local meetups in geographies that are not well represented would have a greater impact. I think that's happening to a degree already, but perhaps we could figure out some more deliberate and coordinated way to make this happen.
Having the board meetings coincide with some other public event also makes it more likely that foundation members who are not on the board would be able to attend, because they can coordinate the trip with the conference or other event to justify the budget expense. As with OSCON, those events don’t need to be limited just to OpenStack-specific conferences, so there should be plenty of flexibility in the schedule.
Doug
On transparency and openness, as always I'm hugely in favor of improving this. I don't think this decision needed to be made privately. However, turning a relatively mundane decision into an unnecessarily heated and charged debate does little to encourage people to be more open.
Mark.
_______________________________________________ Foundation mailing list Foundation@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foundation
_______________________________________________ Foundation mailing list Foundation@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foundation
On Tue, 2015-02-24 at 12:29 -0600, Lauren Sell wrote:
* We should take quick action to create an open Board mailing list and operate it just like the TC and User Committee lists. This was a recommendation early on by the transparency committee that stalled because we were waiting for an OpenStack-based document store that could be used for the few confidential pieces of information that needed to be exchanged. In the interim, Board members were encouraged to use the public foundation list, but I don't think that's practical for every discussion and makes it too easy to keep things on the private list.
The tools we have probably help make this even more of an issue. Mark McLoughlin and Dave Neary suggested a path forward to merge the public and private list, that requires QA and testing. I guess we could create a mailing list and try things out to see if that option is still viable or not https://storyboard.openstack.org/#!/story/1160466 Is it worth proceeding? Any volunteer? Regarding the repository for files, there was an effort from Infra team to investigate deploying a couple of storage options but there was no positive outcome from that investigation. Maybe it's worth picking that up again? thanks stef
On Tue, 2015-02-24 at 12:29 -0600, Lauren Sell wrote:
Regardless, let's take this opportunity to bring transparency top of mind and execute some significant, yet fairly easy and quick to implement changes to prove it to the community.
Indeed.
Aggregating some of the constructive recommendations on this thread as well as my own thoughts, I would propose the following path forward: * We should take quick action to create an open Board mailing list and operate it just like the TC and User Committee lists. This was a recommendation early on by the transparency committee that stalled because we were waiting for an OpenStack-based document store that could be used for the few confidential pieces of information that needed to be exchanged. In the interim, Board members were encouraged to use the public foundation list, but I don't think that's practical for every discussion and makes it too easy to keep things on the private list.
The "just use the foundation list" approach was a worthwhile experiment, but I think it's going to prove to be impossible to encourage board members to use (particularly for mundane matters) a list that's perceived to be a huge public audience. A public mailing list specifically for the purpose of coordinating board matters makes more sense. We explored the idea of opening the foundation-board list, but the concern was about opening the archives of a previously private list. I think we should just create a new public list, calling it e.g. foundation-directors. But yes - we still don't have a mechanism for sharing necessarily confidential documents amongst board members, so we should retain the private list for that purpose. Perhaps we should set the moderation bit on the private list so every email would be moderated and only approve those emails which are simply sharing confidential documents.
* Again, we've learned a lesson here with the anonymous doodle to schedule the meeting, and we should make a point to have any future polls and discussions along those lines public on a new, open Board mailing list.
Agree.
* To showcase the board commitment, it would make sense to get the list set up quickly and re-run the mid-year board meeting scheduling poll and discussion publicly.
I've offered in the past to set up the list. I'm still happy to do it, so perhaps we just need a brief motion and discussion of this plan at next Tuesday's meeting.
* The original pitch to co-locate the Board meeting with OpenStack Day India was to make a strong show of support for the growing community; however, I agree with others that there are effective ways to do this whether or not the meeting is co-located. I know several of the Foundation staff have been discussing mid-year travel schedules and would like to attend, and I definitely think we should make a strong effort to recruit Board and TC and other community members to attend the event.
Cool.
* I'm happy to see Sean pick up the torch with the transparency committee. I was on the committee in 2013 and helped draft the transparency policy, but the committee waned and did not take much if any action in 2014. It would be great for Sean to get some time on the March 3 board meeting to discuss it.
Agree, and I think the committee's previous report does a nice job of showing us where we should focus next. Great list, Lauren. Thanks! Mark.
On Feb 25, 2015, at 1:46 AM, Mark McLoughlin <markmc@redhat.com> wrote:
On Tue, 2015-02-24 at 12:29 -0600, Lauren Sell wrote:
Regardless, let's take this opportunity to bring transparency top of mind and execute some significant, yet fairly easy and quick to implement changes to prove it to the community.
Indeed.
Aggregating some of the constructive recommendations on this thread as well as my own thoughts, I would propose the following path forward: * We should take quick action to create an open Board mailing list and operate it just like the TC and User Committee lists. This was a recommendation early on by the transparency committee that stalled because we were waiting for an OpenStack-based document store that could be used for the few confidential pieces of information that needed to be exchanged. In the interim, Board members were encouraged to use the public foundation list, but I don't think that's practical for every discussion and makes it too easy to keep things on the private list.
The "just use the foundation list" approach was a worthwhile experiment, but I think it's going to prove to be impossible to encourage board members to use (particularly for mundane matters) a list that's perceived to be a huge public audience.
A public mailing list specifically for the purpose of coordinating board matters makes more sense. We explored the idea of opening the foundation-board list, but the concern was about opening the archives of a previously private list. I think we should just create a new public list, calling it e.g. foundation-directors.
But yes - we still don't have a mechanism for sharing necessarily confidential documents amongst board members, so we should retain the private list for that purpose. Perhaps we should set the moderation bit on the private list so every email would be moderated and only approve those emails which are simply sharing confidential documents.
The PSF uses split lists like this with good results. I like the moderation enhancement. Doug
* Again, we've learned a lesson here with the anonymous doodle to schedule the meeting, and we should make a point to have any future polls and discussions along those lines public on a new, open Board mailing list.
Agree.
* To showcase the board commitment, it would make sense to get the list set up quickly and re-run the mid-year board meeting scheduling poll and discussion publicly.
I've offered in the past to set up the list. I'm still happy to do it, so perhaps we just need a brief motion and discussion of this plan at next Tuesday's meeting.
* The original pitch to co-locate the Board meeting with OpenStack Day India was to make a strong show of support for the growing community; however, I agree with others that there are effective ways to do this whether or not the meeting is co-located. I know several of the Foundation staff have been discussing mid-year travel schedules and would like to attend, and I definitely think we should make a strong effort to recruit Board and TC and other community members to attend the event.
Cool.
* I'm happy to see Sean pick up the torch with the transparency committee. I was on the committee in 2013 and helped draft the transparency policy, but the committee waned and did not take much if any action in 2014. It would be great for Sean to get some time on the March 3 board meeting to discuss it.
Agree, and I think the committee's previous report does a nice job of showing us where we should focus next.
Great list, Lauren. Thanks!
Mark.
_______________________________________________ Foundation mailing list Foundation@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foundation
+1
On Feb 25, 2015, at 6:03 AM, Doug Hellmann <doug@doughellmann.com> wrote:
On Feb 25, 2015, at 1:46 AM, Mark McLoughlin <markmc@redhat.com> wrote:
On Tue, 2015-02-24 at 12:29 -0600, Lauren Sell wrote:
Regardless, let's take this opportunity to bring transparency top of mind and execute some significant, yet fairly easy and quick to implement changes to prove it to the community.
Indeed.
Aggregating some of the constructive recommendations on this thread as well as my own thoughts, I would propose the following path forward: * We should take quick action to create an open Board mailing list and operate it just like the TC and User Committee lists. This was a recommendation early on by the transparency committee that stalled because we were waiting for an OpenStack-based document store that could be used for the few confidential pieces of information that needed to be exchanged. In the interim, Board members were encouraged to use the public foundation list, but I don't think that's practical for every discussion and makes it too easy to keep things on the private list.
The "just use the foundation list" approach was a worthwhile experiment, but I think it's going to prove to be impossible to encourage board members to use (particularly for mundane matters) a list that's perceived to be a huge public audience.
A public mailing list specifically for the purpose of coordinating board matters makes more sense. We explored the idea of opening the foundation-board list, but the concern was about opening the archives of a previously private list. I think we should just create a new public list, calling it e.g. foundation-directors.
But yes - we still don't have a mechanism for sharing necessarily confidential documents amongst board members, so we should retain the private list for that purpose. Perhaps we should set the moderation bit on the private list so every email would be moderated and only approve those emails which are simply sharing confidential documents.
The PSF uses split lists like this with good results. I like the moderation enhancement.
Doug
* Again, we've learned a lesson here with the anonymous doodle to schedule the meeting, and we should make a point to have any future polls and discussions along those lines public on a new, open Board mailing list.
Agree.
* To showcase the board commitment, it would make sense to get the list set up quickly and re-run the mid-year board meeting scheduling poll and discussion publicly.
I've offered in the past to set up the list. I'm still happy to do it, so perhaps we just need a brief motion and discussion of this plan at next Tuesday's meeting.
* The original pitch to co-locate the Board meeting with OpenStack Day India was to make a strong show of support for the growing community; however, I agree with others that there are effective ways to do this whether or not the meeting is co-located. I know several of the Foundation staff have been discussing mid-year travel schedules and would like to attend, and I definitely think we should make a strong effort to recruit Board and TC and other community members to attend the event.
Cool.
* I'm happy to see Sean pick up the torch with the transparency committee. I was on the committee in 2013 and helped draft the transparency policy, but the committee waned and did not take much if any action in 2014. It would be great for Sean to get some time on the March 3 board meeting to discuss it.
Agree, and I think the committee's previous report does a nice job of showing us where we should focus next.
Great list, Lauren. Thanks!
Mark.
_______________________________________________ Foundation mailing list Foundation@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foundation
_______________________________________________ Foundation mailing list Foundation@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foundation
I will add the transparency committee to the board agenda. The committee is just getting started, so we will discuss next steps. I think a new public board directors ML is smart. Making the private list moderator approved only is smart as well. We can set the board meetings to go worldwide in the spirit of representing our broad community. As long as it doesn't cut down on participation, I am in favor of it. ~sean
On Feb 24, 2015, at 22:46, Mark McLoughlin <markmc@redhat.com> wrote:
On Tue, 2015-02-24 at 12:29 -0600, Lauren Sell wrote:
Regardless, let's take this opportunity to bring transparency top of mind and execute some significant, yet fairly easy and quick to implement changes to prove it to the community.
Indeed.
Aggregating some of the constructive recommendations on this thread as well as my own thoughts, I would propose the following path forward: * We should take quick action to create an open Board mailing list and operate it just like the TC and User Committee lists. This was a recommendation early on by the transparency committee that stalled because we were waiting for an OpenStack-based document store that could be used for the few confidential pieces of information that needed to be exchanged. In the interim, Board members were encouraged to use the public foundation list, but I don't think that's practical for every discussion and makes it too easy to keep things on the private list.
The "just use the foundation list" approach was a worthwhile experiment, but I think it's going to prove to be impossible to encourage board members to use (particularly for mundane matters) a list that's perceived to be a huge public audience.
A public mailing list specifically for the purpose of coordinating board matters makes more sense. We explored the idea of opening the foundation-board list, but the concern was about opening the archives of a previously private list. I think we should just create a new public list, calling it e.g. foundation-directors.
But yes - we still don't have a mechanism for sharing necessarily confidential documents amongst board members, so we should retain the private list for that purpose. Perhaps we should set the moderation bit on the private list so every email would be moderated and only approve those emails which are simply sharing confidential documents.
* Again, we've learned a lesson here with the anonymous doodle to schedule the meeting, and we should make a point to have any future polls and discussions along those lines public on a new, open Board mailing list.
Agree.
* To showcase the board commitment, it would make sense to get the list set up quickly and re-run the mid-year board meeting scheduling poll and discussion publicly.
I've offered in the past to set up the list. I'm still happy to do it, so perhaps we just need a brief motion and discussion of this plan at next Tuesday's meeting.
* The original pitch to co-locate the Board meeting with OpenStack Day India was to make a strong show of support for the growing community; however, I agree with others that there are effective ways to do this whether or not the meeting is co-located. I know several of the Foundation staff have been discussing mid-year travel schedules and would like to attend, and I definitely think we should make a strong effort to recruit Board and TC and other community members to attend the event.
Cool.
* I'm happy to see Sean pick up the torch with the transparency committee. I was on the committee in 2013 and helped draft the transparency policy, but the committee waned and did not take much if any action in 2014. It would be great for Sean to get some time on the March 3 board meeting to discuss it.
Agree, and I think the committee's previous report does a nice job of showing us where we should focus next.
Great list, Lauren. Thanks!
Mark.
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participants (15)
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Dave Neary
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Doug Hellmann
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Jesse Proudman
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Jesse Proudman
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Jonathan Bryce
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Kavit Munshi
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Lauren Sell
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Mark Collier
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Mark McLoughlin
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sean roberts
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Stefano Maffulli
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Steve Noble
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Steven Noble
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Tim Bell
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Tristan Goode