One factual correction: The Foundation's 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

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.

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

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

---------- 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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