Oversight Board/Meeting Minutes-2019-03-01

Present

Board members

Walter Bender, James Cameron (chair), Samson Goddy, Lionel Laské, Alex Perez, Devin Ulibarri, and Claudia Urrea.

Visitors

Community members

Ibiam Chihurumnaya and Peace Ojemeh.

Agenda

• Pending motions,
• Receive report from Google Summer of Code Sugar Labs organisation administrator,
• Introductory Tasks,
• SCALE 17x,

Receive Report from Project Representative

James Cameron made a report as Conservancy liaison.

Ours and another project's travel policy exemption request were considered by the Conservancy board, but they decided not to grant either, because of the increased work and the number of exemptions they had already granted to all projects. The other project's exemption was due to illness. Our exemption was due to our own failure to communicate.

We did not discuss.

Pending Motions

A motion was pending from e-mail, and the remaining votes collected.

We discussed;

• better documentation of the benefit of the trip,

AGREED MOTION 2019-08

to pay a travel advance of $USD 1600 to Ibiam Chihurumnaya to attend Pycon 2019 in Cleveland, with pauses in New York accommodated by member Dave Crossland.

Receive Report from Google Summer of Code Sugar Labs organisation administrator

Walter Bender made a report.

• we have been accepted,
• we have proposal ideas, see https://github.com/sugarlabs/GSoC,
• we have consent from Conservancy,
• we will hold off inviting mentors until proposals arrive; so that we know what sort of proposals we are getting
• we can still add more project ideas,
• we can encourage participation,
• Walter is doing outreach in Nigeria, and will advertise at Open Edx talk,

We discussed;

• the hold off will also help make sure that participants do not design their proposals to meet requirements of mentors,
• we may designative a main mentor on each idea, to help with approval of proposals,
• we should update project ideas in repository in response to proposals and any discussions,
• as board members have a responsibility to be aware of the event, we may nominate as mentors in order to do so,

SCALE 17x

Alex Perez made a report;

• event begins next Thursday, 7th March,
• need ideas of what to present,
• display will include OLPC XOs, a low end $250 laptop running Sugar, and an Android tablet running Sugarizer.

We discussed;

• an RPi,
• key messages for general public,
• key messages for potential developers,
• keep us updated via mailing lists,

Introductory Tasks

James made a report;

We create issues for introductory tasks that we don't have time to do ourselves. We get criticism of the tasks, but very little support from other developers defending the tasks.

We discussed;

• most of us are not aware when this happens, since we are not watching all repositories,
• tracking the tasks to offer to new contributors,
• reaching out to those who criticise,
• need a way to find repositories we are not watching,
• we will continue to create introductory tasks.

Research Purchase

We were asked to buy a copy of the research; https://www.nngroup.com/articles/childrens-websites-usability-issues/

We need to be able to share it rather than have a single copy for one contributor.

We will need to control access; to Sugar Labs members only.

AGREEN MOTION 2019-08

to purchase a group license to https://www.nngroup.com/articles/childrens-websites-usability-issues/ for use by members of Sugar Labs.

General Discussion - Conservancy Travel Policy

Often there is a tradeoff between personal time and the policy. How to pay the difference between the least expensive flight and the actual chosen flight?

We discussed;

• several ideas on how to do it,
• alternative readings of the legalese,
• some people don't like the legalese to be called "American".

We did not make a decision.

Meeting closed at around 19:58 UTC with loss of quorum. A discussion continued between three board members and an ordinary member, which is not included here.